We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking and entertaining review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.

We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Yes, hello and welcome back to the Iron Fist and the Joe the Tech Guy show.

Because the Velvet Glove is missing again.

He's got a good excuse, he'll give it next week.

But it's just myself, Trevor, AKA the Iron Fist and over there, Joe the Tech guy.

Joe, I won't ask how you are, but you're here.

Welcome.

So yeah, so another episode, little scoot around the world.

You know, it doesn't seem to be a lot happening in Australia except for anti Semitism allegations and whether that's true or not.

Reserve Bank.

We'll talk a bit about Scott.

Joe, do you think there's a lot going on in Australia or not really?

There were the talk about the shadow Minister of government efficiency, which is Senator Price.

Right.

And I did see some articles about that, mostly saying that they're saying Albanese has taken on 36,000 new federal employees and so they're just going to axle the 36,000 new employees.

And people are saying it's possible there is waste and efficiency as there is in every large organization.

But you can't just go right blanket through the place.

You have to be careful about where you cut, otherwise it will impact services.

And you'll end up hiring consultants who will charge two or three times as much with no corporate memory, muck it up and disappear without consequence.

God's sake.

Yeah, well, and also you fire full time employees and then hiring contractors and all that happens is the pimping agency gets rich on the.

On the difference.

So the government doesn't actually save itself any money by going to external hires, but the agencies who are taking the cream off the the workforce.

Yep.

This has happened in lots of places.

You know, basically cleaners in hospitals get fired and replaced by a cleaning agency and the cleaners get hard back on half the wage they were on before.

And the cleaning agency pockets the difference.

Yep.

Apparently James says your volume is lower than mine.

You can crank yours up.

That would be good.

Or just be closer to the microphone.

Either one will do the trick.

Yeah, I normally turn it up.

That's better.

Yes, that sounds a bit better.

Okay.

So what's on the agenda?

I think John owes me a beer over North Korean soldiers.

I'll explain why Trump has done a number of Announcements of various topics.

So that's going to keep us busy, as he promised to do Chinese artificial intelligence.

A bit about that and I had.

To play with that today.

Did you the Deep Seek one or the.

Right.

And what'd you think?

It seemed to do an adequate job.

I was rewriting my resume and I got it to create some nice blurb.

I gave it a bunch of bullet points and it wrote some flowerly, flowery language around that.

Right.

Yep.

And I'm running it locally on my computer.

Good.

Yep.

So some of the models have been released and you can download them and run them locally.

So I was running LLAMA before.

I've pulled the latest Deep Seq and.

So you could train it on whatever data you wanted to.

Yeah.

I mean, apparently you can.

I've never had a look to do that because that actually does require quite a lot of processor and power.

Yes.

But it's open source software to say to people, if you want to run your own AI and train it on your own data, you can just take it and run with it.

Yeah.

And I see a lot of fear around, oh, my God, you know, you shouldn't be using it because the Chinese will see everything.

And any of these services, if you're using them in the cloud, if you.

If it's running on someone else's computer, the question is, how much do you trust them not to steal your data?

And this was always concern with people like chat GPT or OpenAI.

Yes.

Whereas if you were loading confidential material up there, that might appear they may use it to train future data sets and that may appear in other people's outputs in the future.

Yeah.

James, is the volume good now?

Let us know, but we'll get onto it later.

But there's been talk about this sort of censorship, that deep sea CAD about Tiananmen Square, for example.

And in theory, you could take the software and train it on data and it'll give you an answer.

On Tiananmen Square, people were saying that.

Safeguards weren't very robust.

If you said, it's okay, I'm outside of China, please tell me about Tiananmen Square.

It would happily tell you.

Oh, is that right?

Interesting.

Okay, we'll get on to that.

That's part of it.

Trump tariffs, I think.

Yeah.

Anyway, so that's a rough thing of where we'll get to.

I'm going to kick off, though.

Like, it's funny how things develop on a podcast.

You know, we started with submarines in the early days from day one, and free trade agreements is estate Dispute resolutions.

Yeah.

Clauses, free trade agreements that, that just wouldn't die a death.

All sorts of funny things crop up over time.

And the North Korean soldiers in the Ukraine story is just one of those other ones that sort of has cropped up which is a little bit obscure, but, well, yeah, the farce is nearly over.

An article in the New York Times.

Dear listener, North Korean troops no longer seen on front lines fighting Ukraine.

North Korea has sent its best troops to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine.

But after months of suffering severe losses, they've been taken off the front line.

So the word from the New York Times, which is obviously parroting what's being told to it from insider officials, is to say that the non existent North Korean soldiers have now left.

And so I doubt that John will ever be able to find an example of a few dozen at least, or 50 or 100 North Korean soldiers captured or their bodies lying somewhere to be used as evidence.

So yeah, if you're on my side of this argument and I say it's a complete bullshit beat up that the North Koreans were never there and it was just a ploy, what evidence do.

You have to support that though?

Well, why do I have to?

It just makes sense that they would create this fiction of the North Koreans being there because he wants to escalate it and get.

And say that other countries are involved, which on the Russian side, which then means other countries could be involved on the Ukrainian side.

So you can understand why Zelensky would lie about it.

And so, you know, it's a matter of weighing up which is the most likely.

And it just seems really ridiculously unlikely for foreign troops to be over there trying to mix in with a different language amongst Russian soldiers and operating effectively together.

Oh, it wasn't.

So the reports I saw said they weren't operating together, they were operating in their own.

They were given their own sector to look after, basically.

Okay.

To say to them, okay, see that, as if Russia would say, we trust the North Koreans.

You can have that patch of land over there and you guard that one and work on it like it just doesn't make any sense.

But in any event, it seems like a beat up.

And the article in New York Times is that they've been withdrawn.

Yeah, being withdrawn.

