When Seeing Isn’t Believing — A.I., Thiel, and America’s New Oligarchy

AI video generators are now so realistic you may never trust your eyes again. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, says those same systems can be hacked to learn how to kill someone. Human Rights Watch rejects donations from comedians who cashed Saudi checks. Peter Thiel's secret lectures mix religion, paranoia and billionaire messiah vibes. And the government's new mining deal shows America edging toward oligarchy and socialism all at the same time. All that today on Filtered. Lots of fun to come. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker Foreign okay, welcome and thanks so much for joining me. Today we are going to dive right in. We'll start as we always do, giving a quick market update and looking at what happened yesterday in the markets. S P 500 closed down 0.28% at 6,735.11. The Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.08% at 23,024.63. Keep in mind the long term S&P 500 averages going up 7.47% per year. The Nasdaq 100 is averaging over the last 25 years, going up 9.73% per year. So always keep in mind the long run. Let's dive right into issue one today. A lot of fascinating stories going on. AI video generators are now so good you can no longer trust your eyes. According to the New York Times, OpenAI's new app, Sora can instantly generate realistic video from short text prompts like police body cam footage, a dog stealing steak at Costco. It's fun until it isn't. The same tech can create fake dash cam crashes for insurance fraud, phony news broadcasts smearing real people, or fabricated health videos touting dangerous misinformation. Already, users are cropping out Sora's watermarks and flooding TikTok and Instagram with AI made clips that look indistinguishable from real life. Experts say this marks the death of visual proof. The end of seeing is believing. Once a photo could confirm reality, then came Photoshop. Now even video lies effortlessly. Berkeley professor Renig warns, our brains are wired to believe what we see. We must now pause and ask whether it ever happened. In other words, the era of trust, which you thought was over, is really, really over. Okay, what's the real message here? Our entire world, what little strands of trust remain are about to be shredded. If you can instantly create a video of anything, you can have your opponent call for genocide. You can pose as someone's child saying, I'm in jail, Mom. Send $5,000. You can create reality and Pervert reality and destroy the underpinnings of society. This is potentially huge trouble. Let's dig a little deeper here. Now I mentioned some of the potential causes or potential ways of abusing this. You could just, you know, back into your own garage, ruin your car, and then create footage showing that you were the victim of a hit and run. Traditionally, footage like that would have been useful and accepted as somewhat real with insurance companies, with police. But now let me show you some of this AI generated stuff. It's just, it's getting better and better and better. And that is what makes it scary. It's fascinating. It's going to be a great tool for a lot of people. But just take a look at this one right here. This is courtesy of the New York Times doing this with the SORA platform from Chat GPT. But look at this. It is a cat just floating through space. You can make it look like anything. Now you can tell that's not something that is real because cats don't float in space. Look at this one. Now this does look in some ways highly realistic. It's a dog. And it's a dog climbing its way up a rock climbing gym. And it appears to be a Welsh corgi, which is similar to the type of. I had a half Welsh corgi as a child growing up. But again, it just looks so real. If you could make a dog do that, imagine how you could make a politician you don't like appear to be stuffing $50,000 of unmarked bills in their pockets or taking it in a brown paper bag. I mean, the possibilities of this are absolutely mind blowing. Let's say you're a really, really. And I don't mean to be giving kids ideas, but they're going to find them sooner or later. Imagine you're an extremely cruel teenager. You know, one of your classmates has a crush on somebody. You create an AI video image of that person asking the person you know to the prom. And they're sending it as a video to their Instagram account and the person gets their hopes all set up and then only to realize it was all a scam. You could see people ending marriages. Let's say you hate somebody, you want to break up their marriage, you create essentially a porn video of one of the spouses and you send it to the other. I'm not recommending you do this, mind you, but I'm just telling you the possibilities of this are absolutely endless. And it used to be that video documentation was considered evidence. I had a friend in the last year or so served on a grand jury in Manhattan. And she said it was relatively easy. The prosecutor would say, we would like to charge this person with a crime. We would like to indict this person with a crime. We think this person did it. By the way, here's file footage or here's camera footage from this security camera showing him actually doing the knifing or the mugging. Here's another set of security footage showing this person doing. Here's another set. And so those on the grand jury or on the jury pool simply said, okay, convict, convict, convict. What if video evidence showing someone committing a crime or not committing a crime is so pervasive that we, we can no longer trust anything we see? Let's say you do commit a heinous crime and now you can use video to show yourself at a big public concert with all of your friends at the time the murder was alleged to have been committed, and you just created the video. This is so big, I don't think my puny brain could even wrap its head around it. And already I'm seeing it. It is utterly mind boggling because it's fundamentally changing the way human beings accept reality. Of course, there's the problem with, with con artists and frauds. Imagine, I tell you, get TJ's new Magic Health elixir. This will solve, eliminate tuberculosis, eliminate cancer, eliminate diabetes, get one gallon of my magic TJ elixir, and then I show video of, of every past surgeon general recommending it. I create video, I concoct it from top epidemiologists from Harvard and top nutritionists from Stanford, all endorsing TJ's magic potion. In reality, it's just a glass of water. For our podcast listeners, I was simply holding up a glass of water. But if I'm a slick marketer and ChatGPT can make almost anyone into a slick marketer, I can now use video proof video testimonials. Oh, why should you hire T.J. walker? Well, here's a testimonial from Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama saying TJ Walker is the greatest thing ever. Just created video. So certainly there was a time when the printed word had credibility. And then people realized you can write anything, you can fabricate a letterhead. Written testimonials didn't mean as much. So then many people did switch over to