1/27/25: Trump Purges Gov Watchdogs, Tech Oligarch Panic Over China DeepSeek AI, Andrew Callaghan On His New Doc
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Trump ousted at least 15 independent inspectors general in late night purge. So every cabinet level agency has one of these inspectors general. We're supposed to be independent. They're actually supposed to have lengthy terms. So it's not just, you know, serving under one president to try to insulate them from political influence.

And actually during the first Trump administration, Trump had tried to fire a bunch of these individuals and I think did fire some of them. And Congress reacted in a bipartisan manner. It was like, you know, we really need to protect the independence of these roles. So we are going to require that you give Congress 30-day notice and that you give us ample cause.

for why you're letting all of these people go. So Trump says, don't care that there's a law that says that I need to give you 30 days notice. I'm just going to do it anyway. They were notified late Friday by emails from the White House personnel director that due to changing priorities, they'd been terminated immediately. The only ones who were spared were

were the watchdogs at Homeland Security and Justice, which is kind of interesting, actually. I'll get to that more in a moment. They go on to say the dismissals appear to violate federal law, which does require Congress to receive 30 days notice of any intent to fire a Senate-confirmed inspector general. The legal uncertainty could create awkward encounters on Monday, that would be today, when several watchdogs who were told they were fired plan to show up in their offices to work anyway. So there's one person who sort of

oversees the entire inspector's general program. And he put out a letter saying, listen, this wasn't legal, so we don't accept it. So a bunch of these watchdogs are going to show up today anyway, because they view it, I think very clearly and accurately. So as being unlawful, one of the fire watchdogs describe it as a widespread massacre. They said, whoever Trump puts in now will be viewed as loyalists that undermines the entire system. The other thing that's

interesting, weird, whatever here, Emily, is that a bunch of these people that he just fired were his own appointees from the first term. So it's not like this was a bunch of like, you know, libs put in by Obama or Biden. Many of these people were actually Trump appointees. But one of the people who survived was an Obama appointee. That's Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department.

And apparently he liked him because, you know, he had been critical. He had been critical of Trump, but he'd also been critical of Biden. I mean, that's their role is to try to be even handed, regardless whether it's a Republican or Democrat who's serving.

The other one that he left in place was one of his appointees at the Department of Homeland Security. That individual, Khafari, has been under investigation for years. But he had done something, and he's in charge of overseeing the crackdown on immigration. So it's important to Trump to have someone who's friendly there in particular. And he had also put out some report that Trump had appreciated. But, you know,

some of these people that he fired had been really critical of different Biden actions. The inspector general at the Veterans Affair oversaw multiple investigations of how the Biden administration handled the agency's troubled effort to build a massive electronic health record system.

Another one, a Trump appointee at the Interior Department who was fired had released a lengthy investigation concluding that when the US Park Police led law enforcement officers into a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters, that he actually, he sort of backed up Trump's

version of events there. You guys remember the whole Lafayette Square situation? His report said that it was about a pre-planned effort to build a fence around the park to protect officers and not because Trump had like sicked them on these peaceful protesters. So you would think that would be something Trump would like, but nevertheless, that person is fired as well.

Yeah, and Chuck Grassley responded to this and said, there may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that. If so, I'd like further explanation from President Trump, regardless the 30-day detailed notice of removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress. Jonathan Turley, by the way, agrees with that. Jonathan Turley, a professor at GW Law, somebody who has agreed with a lot of Trump's decisions. Yeah, he's like a regular Fox News kind of a guy. I think he's a contender.

Yeah, he's willing to go out on a limb for some of Trump's decisions, but not this one. I think it is because with the Senate appointed positions, it is so clear. And what's interesting is that you can kind of pick up on

scuttlebutt about policy priorities in the conservative world. You know, these IGs, we have to have a plan. I don't know if this was in Project 2025. I don't remember it. Maybe it is and I'm forgetting, but I'd actually never heard that there was a plan to gut IGs.

And it seems like Chuck Grassley hadn't heard that either as somebody who would have a significant interest in it because he says there may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that if so. John Barrasso, the Senate majority whip, told Fox on Saturday, quote, sometimes inspector generals, inspectors general, don't do the job that they're supposed to do. Some of them deserve to be fired. And I'm sure, by the way, that that's true.