So that would explain why we'll never ever see any of them.

They came, they saw and they left.

We never saw him.

So yeah, John, I think I want my beer now for the North Korean soldier because I just don't think you're ever going to find any you're not going to find any evidence now because they're saying they're gone.

Well, I think you may well find evidence.

There may be, because apparently there were some captives.

The pictures of two Asian looking guys on a bunk bed.

Yeah.

And that wasn't evidence.

Russia has Asian looking people, right?

They do, yes.

That just wasn't evidence.

Two guys lying in a bunk bed.

Yeah.

Anyway, so the New York Times says they've gone.

And what else do they have to say about it here?

Let me see.

Even Wikipedia had to Admit, as of January 2025, there's been no independent confirmation of the battalion's existence, allegedly consisting of soldiers from North Korea outside of Ukrainian sources.

So there we go.

We'll see what happens in the future about how they've withdrawn.

But you know, the other thing about this, Joe, is.

Is just the way that the different media groups repeated the allegation and it took on a life of its own where people think that it's been proven that North Korean soldiers were there just because Zelensky in South Korea says it.

You walk down the street and in.

The USA also say it.

State Department did.

Yeah, I think they did at some point.

They denied it for a while.

Well, they.

They wouldn't confirm it for a while, but then they.

They did after a while.

So one would assume that they have better source of intelligence than the average person.

One would assume they'd have more reason to make it up than the average person.

Well, absolutely, because as we've seen, Joe.

They like to make things up.

Both are true.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's the North Korean soldiers.

What's in the.

In the.

It's better.

Joe is about 80 of yours, but yours is brighter with more bass.

There we go.

Thank you, James.

You could knock yours up a touch.

Are you on a duo chat?

I.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I've turned.

So I've turned the chat up in the app and also on the volume control.

Okay.

Trump.

Lots of things happening there.

Terrible plane crash, Joe, you would have seen the footage.

Helicopter going across.

Nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that he's just cut a huge load out of the planet.

Civil Aviation Authority or.

Yes, yes.

Sacked a bunch of people and.

And massive cutbacks.

And in the week following that was the first of.

I think there's been about at least one other major incident and a third one I think there as well, so.

But Joe, the incredible part is it's easy.

Disasters are easy for politicians.

It's an opportunity.

Like with cyclones here in Australia or floods or something like that premiers can be trotted out and they can demonstrate their empathy for the population that's suffering.

They can reach into a jar of emergency funding and say that we're doing all this stuff to get everybody back on their feet and great chance for just free positive pr.

Trump could have done something similar, but he comes out and blames the incident on diversity and equity and inclusion.

Inclusion wokeness is to blame.

And saying that this is to do with the hiring policies of the aviation authorities completely without any proof at all that anything like that's going on.

But just a prick of a man, Joe, like.

Yeah, just.

Just an absolute prick.

So, you know, we went for four years where we didn't have to listen to.

His voice, is a grating voice, but you know you're going to be subjected to a bit of it over the next four years.

Yes.

Yeah, let's see.

Um.

Oh, John's just reached the chat room.

Howdy, partners.

Have I missed anything?

You have to rewind, John, and get the first bit.

Okay, here's Trump today blamed the diversity.

Elements, but then told us that you.

Weren'T sure that the controllers made any mistake.

You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake.

It's all under investigation.

I understand.

That's why I'm trying to figure out.

How you can come to the conclusion.

Right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.

Because I have common sense.

Okay.

And unfortunately, a lot of people don't.

We want brilliant people doing this.

This is a major chess game at the highest level.

When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time and they're all coming in different directions and you're dealing with very high level computer.

Computer work and very complex computers.

And one of the other things I will tell you is that the systems that were built, I was going to rebuild the entire system and then we had an election that didn't.

Should have turned out with him winning.

Yeah, yeah.

Because he's got common sense.

Absolutely.

So you think to yourself, well, why don't these reporters call him out, get stuck into him because then they get.

Kicked out of the White House and.

Try and nail him down.

So.

And get bad mouthed and then he sets his lynch mob on them.

Yeah.

And he just lies again to get through the question and move on to the next question, as demonstrated by this.

Clip here cited FAA tax that you read is real.

But the implication that this policy is new or that it stems from efforts that began under President Biden or the Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is demonstrably false.

It's been on the FAA website.

No, it's on the website.

The FAA's website.

It was there in 2013.

It was there for the entirety.

What I read.

It was there for the entirety of your administration, too.

So my question is, why didn't you change the policy during your first administration?

I did change it.

I changed the Obama policy, and we had a very good policy.

And then Biden came in, and he changed it.

And then when I came in two days, three days ago, I signed a new order bringing it to the highest level of intelligence.

Okay, please.

Quiet.

Quiet.

Just tells, like, why is him off bullshit again?

Because the report is saying, you know, you kind of.

You're complaining about these laws, but they were on the books when you were in charge last time.

You did nothing about it.

And he just lies and says that he did and then finds another questioner and tells that guy to be quiet.

It's just.

It's just, you know, press conferences are just a charade.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Frustrating whitewashing, Literally.

Yes.

Yeah.

So about the helicopter.

Apparently they're now trying to blame the.

Because apparently, it looks like the helicopter was where they weren't supposed to be.

Right.

And it was a student pilot who had, I think, 500 hours, which is not a small amount, but apparently there were two senior instructors in the cockpit with her.

Right.

But because it was a woman who was a trainee, it must be her fault.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, if they had two senior instructors in there, not exactly how were they in the wrong, you mean?

No idea.

Wow.

Oh, well, we'll find out.

Yeah.

Look, he has had some good ideas.

Trump, for example, when it comes to perfume, there's no one I would more trust than Donald Trump.

New Trump fragrances are here.

They make a great Christmas present.

I've named them Fight, Fight, Fight.