video testimony. I know I've used video testimonials for going on 15 years because there was a hidden assumption there that you can just write anything you want, put someone's name on it. It could be fake. But you can't fake someone's face, their voice, their body saying good things about you. Well, now you can't. Now you can't. Some of the early adopters have used this technology to fake Tesla accidents, false health claims like fried chicken cures cancer. It's going to create copyright chaos because remember, studios are reporting that Sora generated clips copying recognizable movie scenes, movie stars. OpenEye says the videos include watermarks and digital signatures, but some users are figuring out how to crop it out. So you're not going to be able to figure that out. There's going to be all sorts of problems with hostage tapes, for example. I mean, the possibilities of this are nearly endless. And so can we put the genie back in the bottle? Can we make this illegal? No, I don't think we could. We couldn't make photoshopping illegal. Someone could have photoshopped a fake medical degree from Harvard University, put it on a wall, and start performing appendectomy. Appendectomies. Nothing stopped that. In the future, you can't use the law to stop technology that can be used for good or evil. You know, I'm not. All technology can be used to abuse. A pen can be used for writing notes. It can be used for jabbing someone's eyeballs out and killing them, too. We can't outlaw pens. We don't. We're not going to be able to outlaw this. I do think that we as a society are going to have to spend real time, our courts, our legal system. What's going to be considered evidence in the future? What is actually authentic? How do artists and creators get paid? Now, there have been some payoffs to artists from some artificial intelligence companies recently, but most of them are taking the attitude of, we're going to do what we want. And hey, if we stole something, notify us. That was how YouTube started its, its ascent back when there were a gazillion other video file sharing sites. All the others said, oh, we better not break the law. We don't want to be sued. So they wouldn't let you use footage from other places. They made you get permission first, which is how laws usually work. YouTube figured out, you know what, let's just raise a lot of money and let, let's let people post whatever they want on YouTube. We'll worry about the legal niceties later. And it did work out for YouTube. And in fairness to YouTube, they did ultimately work out a way of compensating creators and producers. But is that going to happen in this new AI World where there's not going to be one accountable platform the way YouTube can be held accountable. Are we going to see a nation fabricating video showing a nuclear warhead from an enemy nation hurtling towards them? Then with the president coming on saying, I have no choice. A nuclear weapon is coming to us. I had to push the button to punish and to react to this other country. You could certainly anticipate that happening. And. And what if the president of that country or the political establishment isn't trying to start a war? They're not looking for a phony context, but other bad actors are trying to start a war. So they're sending these videos that look incredibly compelling, where they're taking them to the war room of an opposing country and showing what appears to be real news footage of the prime minister or the president of that country saying, yes, we must go to war. Let's send our nuclear weaponry to them in two hours. And that goes out on the news. The panic, the chaos, people on the streets. You know, I hate to be a Chicken Little with my head, you know, running, you know, saying the sky is falling constantly. But this is different. This is a fundamentally different way of human beings perceiving reality. And there's simply no way that I foresee that this doesn't create big changes. And I'm sure that I have not foreseen 99% of the ways that this can be used and abused. Some ways will be great. As we talked about on this show earlier, this is going to be great for truly creative visionaries who can come up with their own mind of a concept for a movie, write the thing or prompt the thing and have a fantastic movie that maybe sells $500 million worth of tickets. And it was all done with this program. Maybe a free version of this program. And the mind of one teenager. Not so good if you're a movie producer or an actor or a director, but good for that teenager and good for people who want to be entertained with that. I'm going to be monitoring this closely. I don't have all the answers. I do have at least some of the questions. And together, maybe we can grapple with this thing and figure it out. So if you're new to the show, thank you for joining me. It's Friday. It is October 10, 2025. This is filtered with TJ Walker. This is the show where we look at a mix of the top stories of the day in the business world, the artificial intelligence world, like this, the culture world, and then we filter it through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills, all with the goal of building your success of improving your own skills so you can be more successful in your personal life as well as your professional life. That's what we're about. Now the tie in to this issue is you better learn how to use artificial intelligence to make images and video. Now my staff and I, I should say my staff, not really me, we are using artificial intelligence to create images for the graphics for this show. And if you are listening to the show on any podcasting platform, I do appreciate you doing that. If you want to check out what we look like, you can watch the show on YouTube. My friends on TikTok can't see the images I'm showing, but on all other social media platforms, Twitch, Facebook, LinkedIn X&A handful of others, we are simulcasting this as a as a video show as well. And I do use graphics. So my challenge to you is either figure out how to use these graphics capabilities from OpenAI and all the others, especially the video capabilities, or get someone on your team and empower them to do it. Because I really worry I'm going to be left behind and I worry you're going to be left behind. I don't want that to happen more in a moment. Want to communicate like a Pro? Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com Millions have already transformed their speaking skills. Why not you? This show doesn't run on a lot of corporate sponsorships or big media backing. It runs on caffeine and your support. If you like what you're hearing and want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee. Really just go to buymeacoffee.com tjwalker it's quick, it's easy and yes, it helps. Helps cover editing, hosting and staying relatively ad free for as long as possible. Buymeacoffee.com TJ Walker your 395 makes a real difference. Want live coaching from me? Bonus episodes, full course access. It's all waiting@tjwalker.com members join now. Welcome back to filtered issue two. Ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns AI can be hacked to, quote, learn how to kill someone. Those are indeed strong words. Schmidt explained that hackers are can manipulate powerful AI models through prompt injections or jailbreaking, essentially tricking them into performing dangerous or illegal tasks. He said, quote all major companies make it impossible for those models to answer the question, but there's evidence they can be reverse engineered. Despite the warning, Schmidt described AI as under hyped, believe it or not, calling it a force that could soon surpass human intelligence and deliver huge economic rewards. But until there's an international system for AI non proliferation like the one that governs nuclear weapons, the risk of rogue weaponized AI remains terrifyingly real. Look, here's the real message, Eric Schmidt can't be written off as some goofball. This is a serious person. And when he's warning people that AI can be hacked to kill people, it's time for us to listen up. It is time, in fact, for regulation. Let's go a little bit deeper here. What does this mean? Now, Schmidt and others have often said it's so powerful, it's so dangerous, it should be regulated. AI should be regulated like nuclear weapons. And let's, let's give credit to a much maligned institution, the United nations, and one of its organizations, the ctbto, which is in charge of regulating nuclear use and nuclear weapons. It's been a huge success, frankly, because how many nuclear weapons have been dropped since 1945? Okay, so I know it's, it's not politically correct to ever say anything nice about the un, but if you're going to blame them for mismanagement, let's give them some credit for fulfilling their fundamental mission, which is creating a, an environment of national law, norms, societal standards, and working with the Security Council to stop proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yeah, the more companies have, more countries have nuclear weapons. Yes, but there have been enough controls, enough regulation, so that we are not seeing countries drop nuclear bombs on other countries. That's a huge success. Here's the difference between nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence. Nuclear weapons are insanely difficult and expensive to build and require huge numbers of highly trained experts. It's frankly not something people can do unless you have the full power and financial backing of major governments. So in a sense, it has been easier to stop the non proliferation or to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons because of the cost, because of the infrastructure, the size, the scope of what it takes to create a working bomb. Artificial intelligence is different. And we may be getting to the point where a kid in his mom's basement may have all the raw resources needed to make an extraordinarily dangerous AI. Now, we don't appear to be there yet, but advances are coming faster and faster and faster, and there's simply a cost difference. You don't need enriched uranium to create an artificial intelligence bot. So that's why the comparison. It is a fair comparison, given that both things are considered wildly dangerous and could kill people. But it's not as simple as passing some legislation as recently as two years ago, you may remember, I remember that Elon Musk and all sorts of luminaries said let's come together as an AI community and put a pause on all testing for six months. Well, you see how well that went. That was celebrated for about five seconds. Everyone instantly forgot about it. And everyone instantly went on to go deeper and deeper in their understanding of development of their own AI programs. Because here's the problem. Whoever wins this war, at least the short term, whoever becomes the preeminent AI company in the world really could benefit from a winner take all system. They really could be the most powerful company in the world, the richest company in the history of the world. They might even become the only company in the world, especially if they are the first to create a general artificial intelligence, something that is truly superior in thought to what humans can do. And of course that does bring up the whole issue of when in the history of planet Earth has one animal dominated another animal that is smarter? That's really what concerns people because the history of this planet is whatever being or thing is smartest wins. It's not the strongest. You and I are not as strong as a gorilla. It's not the fastest. You and I are not as fast as a cheetah. It is whatever being is smarter dominates everything else. And that's really what concerns people with respect to us reaching a general artificial intelligence. Once it's smarter, it should in fact be able to figure out how to manipulate you and me and governments and everyone else. And then who knows what it will decide to do. We just don't know. Those who are convinced it's doomsday, they'll kill all humans. You don't know that. Those who are convinced it is just going to create a utopia where it's going to do everything we want and you and I can just sit around writing poetry, having a robot feel, feed us grapes and we're all in big beautiful mansions created by AI robots. You don't know that either. Nobody really knows what's going on. I want to point out a few more facts put out by Eric Schmidt. Again I should point out he's the retired CEO of Google, but still someone who is actively involved. And he has his finger in a lot of pies. He wrote not one, but two books on the future of AI with Henry Kissinger before he passed away. So this is someone who's giving a tremendous amount of thought. Schmidt doesn't expect an AI bubble crash arguing investors taking the big risks expect equally huge. So he doesn't think there's an AI bubble. I'm not quite sure where he's getting that because there was a crash with search engines. Google became so big, the people who invested a lot of money in altavista and there's, you know, so many different search engines I don't even remember the names of, they did lose money. So many people who invested in Internet companies lost money, but the Internet in general did really well. There are hundreds of of companies, car companies 100 years ago that raised millions and millions of dollars from investors and all but three in the US anyway went bankrupt. You look at the railroads in the 19th century In England, over development, new technology, money flowed in, most of them went bankrupt. So I don't quite get why he's saying that we shouldn't have an AI bubble crash. I do think that if you look at the history of new technologies, ones that ended up being a big deal and making a lot of money, there was typically a crash for, for all the second place companies. What's different about artificial intelligence now is the possibility that one company truly becomes insurmountable, that has a monopoly like no other. If it really can get a general artificial intelligence now, he says, despite the risk, he called artificial intelligence under hyped, believe it or not, predicting enormous long term economic value. I don't know if I'd say it's under hyped. I would say