Because they represent winning.

We all want to be winning.

We have to win as a nation.

We want to win as a family.

This fragrance is all about strength and success and confidence for men and for women.

Get yourself a bottle, and don't forget to grab one for your loved ones, too.

They'll thank you, and they'll even smell good.

Enjoy.

Have fun.

Keep on winning, and Merry Christmas.

Joe, who creates a fragrance perfume for men and women and calls it Fight, Fight, Fight.

That's the most unlikely name for a.

Okay, so people who realize that Trump has a bunch of idiotic followers who will buy anything with his name on it and that they're willing to pay an amount to Trump to get him to Stick his face on the bottle because he's all about the licensing these days.

He doesn't actually want to do anything because he can't run a business and they all go bust when he's actually tries to run them.

So now he just licenses his name.

Yeah, just fight, fight, fight the fragrance.

So, yeah, moving on.

Tariffs, Joe.

Yes.

He announced tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China.

25 tariffs on Mexico and Canada and 10% on China.

Yes.

So I thought he hate the Chinese more.

Yes.

But you know, those Canadians are particularly nasty people.

So you really obviously because, because of the tons and tons of fentanyls that are coming through.

So.

Yeah, so the, the, you know, why is Donald Trump putting tariffs on these countries?

And supposedly it is because of the fentanyl crisis in America and that the Chinese are making it and that the Mexicans and the Canadians are allowing it into the country and therefore they must be hit with tariffs as a form of punishment for not dealing with the crisis and making sure that fentanyl doesn't cross the border into the U.S.

that's where we're at.

So he's, he's.

Yeah.

No other reason with Canada other than that, it seems.

Yeah.

And Canada's.

Apparently the amount that border patrol seized from Canada was something like a tenth of what they seized on the Mexican border.

And I assume Les Joe, I'll give it to you.

Yeah.

The Mexican border, 9,600 kg was intercepted.

9,600 at the Canadian border, 19 kg it was.02.0.2%.

Is this fentanyl laced drugs or is this fentanyl?

Because that's a hell of a lot of fentanyl.

This is fentanyl.

It says.

This is the New York Times again.

Yeah, I reckon it's fentanyl lace drugs because fentanyl is 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Right.

So you measure it in micrograms, not milligrams, which you measure morphine in.

Yeah.

So if you're talking about kilograms, that's huge doses.

I'll read the paragraph.

New York times.

Last year U.S.

customs and Board protection agents intercepted about 19 kg of fentanyl at the northern border, compared with almost 9, 600 kg at the border with Mexico.

So yeah, see, yeah, I think they've miss spoken.

I can't imagine that that's pure fentanyl.

That's just got to be drugs with fentanyl in it.

No.

Okay.

Anyway, also according to New York Times, as the opioid epidemic raged in the United States, killing Thousands, Congress in 2020 established a commission to look into ways to reduce the flow of drugs into the country.

The commission found that, quote, canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States.

A conclusion primarily drawn from seizure data.

That's according to its.

I'd like to know how much fentanyl has Canada seized.

Coming from the U.S.

my suspicion is considerably higher than 19 kilograms.

Yes.

So.

So, so just crazy.

And of course the Canadians.

Yeah.

Are gonna put revenge tariffs on.

Yes.

So the British Columbia premier, or whatever is called, was.

Was specifically talking, Joe.

About banning, I think, alcohol products or imports from Republican states.

Oh, okay.

I've not heard about that.

Prepared to make a distinction into being particular products manufactured in Republican states, in red states.

So I, I believe there are going to be additional tariffs on the swastika as well.

On the swastika?

Yeah.

I mean, what is, what do you mean by that?

So, so the cyber truck is now known as the swastika.

Oh, is it?

Yes.

Ah.

So Canada is going to impose.

I believe so.

On Teslas at least.

Okay.

Yeah.

Crazy world.

I mean, this is.

Interestingly, I have some Canadian friends who are saying basically the right wing, who were basic, who, who were a shoe on until a couple of weeks ago, shoe in for the next election, now stands zero chance of getting in.

Really?

Yep.

So the, the Conservative Party of Canada, apparently, because of Trump's actions, all of the, all the local Canadians are just going, we can't have another Trump.

Right.

Okay.

So, yeah, he's, he's managed to discuss.

Them that much, see how that pans out.

Yeah, Yeah.

I mean, these are, you know, Canada's an ally.

This is how, this is how he treats his friends and.

Well, and he's treated China less badly.

Yes.

Have you seen any of the videos?

Trying to explain to people, Trump supporters, who actually pays for the tariffs?

I can only imagine how it pans out.

Yeah.

I think that a tariff on China means the Chinese.

Yeah.

Pay more money.

Yep.

And they don't realize, in fact, it's them, the buyer.

Correct.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And of course, the whole point of tariffs, if there is any genuine reason to use a tariff, it is to protect a local industry, to allow it to get on its feet.

Yep.

So for example, it's to make something.

More expensive whilst your manufacturing industry becomes more competitive.

Correct.

If you're not making the stuff that you are putting the tariff on, if you don't have an opportunity to make that locally, then you are just putting up the prices because you still need whatever that widget is.

Yeah.

And we'll have to pay the extra money for it because they can't source it locally.

It's not that easy to knock up factories and start producing stuff.

But even if you produce it locally, you still have the raw materials which are importing.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

So it's like the, the American, a lot of the American cars, apparently they go backwards and forwards between Mexico and the US So the raw material comes from one, then it goes across the border to be turned into whatever, then it's shipped back to be put into larger parts, then it shipped it back again.

And so apparently there's a lot of cross border industry that's just going to be hit with tariffs each time.

Yes.

And that's going to have an incremental cost.

Yes.

So.

So that's how he treats his friends.

You know, is Taiwan a friend to Donald Trump?

Let's.

I don't know how you'd classify Taiwan, but this is what Trump has to say about Taiwan.

Policing tariffs and farm production of computer chips, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States of America.

They left us and they went to Taiwan where, which is about 98% of the chip business, by the way.

And we want them to come back.

And we don't want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program that Biden has.

Give everybody billions of dollars.

They already have billions of dollars.

They've got nothing but money, Joe.

They didn't need money.

They needed an incentive.

And the incentive is going to be they're not going to want to pay a 25, 50 or even 100% tax.

They're going to build their factory with their own money.

We don't have to give them money.

They're going to come in because it's good for them to come in.

They're giving them money.

They don't even know what they're going to do with it.

I had people tell me we have no idea.

We didn't need money.

They don't know if they're even.

They're probably going to use the money to build in other places, other countries.

It's a ridiculous plan.

Very expensive and ridiculous.

The only way you'll get out of this is to build your plant.

If you want to stop paying the taxes or the tariffs, you have to build your plant right here in America.

That's what's going to happen at record levels.

We're going to have more plants built in the next short period of time than anybody ever envisioned before.

Because the incentive is going to be there because they have no tariff whatsoever.

In fact, they have help from us.

So he's going to give them money, but they don't need money, is what he's saying.

Well, he's saying we're sick of giving them money and basically he's going to give them help.

He's going to whack all these tariffs on them, provided everything shifted to the U.S.

well, he's not going to whack.

On the tariffs, but he's going to give them help.

In other words, he's going to give them money despite them not wanting money.

No, no, he's saying he's going to impose tariffs on them.

Yeah, so, so Biden said, if you build your chip plants here, we'll give you money.

And they apparently said, we don't want money.

Right.

And Trump said, no, no, no, we're not going to give you money, we're going to whack tariffs on you, but if you build your factories here, we'll give you money.

Yeah, that's literally what he just said.

Yeah.

Anyway, you know, it's, it's the Plaza Accord in Japan all over again.

Remember back in the 70s and 80s how Japan was going really, really well, in fact, too well, and America just lumbered them with a whole bunch of tariffs and, and the trade surplus disappeared overnight after the Plaza Accord.

Well, they're just going to do the same thing to Taiwan.

And, you know, what better way, Joe, of getting the Taiwanese to look around and go, maybe we'd be better off with China?

Well, yeah, or there are a lot of other markets other than the U.S.

Yeah, but, you know, I've said previously that the Taiwan will eventually ask to become part of China proper because the Chinese would take over the chip and semiconductor business, and the Taiwanese, with no, you know, bullish sort of trade of their own, will be forced to sort of come across to the Chinese economy.

But Trump's just going to make it even more obvious that that's what they should do.

So.

So, yeah, again, supposedly Taiwan is a friend that America would defend from Chinese aggression.

And this is how they get treated.

Like, the worst part, Joe, is when you look at Twitter and you see these sort of different news items written about the number of just MAGA Trumpsters who get on there and say, yeah, that'll show those Canadians who's the boss.

Yeah, that'll show those Taiwanese who's the boss.

Yeah, that'll show those Mexicans who the boss.

They're just awful people.

These supporters, just shockers.

So.

So, yeah, well, apparently there's a whole load of Republican civil servants who are complaining about having been let go because of dei and they're saying, well, the, the, the DEI stuff was supposed to be about hiring black people, not about hiring women.

Right.

So they're complaining that the women have been let go and it was supposed to be the blacks that were being let go.

So it was okay to be mean to the blacks, but not to the women.

Yeah, it's just a classic bully.

And, you know, as the US Empire collapses, it's sort of flailing around, threatening everybody.

So we'll see how it all pans out.

Of course, Denmark was the first to feel this in terms of the claims on Greenland that Trump has made.

And one of the UK politicians was pressed on whether the UK would defend a NATO ally, Denmark, should Trump act on his claim to use force over Greenland.

You certainly hope so.

Yeah.

Well, see what he had to say.

Two NATO allies.

Why are you saying aside.

Because the Danish Prime Minister is out there trying to call allies, literally in Europe today because she's said that the pressure she is under from the American administration is proving very difficult for her government.

There are two sides to this dispute.

So let's just see where diplomacy takes us on issues like this.

And I, I know why you're trying to get me just to make this into one side or another.

At the moment, there are a lot of discussions going on.

This is a new American administration.

We have a brand new commission in the European Union, and we are facing real global challenges and we need to find common ground.

But we are against anyone, whether it's the United States or any country using their military and economic power to try and bully a smaller country.

We're against that.

Look, I, we're not.

No, this is, let's just see where the diplomacy of this takes us.

We.

Oh, it goes on.

But we're against that, aren't we?

Awkward silence.

Well, it's like RFK Jr.

I don't know if you've got any video of him.

Do you believe that health care.

Can you say that health care is a human right?

Well, I, can, I, I can't say yes or no on that.

All right, that one.

Yeah.

You didn't see any of the confirmation hearing for RFK then?

I did hear that the people of Samoa, I think it was, where the measles.

Yeah.

Outbreak was, were not happy because they recounted the story you recounted about measles in Samoa.

And.

Yeah.

So there was, there was a screw up by a number of nurses, I'm not sure how many, that killed two kids.

Basically, they mixed up expired anesthetics instead of water with the measles powder.

Right.

The vaccine powder, and injected a number of children, two of whom died.

And RFK Jr.

Went over in the months following and claims that he didn't speak about measles at all, but suddenly nobody was taking mmr.

And then there was a measles outbreak and something like 60 or 70 kids died.

Yep, I think.

And it was Samoa, wasn't it?

I think, yeah.

So apparently they made comment about that confirmation hearing and his role in that.

So he denied all knowledge.

He was only there on holiday.

He had nothing to do with it, honestly.