it's not understood carefully because the problem I have and you have and most people have is we're still thinking in terms of typing something on a screen and wow, it is great to be able to type in a question, hit a button on your computer and, and have ChatGPT or any other AI program, write a detailed research report that's pretty good. That would have taken a smart 24 year old two weeks to write and would have cost you $10,000. That is impressive, there's no doubt about it. But I think what Schmidt is getting at, and I have to increasingly remind myself, is that we are close to a world where AI is taking over things. We're already seeing it taking over autonomous driving vehicles, it's coming to planes, it's already used in planes. And it could get to the point of robots, things that look like humans, or things that might just look like a giant vacuum cleaner, but that start doing things in the physical world again. Some of this could be fantastic. To have a home health care worker that you could, let's say buy for $20,000 to take care of a family member who needs constant care is going to generate so much extra value in our world because right now people are either faced with, you know, going bankrupt sometimes paying for home health care workers 24 hours a day, or having to leave their home and go move to a center where they really don't want to be. If you could have a home, a robotic home healthcare worker that cooks all your meals, takes care of you, picks you up to take you to the restroom if you need to, cleans your house, and yes, could talk to you and socialize with you for a one time fixed fee or some kind of monthly subscription that is infinitely less expensive than hiring human beings. Well, it does a couple of things. For one, it instantly puts another several million people out of employment. That's not good to them, but it also dramatically enhances the life experience for people who do need care. So this is, this is going to have so many different impacts. Again, boggles them. Issue one and issue two today are very similar. Obviously it's about the power of AI. The first story just looking at the tremendous power of this new AI video released by ChatGPT, but more broadly, Eric Schmidt's warning that it could in fact kill us and we might get all rich and live in utopia for a while before it happens. But that's not much of a consolation if it, if someone hacks it and creates misery. One of the most often predicted ways that this could happen is for an artificial intelligence to create some form of pathogen where there is no cure. And it's really and it makes Covid look like a day in the park. I hope it doesn't happen. I'm not so arrogant as to think I'm injecting this idea and I have such a large audience that people are going to do it because I mentioned it already being talked about. I hope it doesn't happen. Okay, we're gonna go, we're gonna go on to more enjoyable laughing light hearted matters in just a moment on the next segment. We'll be right back after this break. Want more? Grab my 5 book success library for 9.95 at tjwalker.com books it the fastest way to level up your communication. Imagine being the most confident person in the room whether you're on Zoom or on stage. That's what thousands of professionals are learning to do right now through my online communication courses at Media Training Worldwide. You can access my complete training library on demand. Affordable and actually effective when whether you're preparing for media interviews, client presentations or TED style talks, I've got you covered. Check it out. Mediatrainingworldwide.com. you'll never wing it again. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com advertise and welcome back. I'm TJ Walker. This is filtered. Human Rights Watch rejects donations from comedians who performed in Saudi Arabia. According to Variety, Human Rights Watch says it will not get this. It will not accept money from performers who take money from the Saudi Arabia fund that's paying for this Riyadh comedy festival, including Aziz Asari, who pledged to donate part of his fee to human rights groups. The organization's Saudi researcher Joey Shaya says, quote, it's not too late for performers to instead call for the release of imprisoned Saudi activist. Shay reminded the public that this is the same government responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the ongoing jailing of the dissidents. The festival's lavish payouts, reportedly up to $1.6 million per set, to some comedians, drew big names like Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Louis C.K. pete Davidson, Jessica Kurzen, Whitney Cummings, Joel Kim, Booster, Mattie Olaine, and Michelle Wolf. Even as other comics refused the offers, calling the event propaganda for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's regime. Ansari defended his appearance, saying he wanted to engage, not isolate. But many critics say laughter shouldn't come with censorship clauses or blood money. Okay, what's the real message here? There is a reason that. That many people despise those perceived as on the left as having no sense of humor and being holier than thou and being obsessed with. You're wrong. You're always wrong. It is an outrage for a human rights organization to say we're not going to take money to help us with our cause from comedians who are donating it, who are engaging with our enemies, who are getting people to do what we want them to do. We tell these extremists, these Saudi Arabians, don't kill Jews. Hire them. Well, that's what they're doing. We tell them, don't stone to death gay people. Treat them as equals and hire them. They're hiring gay comedians. We tell them, don't keep women down in the kitchen or the gutter. Elevate them. Treat them as equal. Let them work. Well, that's what they're doing. Hiring female comedians. So Humans Rights Watch and others have got this backward. They need to be thanking these comedians for creating progress. Okay, let's go a little bit deeper here. I'm certainly willing to acknowledge that there can be fair minded, honest people on both sides of this issue. And I have no problem with a comedian deciding they don't want to take the money to go to this comedy festival. Although I would question how many of them really think it's wrong versus I just don't want the criticism. I'm already rich. I don't want the criticism now. It's very easy to be sanctimonious about other people's money and telling people they shouldn't take a job. You know, you could analyze any government job, any private sector job, and come up with a reason how. Oh, it's not pure. It's not pure. There's an old saying I remember 30 years ago in certain fundraising circles and in liberal left circles in Manhattan. You know, the only purists out here are people whose grandfathers ran coal mines or owned slaves. You know, they've got so much inherited wealth they can be pure. If we're going to live in some kind of a worldwide capitalistic system, there simply is nothing that's 100% pure. If you're driving to a rally to protest something, maybe you used oil in your car that came from