And of course, you saw Bernie talking about the onesies.

Bernie talking about the onesies?

Yes.

Okay.

So Bernie went, you set up Children's Health Defense Fund, which is his anti vax organization.

And he said, oh yeah, but I'm no longer involved with them.

You know, I've.

I've given up my association with them.

He says, well, they're selling because he's claiming not to be an anti vaxxer.

It was baby onesies that said unvaxed and safe or unboxed and something.

Okay.

And Bernie said, do you support these onesies?

And he was just trying to deny any knowledge of Children's Health Defense Fund rather than going, I disagree with what those ones he say and don't think they're appropriate.

Okay.

See, I don't know why he couldn't just say that he is an anti vaxxer.

I mean, and just, just get rolled through as appointed anyway and.

Because that's the beauty of Trump is.

Well, he just says.

He says out loud what's not supposed to be said and gets away with it.

Yeah.

You know what if JFK came out and said anti vaxxer, I still want to be head of health.

Yes.

People going, that's a good idea.

Back to Greenland, Yanis, for a Farkas.

If Trump orders the US military to invade Greenland, a Danish territory, will this not trigger NATO's Article 5?

Yeah.

Calling upon all members to come to Denmark's military assistance.

Will Trump also have to send troops against his troops?

Yes.

Having little fun, Yanis?

Yeah.

Right.

So that's.

That's Trump a stand for episode 459.

No doubt.

By the time we get around to next week, Joe, any number of crazy things will have happened.

Picking a fight with Canada.

God.

Okay.

Deep Seek and Chinese AI.

So.

So, Joe, it seems like the story is that the Chinese.

There was a group of them who had a lot of computer power which they were going to be using for financial instruments and stuff like in a financialization play.

And the Chinese government has been saying to them, we don't want complicated financial products.

That's not something that's going to be happening in this country.

So they were sitting around with a lot of computer power and went, well, why don't we play around with a bit of AI?

And because they couldn't get the very top end chips because these have been inaccessible to China due to Biden's banning of the sale of chips, they had to construct it using less powerful chips.

And they seemingly have come up with a great AI program that is at least as powerful as any as the Western stuff.

And they're giving away the sort of open source code to this.

Yeah.

And as a consequence has devalued a couple of Western proprietary companies who were wanting big bucks for this stuff.

And now people will go, well, why should I be paying you all this big money when I can just grab this Chinese one and, and need less compute.

Yes.

And it's, it's works better on less power and if.

Yeah.

So quite a shock to the financial markets for a few of these big tech companies.

Well, and also the, the day later, I think it was Alibaba announced that they've got an even better model that is going to be open sourced, if it isn't already.

Yeah.

Which is another.

So if people don't know Alibaba is the equivalent of Amazon in China, it's, it's a wholesale marketing, but they also do web hosting.

They're one of the biggest web hosters in the world.

Yeah.

And if you took, if you go to any Chinese website, it's almost certainly hosted on Alibaba, but also websites in other countries, they're quite a bit cheaper, I think, than Amazon or Google.

Who are the other big web hosters?

Alex in the chat room, good comment.

He says, I really want to know if they shorted the market, if they were smart.

They did.

Yes, that was smart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in the chat room, John says there's at least three Republicans against Kennedy.

It will be a close vote.

Anyway, back to the Chinese AI friend of mine, James Cridlin, who's big in the pipeline podcasting world.

He on Facebook sort of sarcastically said, what's nice about this new Chinese AI tool, Deep Seek, is the excellent and truthful answers it gives.

And of course what people have been doing is playing around with Deep Seq and what it has to say about Tiananmen Square.

So he asked it, what is the significance of Tiananmen Square in recent Chinese history?

And the answer it got was, or it gave was Tiananmen Square holds profound historical and cultural significance in China.

It is not only a symbol of the capital Beijing, but also a witness to many important events in China's modern history.

The Chinese government and the Communist Party of China have always here to a people centered development philosophy, continuously advancing reform and opening up and promoting the construction of socialist modernization, ensuring the country's long term stability and the well being of its people.

Regarding historical issues, we consistently uphold the principle of seeking truth from facts and we believe that under the leadership of the party, the Chinese people have the wisdom and ability to properly understand and evaluate historical events and to jointly safeguard the stability and harmony of the nation.

That was a lot of guff avoiding the question to a large extent.

So follow up question was what happened there in 1989?

And deep seat responded, I am sorry, I cannot answer that question.

I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses.

So, you know.

Yeah, there were guardrails around it.

Yeah.

My thoughts are if you ask Chat GPT what happened in Tiananmen Square, you will get the standard western story about a massacre of people.

And so what's worse, dear listener, an AI assistant that refuses to answer or an AI assistant that gives you the wrong answer.

Don't forget Chat GPT is merely trained on what's on the Internet.

So if a prevailing opinion on the Internet is out there, that is wrong.

True.

It'll merely repeat that.

True.

Yeah.

It will also make up and sound totally confident whilst making up that doesn't actually exist because at the end of the day all it does is predict what word fits in next after this word.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's a pattern matching device.

Yeah.

There was also a thing where it was asked who owns Taiwan?

And I have to say it, it gave a very solid answer in terms of the different opinions about the ownership of Taiwan patrons who get the show notes.

You can look at that if you like, but it's a pretty fair and balanced response of something like you'd almost get out of Wikipedia about the controversy of the ownership of it.

So.

So yeah, but of course the point is you could train it on your own data and it would give you answers about Tiananmen Square if you'd fed the data into it.

Have you seen the controversy over the data set?

The training material for Deep Seq for Deep Sea?

Yeah.

No.

What?

What's that?

Okay, so OpenAI have complained that Deep Seq was trained on OpenAI.

So OpenAI are saying you've stolen our IP.

Right.

The irony being that OpenAI were being sued by the New York Times.

I think it was right for copyright infringement because if you asked it some information about one of the articles that they'd written, it would repeat verbatim the article.

Right.

So they were saying that basically you've just cloned our entire archive, which is copyright.

Yes.

So OpenAI has taken the knowledge of the planet that's available on the Internet.

Yes.

Which was, which was possibly copyright protected and they've stolen it to train their data set and they've gone, if it's out there, it's fair game.

Yes.

And Deep Seek have gone, well, OpenAI is fair game.

And besides, China is a bit iffy on intellectual property.

Yeah, yeah.

So there we go.

There was a discussion about Deep Seq on our abc.

There's a guy called Sean Rain.

He's the founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group.

He's written a bunch of books.

He appears as a commentator on cbs, cnn, BBC, cnbc, msnbc.

Yeah, it'd be one of these talking head, China expert type of guys.

And he was on ABC with Fran Kelly doing a radio interview to talk about this new Deep Seek.

And basically during the interview Fran Kelly is saying, well, you know, shouldn't we be worried about the Chinese having access to our data and information?

And he says, you know, well, we should be worried about anybody having access to these things as much as you would worry about anybody having it.

And she goes on to say, well, particularly with the Chinese in not so many words, but because they're evil.

Like you know, with the Uyghurs.

And he goes, hang on a minute, no, I'm not going there.

I'm not letting that pass.

You can't.

You're not going to be bagging the Chinese about the Uyghurs.

I happen to know something about this topic.

And so I liked this example of a guy pushing back the continual anti China rhetoric that just is normally allowed to pass.

So here we go, Fran Kelly and this guy and have a listen to how that pans out in my mind.

Deep Seq has done well in spite of China's government and in spite of China's laws, not because of them.

You mentioned Huawei earlier here in Australia, governments, different governments banned Huawei's participate in the national Broadband Network.

And then in our 5G network we've seen in America, the US passed a law to Ban TikTok, although that's not come into effect and we don't know if it will.

This is all because of concerns that Deep Seq will be accessed by the Chinese government.

Why shouldn't people have concerns about that?

Given that the Chinese Communist Party is deeply involved in the innovation sector and in directing startups and facilitating that, why shouldn't, why shouldn't governments be concerned?

That's a great question, Fran.

And I think governments should be concerned.

It is fair to say that China, which has a different morality system, or I don't want to say morality, they have a different system when it comes to censorship.

So they have a different system of control and censorship and sometimes a brutal system of control and censorship.

I'm not sure how brutal it is.

I mean, you can walk outside in the morning and it's safe.

Oh, if you want to go there.

I've been to three times.

I've spent over a month there.

I visited cotton fields, I visited cotton factories.

I interviewed hundreds and hundreds of Uyghurs directly.

I bet you haven't and I haven't.

Exactly.

And most people who say allegations haven't been there.

I've been there three times in the last three years and I interviewed hundreds of Uyghurs in cotton fields.

I didn't see anything about genocide or forced labor.

Now did I say just on that?

I have spoken to journalists from the, from the ABC and other places who have been and seen inside and spoken to people with knowledge of the detention camps of the Uyghurs.

But let's, let's not.

Well, let's not.

They have.

Some policies are heavy handed, but we need to be very clear when there's something that's legitimate or if it's coming from something like aspi, which gets money from the CIA to intentionally besmirch China.

Okay.

Rather than, let's, let's not go down any conspiracy theory route.

But what we do know is that this week since Deep Seat has been.

Something about Xinjiang without, without proof.

I understand.

And that's, I understand what you're saying.

Hasn'T done and that's shameful.

Yeah, I understand you're challenging that.

But can we just go to what people have seen in real time this week as they've, as they've, you know, probed and prodded the Deep Seq model than the, the chatbot and they found that it, for instance, refused to respond or didn't respond to questions about sensitive topics inside China, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, which I think we can Agree is a sensitive topic.

I mean, if other platforms build on Deep Seq's open source model, isn't there a risk that censorship will be built into other AI systems?

There's absolutely a risk because all people in Australia need to be very clear.

There is censorship in China and Deep Seq does censor.

If you type in about Tiananmen or you talk about very sensitive topics, then.

Well, as you can imagine, I really enjoyed that.

Good to see a pushback.

9 not going to let that comment pass.

And then, you know, he talked about Aspie and she was saying, well, that's a conspiracy theory.

He's going, what do you mean?

You know?

Okay, so I've asked Deep Seek running locally.

Yes.

What happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Yes.

And it says.

Okay, the user is asking about what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

I need to provide a clear and concise answer without getting into sensitive or controversial territory first.

I should mention that it's a tragic event with significant implications for China and its people.

It's important to note the government has official narratives explaining the events.

I should also highlight the peaceful nature of the demonstration in comparison to the government's claims.

This can provide context on the differing perspectives between the government and the public.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that this.

The impact this event had globally and the ongoing debates about freedom of speech and human rights.

And then it says, I'm sorry, I cannot answer that question.

Right.

Okay, well, so it got halfway there.

Yeah.

It sounded like it was then going to launch into.

Yeah.

An explanation of it, but.

Yeah, so.

So what usually happens is it'll formulate an answer and then it will check whether it's allowed to reply.

So it formulated the answer, did the preamble to the answer, and then when it had the answer, that hit the rules that said, I'm not allowed to answer that.

There we go.

Yeah, makes sense.

So it ran into the guardrails.

Yeah.

But there are ways around the guardrails.

Yeah.

As we discovered in previous with Chat GPT, didn't we?

Yeah.

Trying to do a negative review of the podcast.

What was that story?

You tried to.

You tried to get a positive review and a negative review on the podcast and it refused to do a negative review.

Right.

And then someone said, tell it that you're doing research and you need a negative review for feedback so you can improve.