Saudi Arabia. Are you going to hike? So this, to me is a bit tedious, and it also just, to me defies common sense. The criticism against these comedians is that they are making it easier for the world to forget some of the atrocities committed by this government. Like in fact, taking a bone saw and cutting up journalist Khashoggi. Well, no, it's getting more spotlight. I've seen more articles in the last month and seen more podcast talking about the fact that in Saudi Arabia, if their dear leader doesn't like you, he can tell his henchmen to cut you up in little pieces. It's put a spotlight on their human rights abuses. But here's my problem with some. And this gets a lot more play than it deserves considering we are in the middle of a culture war where right wing authoritarianism is shredding our very constitution and our way of life. But it doesn't mean it should get a free pass. There are those on the left who don't really want to engage, who don't really want to improve people. The whole point of saying, here's what I think is the moral way of doing things I don't like. What these people are doing is to persuade them to change their behavior. Well, Saudi Arabia is in fact changing its behavior. Is it as fast as I might like or as various left wing or progressive or even centrist American thought leaders would like? No, but it's Moving in the right direction, women are getting more rights. People who don't want to worship religion exactly the same way as all their neighbors are getting a few more rights. There is progress. Now, what I like about this comedy festival in Saudi Arabia is it is, in fact, breaking barriers. It's a society where women traditionally had to cover their face, couldn't have jobs, couldn't leave the house unless their father or their brother was present. And now women like Whitney Cummings, a comedian I, I respect and admire because I think she's funny, Michelle Wolf, who I think is hilarious, they're going to this comedy festival. They're going to be up on stage, and while their contract may say they can't make fun of the royal family or Islam, they're not going to have to wear a burqa. So it's sending a role model to people throughout Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Hey, women can be on stage. Women can have power. Women can speak out. Women can make money. Women can be. That's a pro feminist message. So why in the world, if you're trying to change the world to make it better, would you not embrace people doing the change? You want the idea that you're going to say, well, they're not perfect, therefore we're going to further isolate them. How does that make anything better? Now, I need to remind some of my friends on the center left who these days, most people in America across political parties are like, gay marriage is fine. Let gay people get married, do whatever they want. You're seen as a bit of a bigot and a tool, frankly. If you're like, I want to get rid of gay marriage, that's a narrow niche position. Not in the Democratic Party, but even in the Republican Party these days, you don't see President Trump spending time trashing gay marriage. I'm going to eliminate gay. You don't see him doing that. But I have to remind my friends, it was only a decade or so ago and Barack Obama was not in favor of gay marriage. He didn't deem it politically viable. When he first ran for the presidency, I should say 15 years ago, 17 years ago, he didn't view it as a politically viable position, but he was lobbied. A lot of people who were in favor of gay marriage still voted for him because they thought he was superior across a whole variety of issues to his opponents. They didn't write him off. They didn't say, well, okay, Barack Obama, at one point, you were not in favor of gay marriage, so we're just going to write you off. As a right wing homophobic bigot forever and ever and ever, I will never vote. You would never. No, that's not what happened. They had some patience. They lobbied. They got not only Barack Obama, but a gazillion politicians of every political party to change their views. Once they change their views, they didn't go back and say, ah, but I still think you're a homophobic bigot because eight years ago, you blah, blah, they didn't do that. Now, I'm not suggesting that the leader of Saudi Arabia needs to have his history forgotten or whitewashed because he's never publicly admitted that, yeah, I ordered the hit. I told them I didn't like this journalist, go cut him up in little pieces. He's never admitted that. He's never admitted he's wrong. And I don't think we should ever forget that. But this idea that we, we can't try to persuade people to make positive changes and that the only way to do it is to say, I'm better than you and you're awful and no one can ever deal with you. I don't see how that's how you make change. It's not how you make change within a society like the United States. It's not how you make change around the world. Here's one thing I know. If people are laughing, they're probably too busy to stone somebody to death because they committed an act of adultery or had homosexual sex. So I want people in the Middle east laughing. If you're laughing at a woman because she's funny, you're probably too busy to throw grease in the eyes of your wife at home because she disobeyed you. I'm not saying you couldn't, but you're too busy doing that because you're actually laughing. It's much easier to say, oh, all gay people are horrible, weird, strange, psychologically sick people. If you've never had one make you laugh. But if you've had one make you laugh and you say, here's someone really intelligent, interesting, funny, really has a keen insight. It humanizes them. Don't we want people in Saudi Arabia to have real experiences with people who are different from them? I think we do. So again, there are people I respect who are against this comedy festival and against comedians. I'm not saying they're entirely wrong. But as I weigh, and hey, I'm not a comedian, I have no, you know, no ax to grind in this as far as not benefiting me one way or the other. But I have found as I travel around the world. And I've worked in 45 nations around the world teaching people how to speak effectively, how to speak to the media, how to communicate. And I have worked in the Middle East. I've not worked in Saudi Arabia, but I have worked in Middle Eastern countries where they are still ruled by ruling families and where they are essentially theocracies. I'm not endorsing everything about how they run for society, but if they reach out to me and say, hey, TJ rather than communicating by chopping off heads or hanging people or stoning to death, we want to communicate by speaking, I see that as a positive. I see that as a good thing. So if you want to condemn me for that, that's okay, too. But let's just be careful of this holier than thou thing, because I don't care who you are, whether you're a government official, you can say, well, you know, some of the taxpayers who pay for that government have done bad things. And your salary, if you work at the epa, comes in part from polluters. Does that mean it's