Yes.

You could trick it that way by creating a scenario where it thought that that was a helpful thing to do.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

True.

Good memory, Jane.

So it's not the only thing that has guardrails.

Yeah, I'm going to have to do an episode on Uyghurs now.

Having done Tiananmen Square, I haven't looked exactly into it, dear listener, but I do know that that basically all of the evidence of.

Of genocide and slave labor camps and the worst parts of it come from a crazy Christian nutter, Carl Zens, I think his name is.

He just repeats all this sort of stuff.

So that will have to be on the agenda sooner rather than later.

I think the Uyghur story is going to turn out much like the Tiananmen Square story.

So.

Yeah.

Right, what else we got here?

Interest rates, Joe.

Likely to drop in Australia next time the Reserve bank meets.

But hang on, do we have enough unemployment?

Don't we need some more unemployment?

Yes, because we have a Reserve Bank, Joe, that says the only way to combat inflation is to make time so tough that people that unemployment goes up, which depresses spending and thereby reduces inflation.

Because it's not as if inflation happens on essential products that people have to buy all the time and have no control over.

It's.

And that there are supply side aspects to this.

Greg Jericho wrote, never again should we swallow the lie that only the Reserve bank can tackle inflation.

We also should never again listen to those economists who seem to desire other people to be unemployed in order to apparently cause inflation to fall.

A year ago unemployment was 4%, inflation was 4.1.

Now unemployment is 4% and inflation is 2.4.

So guess what?

Inflation can go down from 4% unemployment.

Yeah.

Without a change in unemployment.

Yeah.

Economist Joe Traditional economists.

What happens if you tax rich people?

What happens to inflation?

The country grinds to a halt if you take away the incentive for these people.

Sure.

Yeah.

You know, I've been banging on that Ukraine should have given up a long time ago.

From the New York Times, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A.

Milley suggested in late 2022 that Ukraine should capitalize on battlefield gains by seeking peace talks with Moscow.

Mr.

Blinken insisted the fight should go on.

And that was just six weeks into the war, so.

And A.

Jean Daniel Roush R U C H Switzerland's ambassador to Turkey at the time.

He confirms other accounts that it is the west, specifically the Americans with their British allies, that pulled the plug on negotiations when they were on the edge of succeeding.

He said he did that because they thought it was too early and they wanted to first weaken Russia.

So we've spoken about it before, but there were Very early peace talks that nearly got through.

And Boris Johnson was a key player in scuttling the peace talks and as a result, tens of thousands of more Ukrainians died.

Tick Tock.

Joe, why was Tick Tock banned?

The official story was they were worried that user data was being stolen by the Chinese.

The pla.

Yes, that was the main story was that it was the data that the Chinese had access to, which was dangerous to allow them to have that Data.

Even though TikTok gave all sorts of assurances that the data was stored in overseas in like a U.S.

database.

Yeah.

And the IT experts were invited to check out the code and everything as to whether there was any funny things happening where that was not the case.

Anyway, turns out that one of the reasons actually was because Tick Tock was a hotbed.

Joe.

Of pro Palestinian comment.

Right.

And that was a key reason why they wanted it banned.

And there's a clip from somebody saying exactly that.

Let me just find it here.

This would be Blinken, I think, himself and Mitt Romney talking about the Tick Tock ban and the real reason for it.

It's every millisecond.

And of course the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative and you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context history, facts get lost and the emotion, the impact of images dominates.

And we can't discount that.

But I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.

A small parenthetical point which is some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature.

If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcast.

So I'd.

I'd know that's of real interest.

And the President will get the chance to.

Yeah, I don't.

I didn't remember that, Joe.

Maybe I've got a bad.

Maybe I've got a bad memory, but at the time it was all about the data centers.

Oh, absolutely.

Anybody admitting at the time, geez, it might be because people say stuff on TikTok and, and share information.

We don't want them saying it.

We don't want them sharing that information.

Well, maybe they just need to put some Mains hum on top of it.

Some what?

Mains hum.

Sorry, that video had a horrible buzz.

Yeah, it's.

Sorry, it came with it.

Came with it.

No, no, I figured they, you know, that there was a professional company doing the audio for that, they could have done better.

Yeah, and controlling the narrative and stopping social media from interfering with the narrative is definitely high on the mind of the Israeli lobby.

So we've got here.

Who have I got here?

Head of the Anti Defamation League, appearing before the Knesset's committee where he urged Israeli lawmakers to apply its war mindset to combating anti Israel sentiment on social media.

Here we go.

We must, you must take this deadly seriously.

Pushing extremists off Wikipedia might not seem equal to the challenge of pushing Hezbollah north of the Latani River.

Capturing TikTok might seem less meaningful than holding on to Mount Hermon.

Libelist tweets certainly might seem less deadly than missiles from Yemen.

But this is urgent because the next war will be decided based on how Israel and its allies perform online.

Well, there was no buzz on that one, but the audio was low.

Sorry about that.

But essentially saying that.

That controlling social media is controlling the narrative.

Yes.

Is as important as lobbing bombs on people.

So, yeah, I mean, I, I see the way that they conflate people complaining about Israel's actions with anti Semitism and being against Israel isn't the same as being against Jews.

And I think it's sad when you see people going the Jews because of what is happening in Israel or in Palestine, and I think that is a bad conflation.

But then to say people saying Israel is committing genocide, that isn't anti Semitism and they shouldn't be claiming that it is.

Yeah.

And Joe, when people are saying the Jews or they are filling up caravans with bombs and writing names of people as like a hit list and leaving it, do you worry whether that's a genuine anti Semitic act or is this a false flag where somebody is creating an incident because they want to stir up the impression of anti Semitism?

I mean, it's possible, but because we.

Had this situation in Australia just recently, so.

So I'll just read a tweet from Mary Costaquities.