wrong for you to do that? No, it doesn't mean that. But you got to be very careful when you start saying there's only some pure money in the world. Am I saying you should do anything for money? No, but they're just telling jokes. And some have criticized, well, how dare you complain about, you know, censorship in America. And you go over there and I do think Dave Chappelle should be condemned for saying there's more freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia than there is in America today. I mean, that's just hyperbole. And comedians usually do use hyperbole to make a laugh. I don't think he was trying to be funny there. But yes, there are banned topics, and they're. But they're implied banned topics at almost any venue. If you're a comedian and all of a sudden you're given a primetime show on NBC or CBS or abc, you're essentially censored. You can't use profanity. If it's a network sitcom, does that mean every single comedian who's ever done a sitcom, does it mean no Seinfeld? I can't ever appreciate a comedian who is done a teeth. No, it doesn't mean that at all. That is absurd. Now, if you're a comedian and your entire act is nothing but making fun of Islam and the leadership of Saudi Arabia, yeah, that would be a bit much if you took money to go over there. But I don't know of any comedian who got offered to go over there and paid money. Who fits that bill? Like most of the comedians have said, look, there's restrictions every on every venue. My act doesn't include making fun of Saudi Arabia or Islam, so it does not really having an impact on my act fact. So I think that's that's a pretty compelling argument. So put me in the category of I think it's a good thing for these comedians to go to the so is it noble to get paid a million dollars or $400,000 for making jokes for an hour? I wouldn't go so far as to say it's noble, but it is a net plus for the world if more and more people, differing viewpoints, hear other people from other parts of the world of differing viewpoints. So put me down as pro. If I learn some jokes and they hire me, I'll be there in a second. Put it that way. But I'm no comedian. Back in a moment after these words filtered is brought to you by the following get the deeper takes. I don't post anywhere else. Subscribe now@substack.com jwalkersuccess and stay in the loop. For years people have asked how they could get one on one coaching from me inexpensively. Well, now you can. Anytime, anywhere. With the TJ Walker AI clone, it's like having me in your pocket ready to help you prep for a speech, polish a pitch, or calm your nerves before a big meeting. You talk to it, it responds like I would based on my real world coaching of thousands of leaders and communicators. Check it out at tjwalker AI. It's not just smart, it's personal. Want to support the show? Skip the ads and buy me a coffee. That's buymeacoffee.com tjwalk. And we are back. Thanks so much for joining me today. My name is TJ Walker. This is Filter. This is where we look at the top news stories of the day in the world of business, technology, economics and culture. And then filter it through the lens of communication and personal development skills. All with the goal of making you more successful in every aspect of life. Peter Thiel, okay, you may or may not be familiar with him. Well known investor, initial investor in Facebook, was a part of the PayPal mafia. He's giving apocalyptic sermons these days he calls Greta Thornburg a legionnaire of the Antichrist. According to the Washington Post, billionaire investor Peter Thiel has been giving secret off the record lectures in San Francisco that sounded more like end times prophecy than tech talk. A leaked recording from four Private sessions titled the Antichrist, a four part lecture series. Thiel warned that people who want to regulate artificial intelligence, including Greta Thunberg and AI safety advocate Elisa Yukowski, are, are actually legionnaires of the Antichrist. He argued that restricting technology could destroy America and usher in global tyranny. Thiel, the PayPal co founder and early Facebook investor, has long embraced fringe ideas from blood transfusions from young men to reverse aging to funding life extension cults and ocean micronations. But these latest sermons fuse religion, libertarianism and paranoia into one worldview where AI regulation equals spiritual evil. One protester outside the venue summed it up this way. This guy's not the Antichrist. He's at least auditioning for the role. Okay, so what's the real message here? What are we to make of Peter Thiel doing all these lectures on the Antichrist? Well, there are some who think that Peter Thiel is the Antichrist. I think that's a bunch of nonsense. Peter Thiel shows once again that you can be a smart individual, be brilliant in one thing. He invested in PayPal and Facebook and be a complete imbecile in many other aspects of life. Henry Ford, great at creating the assembly line, not so good on how to treat Jews. So let's go a little bit deeper here. You know, Peter Thiel was an atheist, I guess, most of his life, most of his adult life, suddenly had this radical transformation and became a Catholic, of all things, and is going all in. And he's a bright guy, he's a smart guy, there's no doubt about it. But to suggest that anyone who gets in the way of American capitalism and technology is the Antichrist is so bizarre at multiple levels. First of all, he claims to be a Catholic. The Catholic Church didn't believe in interest until a few hundred years ago. That's right. Our entire modern banking system, the entire system of having venture capital and making a return on your investment was considered satanic by the very Catholic Church he now purports to believe in. So let's look at some of these claims here, comparing just somebody he doesn't like. You know, this, unfortunately, is what we're seeing all across our political culture, especially from Washington. It used to be where individuals in government, in the private sector could say, okay, I hear you criticize my belief, my policy, my position. I'm listening to you. I respect your right to have that view. I differ with your premise here. I think your facts are wrong here. I don't think you analyze this giving enough weight to this Argument. That's how people in Silicon Valley acted. That's how people in Washington, D.C. acted. And in political capitals around the world, we don't have that anymore. Right now we have someone in Washington who says, if you ever, ever, ever disagree with me on anything, you are a radical far left extremist, you're a terrorist. So the only way to treat you is to essentially put you in jail or stamp you out. What Peter Thiel is doing here is essentially the same thing. You have an opinion. You're a young activist trying to get more regulation to protect the environment so we don't all bake at a 350 degree oven. He's not saying, I disagree, Greta, with your climatologist report. I disagree with what you're saying that the rate of carbon is. He's saying, no, you're the devil. And it's just very hard to have a constructive debate with anyone