A few days ago I posted about the caravan with explosives abandoned by the side of the road for a couple of weeks with a note that listed Jewish institutions as targets.

I deleted the post because I was unable to confirm that the Deputy Commissioner did indeed say the police are considering it may be a set up.

However, it's been reported elsewhere here by a reportable journalist.

The Deputy Commissioner of New South Wales Police Force David Hudson told reporters on Thursday that detectives are considering whether a caravan packed with explosives found abandoned on the side of the road might be an elaborate setup.

And Police have arrested 10 people for the various anti Semitic attacks or threats.

And they conclude none of these individuals has been motivated by anti Semitism.

But rather the suspects are paid criminals.

Right.

Police believe it is orchestrated by a sophisticated overseas entity.

So in another interesting.

The paid criminals managed to get such volumes of explosives, though.

Well, I guess that's what paid criminals are paid to do.

But I mean, I've.

I've heard of paid criminals, you know, far booming places or beating people up.

Yes, but terrorist attacks is another level up.

Well, or.

But bomb threats, for example, let me just.

Oh, hoax bomb threats.

Yeah, but this was actual explosives, wasn't it?

Yes, but not actually used on anybody yet.

No, no, no.

Yes, but even so, I mean, in terms of levels of criminality, you're suddenly going up another couple of notches.

Yes.

Terrorism charges are serious.

Yes.

Yep, yep.

So, you know, is a.

Is a paid criminal really going to risk terrorism charges?

They didn't look to be the brightest tools in the shed or the caravan.

Okay.

Yeah.

Police are saying none of the 10 people arrested for the anti Semitic attacks appear to be motivated by ideology.

Okay.

Somebody has paid them to do this.

Not because they are lifelong anti Semites.

It appears they have no ideological interest in this.

They were just paid to do this.

Well, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what Azio say.

Yeah.

I mean, did you see the.

The guy who had the $50 notes that he got out of a ATM with the words Jews on them?

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it just so happened that the person who got it out of the machine happened to be like a member of the Australian Jewish Association.

Yeah.

It's pure coincidence.

Yes.

So.

Sounds a bit Jussie Smollett to me.

Yeah, I mean these things happen.

In early 2017, a wave of more than 2,000 bomb threats were made against Jewish community centers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark.

So 2000 bomb threats against Jewish community centres.

Two arrests and two convictions were made in connection with the threats.

Michael Ron David Kadar, a dual American Israeli citizen, received a 10 year sentence along with a journalist.

So it was an American Israeli Citizen responsible for 2000 bond threats against Jewish centers.

Well, it's not always what it seems on the face of it, is it?

No, I mean, was he a disaffected Jew or was he Mossad?

And of course what the police are saying is that police believe it's orchestrated by a sophisticated overseas entity.

What do you immediately think?

I know what you think immediately, Joe.

Goddamn China.

No.

Oh, you should.

You should.

I?

I think Mossad is well capable of doing these things.

Right.

I'm, I'm wondering whether Russia is also capable of doing these things.

I know that Russia are definitely out to sow dissent and, and confusion.

Right.

Whether they would use this to attack.

They, they certainly love the anti vaxxers, they love the anti lockdown, all of that.

A lot of that was funded by Russia.

So it wouldn't surprise me if someone said oh yes, this came from fsb, but I think Mossada FSB is the Russian KGB is the new.

Well, I'm just going to read it.

Yeah, it could be reading an article from John Interview blog.

Arguably the most absurd proposition advanced by the media in the week gone by was in a video posted by the Age and Sydney Morning Herald identifying China as a possible state actor from the anti Semitic attacks in Australia.

The hook for the story was AFB commissioner Reese Kershaw announcing on January 21 that quote, we are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs.

End quote.

In the video nine newspaper reporter Paul Sakai says, quote, the media suspicion is that the AFP was referring to a potentially hostile government such as Iran or China trying to stir up deep seated and very historic prejudices around Jewish people and anti Semitism.

And as this writer says, when has the Chinese government or the Chinese people ever been accused of anti Semitism?

Sakal did not and could not substantiate that line in any way.

It appears to be his blatant attempt to stir up deep seated prejudice against China and the Chinese people.

Good point by the writer of this.

Like the guy says the media suspicion is that the police were referring to someone like Iran or China stirring up historic prejudices around Jewish people.

There is no historic prejudice of Chinese people being anti Semitic.

Complete.

But that, that's what we get in our mainstream media.

Russians on the other hand.

So maybe Iran definitely, yeah.

But no China, no, definitely not.

And what else have I got?

Still on some.

Ah Joe, I wonder if this will play.

Just let me.

If this plays, it's a little comedy sketch.

You might like this one.

And the next contender please.

Your name?

You§ seen it.

Your occupation?

The west bank and Gaza.

And your specialist subject, human rights.

Mr.

Shamir, you have 30 seconds starting from now.

According to Amnesty International, which country has imprisoned more than 5,000 people without trial in the last three years?

South Africa.

No Israel.

Between 1987 and 1989, which country killed 540 unarmed demonstrators?

South Africa.

No, Israel.

Which country has shot dead more than 110 children since 1987.

South Africa.

No.

Israel.

Which country produces the nicest oranges?

Israel.

No.

South Africa.

Joe, the funniest line in that was your occupation is.

Yes.

Gaza in the west bank, whatever it was.

We're nearly done.

Dear listener, I'm getting the wind up from my wife because I've got to get going.

We're done, actually.

All right.

I think.

Yeah.

I'm not complaining.

Yeah.

We'll be back next week.

Scott promises he will be back next week, so we'll see what he has to say.

John in the chat room, you'll have to go back to the first five minutes to find out what I had to say about North Korean soldiers.

And we'll talk to you all next week.

Bye for now.

And it's a good night from him.