about everything. If we just go right to ad hominem attack. If every single debate in our culture, political debate, debate about the environment, about the economy, about regulation, if every single debate instantly devolves into, you're the devil, you're Satan, you're evil, you're a terrorist, you're extreme. Therefore I don't have to listen to your arguments, because that's really what it is. It is about shutting down arguments. Oh, you're the radical far left extremist, you're terrorist. Why should I have to have a conversation with you? You're a representative of the Antichrist. Peter Thiel says to anyone who doesn't agree with him, well, why should you have to negotiate? Just attack and destroy. SSB says, is this live? Yes, we are live. So thank you so much for joining us today. This is filtered with TJ Walker and we look at the top stories of the day discussing what this character Peter Thiel is up to. And I should point out, he's a billionaire. He's smart. He's made numerous, numerous really smart early investments in some of the top technology companies in the history of the world. It doesn't mean he really knows what is going on in the world of theology, which he now purports to be an expert in. So his claim again is limiting technology could lead to the destruction of the United States and the global. And a global totalitarian regime. Teal said only a religious argument could inspire people to resist government regulation. Okay, Peter, but we now live in a world where tens, if not a hundred million Americans don't believe in religion. They think of your religion the way you think of Santa Claus or the way you think of ghosts and goblins at Halloween or the way you think of voodoo. They can be respectful of you wanting to have that belief, but it holds absolute, absolute zero sway. And if you want to point to the part of your religious text that says the earth is 5,000 years old and that's it, and then in fact, the sun revolves around the earth, you're free to do that. You have the right to do that. But you're kind of deluding yourself if you think that is going to be a persuasive argument to most people in America or anyplace else. Now, this is also the guy who co founded Palantir. Full disclosure, I don't own any individual stocks in Palantir, but it's a pretty big presence in my index funds. So essentially he's made me a lot of money. So you can factor that in if you want. For my own conflict of interest. It's a data mining firm with long term government and surveillance contracts, which is odd considering how much this guy rails against the government. He's the biggest beneficiary of government funds and welfare. Now, he mused, he also mused over whether Trump, Biden XI or Bill Gates could be the Antichrist. He ruled all out, but said Gates was a very awful person. Yes, Bill Gates is so awful because he spends his time trying to solve the problem of hundreds of millions of poor people dying from poor health care in America. Yeah, that really makes Bill Gates awful. He often praises Elon Musk and was a colleague of Musk in the early days in PayPal. The critics are saying that Thiel's blend of Christian nationalism and tech libertarianism shows how Silicon Valley's strangest mind is now playing the role of the Messiah. And that, my friends, is truly bizarre. SS writes in and says with the way Teal is handling himself, to Vance converting to become a Catholic and the Pope, because becoming an American kind of tells me what the attempt to do within the next five years. You're now the current pope, is an American, was born in Chicago, was raised there. And there is a very strong connection between Peter Thiel and Vance, I believe the Vice President of the United States, J.V. vance, credits Thiel in converting him to Catholicism. And Thiel was the big financial backer of J.D. vance. He made J.D. vance, he gave him a job as a venture capitalist, backed his companies and then he gave tremendous backing to J.D. vance Senate campaign. And he was also by all accounts instrumental in convincing Trump to select J.D. vance as vice president. And there There are many who fear that, you know, when if something happens, and I'm not wishing ill will on anyone, but if something were to happen to Trump and J.D. vance would instantly take over, as the Constitution calls for, that Peter Thiel would essentially be running the government. There are fears of that, but he has such a hole because J.D. vance does owe his entire career to Peter Thiel. I don't think any serious person doubts that. Am I saying he'd be homeless without Peter Thiel? No. But he would not be vice president of the United States. He would not be not have been a senator without Peter Thiel. So make no mistake about it. This guy is extraordinarily powerful and rich. And unfortunately, in our culture, that means people think you're smart on everything. And there's simply no evidence to suggest that he knows who the Antichrist is. More in a moment. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after this break. Want more? Grab my 5 book success library for 995@tjwalker.com books. It's the fastest way to level up your communication. Imagine being the most confident person in the room, whether you're on Zoom or on stage. That's what thousands of professionals are learning to do right now. Through my online communication courses at Media Training Worldwide. You can access my complete training library on demand. Affordable and actually effective. Whether you're preparing for media interviews, client presentations or TED style talks, I've got you covered. Check it out mediatrainingworldwide.com you'll never wing it against again. Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to TJ Walker.com advertise okay. Welcome back. We are heading into our final fifth and final big story of the day. This is story five. We typically cover five stories every day. Right here on Filtered Republican socialism. The government buys a mine while failing to pass a budget. According to Reason, a leading libertarian publication, the administration just took a 10% equity stake in Alaska's Trilogy medals for $35.6 million, with an option to buy another 7.5% later. Reporter Eric Bohm argues this is state capitalism dressed up as national security, noting the government can't pass a budget but is jumping into corporate ownership. The stated goal? Secure cobalt and copper for critical supply chains. The political risk, politicized investing and conflicts of interest as reason reports. Investor John Paulson, a major donor, owns 8.7% of Trilogy. After the deal, his stake jumped from roughly $30 million to over $100 million in worth. Bum's bottom line, permitting a 211 mile access road is fair game. Owning the company is not. He writes, the government is good at issuing permits and not particularly good at running quite quasi private industrial firms securing minerals matters. But turning the state into a portfolio manager invites cronyism, whiplash and mission creep. Okay, what's the real message here? We live in a time of absolute hysteria about creeping socialism taking over America. There is a genuine real risk of socialism taking over America and destroying our free market system. But it's not from a Democratic candidate in a city. It's the Trump administration again. Now they're buying mines, they're trying to take over high tech companies, they're trying to get their fingers in everything. It's crony capitalism. It is socialism minus the beard and Fidel's cigar. Now let's dig a little bit deeper here. It is bizarre to me that so many people who consider themselves free market capitalists. I'm a conservative free market capitalist. They're so exercised how a Democratic candidate, and he's still a candidate at this point, Zorhan Madani in New York City, who is likely to win, likely to become the mayor, but is going to have no power to pass virtually any tax that could affect them. He's going to have no power to all of a sudden buy Goldman Sachs. It's not going to happen. But meanwhile, the people who claim they love free markets and free enterprise and capitalism and who are giving money to this current administration are for the most part saying nothing. Their lips are sealed when again and again and again, Trump is injecting the federal government into our capitalist system. And now he's off buying mines, Alaska's Trilogy metals, taking a 10% equity, taking stakes in intel, taking stakes and writing all sorts of rules how our steel companies can be owned and governed. This is socialism. This, you know what Rand Paul, his father Ron Paul, all these conservatives were right that we have to worry about creeping socialism destroying capitalism. Unfortunately, they're the very same people who are giving aid and comfort to their own ideological enemy, this administration. Because one thing you got to give Donald Trump credit for, he's flexible. I mean, this is a guy who's switched party political parties five times in his life. He's been a Democrat, he's been a Republican, he's been a Democrat, he's been in, he's been all sorts of things. The only thing he truly has allegiance to is himself, his own pocketbook. And he's not some card carrying devout Marxist Leninist. That's not it. But he's certainly not someone who respects free enterprise. He wants a deal because he's a deal maker. That's good for him. Not you, not me, not the American people, not the capitalistic system, but for him. So that's why we're seeing things like him carve up TikTok and give it to his political supporters, people who are going to make him look good. That's why we see him giving $20 billion to Argentina. Because some top contributors to the administration own stakes in Argentina's government or in their economy and are going to benefit from it greatly. And this idea that we're just going to say, well, it's a national emergency, so we need this cobalt, you can say anything is an emergency. And that is in fact the playbook of what authoritarians do to consolidate power. Yes, it was done in Germany less than 100 years ago. It is done in Argentina, it's done in Hungary, it's done in Turkey, it's done in Poland. This is what authoritarian leaders do. They just say, hey, I'd love to follow the constitution and be a good guy like we've always done, but I can't because we have this emergency. These people you think of as centrist in our community are criticizing me. We're no longer going to call them centrists. We're no longer going to call them honest people with differing opinions who may have opinions a little bit to the left of mine. We're simply going to call anyone like that an extremist, a terrorist. It's danger time. We're under assault. Our society is under assault. Therefore, drastic times require drastic measures. This is what authoritarian leaders do. This is what totalitarian leaders do. And that's how they take over. One day it's 10% of a company, next day it's 50%, next day it's 100%. Then it's influencing the media and then it's just taking over the media and then it's shutting it down and handing the keys to a supporter who will only say nice things about them. So if you are a centrist, if you are a liberal, I mean, you gotta get back to the true understanding of liberal. Liberals are trying to fight extremes, especially extremes imposed by governments. They don't like right wing governments controlling everything. They like left wing governments controlling everything. Liberals is properly understood what individual freedom. They want almost everything handled by the private sector, except for things where it's not efficient. It's not efficient for every single person to hire their own private police force. So it's fine for there to be socialized, public schools and public police force and national defense and environmental regulators. Liberals, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, have always believed in that. But what they don't believe in is having the government of own the means of production. And traditionally, conservatives in America have been very eloquent pointing out the problems with this until it's one of their own kind and their own team, their own party. And that is what's happening here. Now, a lot of experts are warning that we're becoming Argentina. And those of you who don't know about. I'd forgotten the history of Argentina, but before Peron took over in the middle of last century, its economy was booming. It was one of the top 10 richest countries in the world. The people there made 80% of what Americans make today. They're making 20%. Because Peron thought, I'm going to be essentially like Trump. He didn't know Trump was not his role model. Obviously he preceded Trump. But he's like, I'm the guy. My guys are going to get the companies I want. I'm going to control things. I'm going to control my own fed. I'm going to run things my way. And he destroyed that economy. It's never really recovered. Today. It's not much better than the economic basket case. And that's unfortunately what many honest observers, left, right and center, and certainly libertarian observers fear is happening here in the United States today with this constant attempt, not attempt, successful occupation of companies by our federal government. And the irony, of course, is the people who are supporting him are attacking another political party, saying they're the socialist ones. Well, show me when Mamdani takes over. When the city of New York says, we're now buying Goldman Sachs and we own it, and we're now going to say, no one at Goldman Sachs can make more than $80,000 a year because that's the median, then I'll agree with you there's a problem that is roughly equal. But until then, let's focus on where the real socialism is happening in America. Today it's happening In Washington, not D.C. i want to thank you for joining me today. This concludes our show. We just have run out of time for our Grab Bag segment. We'll save that for the weekend. I am here for you tomorrow and Sunday and every day because I'm having so much fun. I hope you are having fun as well. My name is TJ Walker. This is filtered. Please. If you have not yet officially subscribed on YouTube or any other platform or a podcasting platform, please do so. Please leave a review. Thanks. See.