But I don't know what the evidence is. I haven't heard people talking about the evidence when it comes to these particular confirmed positions. And one of the interesting things also is from an anonymous source in the Washington Post story that actually makes a pretty good point, which is that IGs do what Trump says he wants to do, which is cut down on waste, fraud, and abuse. That's right. And even if some of these particular IGs weren't doing the best job

of that, it now, by just gutting them right off the bat without going through the formal process, you are undermining, like whoever is confirmed in the future is going to look like a political actor in a way that they wouldn't have before. And they shouldn't look like political actors. Let's say an IG comes out with a great report on the EPA, and this is somebody who's confirmed by, appointed by Trump, confirmed by the Senate,

Well, it's just going to be, they're going to lack the credibility that they otherwise would have. Yeah. Commenting on the waste, fraud, and abuse at the EPA. So-

This one could really come back to bite Trump. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's possible. I also think it's possible that, I mean, he's doing so many things so quickly that it's just hard to like focus on any one, you know, particular outrage. And I mean, so you're right down the line, however things unfold, it's possible that it does come back to bite him. It's also possible that like everyone just capitulates and forgets and moves on. Yeah.

And, you know, I think that's kind of what he's betting on and paying attention to which direction things go in is really important because, again, put actually C2 up on the screen. This is some of the Republican reactions. You mentioned Chuck Grassley, probably the most noteworthy because he's, you know, he's a rock star, like conservative. No one call him, I don't think, a rhino, right? I'm correct about that. Yeah. Yeah.

He pointed out, like, this didn't fall—this was illegal. Senator Susan Collins expressed confusion. You're not confused. You know what's going on here. Lisa Murkowski loaded the lack of notice, expressed worry over the abrupt dismissal. Obviously, the Democrats came out very upset about this. They could put their reactions up on the screen. Next, Chuck Schumer characterized it as a chilling purge, a preview of the lawless approach.

Jerry Connolly labeled the dismissals as a Friday night coup and an assault on transparency and accountability. Elizabeth Warren called it a purge, accused Trump of dismantling constraints on his authority. So obviously they're being very aggressive. But, you know, like I said at the top, I mean, just on the merits, it's important because genuinely some of these inspectors general have done important work on behalf of the American public and on behalf of taxpayers to understand whether it was Trump or whether it was Biden or whether it was Obama before that.

Where there had been failures, where there had been corruption, where there had been things that had been just done improperly or unlawfully, etc. Am I right that Horowitz is the one who did the Hunter Biden, the Joe Biden report about the classified documents? Was that him? He did Comey.

Comey, that's right. Yeah, and Trump has said that he's keeping Horowitz because he liked the Comey report. He liked the Comey report. But in any case, I mean, they have done genuinely useful work that reporters and taxpayers rely on. So it matters for the merits. But I think it is one more indication, and we already have many of these, that Trump 2.0 is taking a truly maximalist approach.

Because there's not even a fig leaf here that this is legal. I mean, the 30-day period is, there's no exceptions for it. You have to give Congress 30-day notice. And he didn't. So it sets up a showdown.

What happens next? You know, do Republicans just decide like, well, he's our guy and we're just not going to put up that much of a fight and we don't really want to cross him and we're just going to accept this? What happens when I mean, you have to the next whoever is going to be next has to get confirmed if their predecessor was fired illegally. Like, what does that look like?

like. And so we're going to see how these sort of showdowns really unfold and whether he is able to do things that are just like clearly unlawful and get away with it. Because you have this, I mean, the birthright citizenship, the executive order ending birthright citizenship is kind of part and parcel of the same type of approach. A federal court has already smacked that down and said like, this is

This was like the most preposterous thing I've ever seen effectively. But he feels like he can effectively do whatever he wants. And the Supreme Court basically told him that that was true. So is he going to abide by this court order? Is he just going to keep moving forward and doing what he wants to do and firing who he wants to fire and all of that?

This is one of, I think, the most important storylines, not just of the first week, but, I mean, this is going to be significant. SNL, of all places, had a really funny sketch kind of poking fun at the Lin-Manuel Miranda millennial moment of Hamilton back in early Trump days. But Trump was like, yeah, maybe we need a king in the sketch. And, you know, Republicans...

I came of age at a period of time when Republicans were just utterly horrified at the executive overreach of the Obama administration. And I think some of those complaints were entirely valid because there was a sort of stretching of the executive branch in a way that if you are a sort of ideological conservative, you would say these are power, you're usurping powers that belong to Congress and it's

actually fueling this vicious cycle where Congress just becomes more and more weak because they're punting everything over to the executive branch. They know that they can't get it done through, for example, the reconciliation process because it's not strictly related to the budget. And so, I mean, some of this is Trump rolling back,

powers that I don't think belong to the executive, but not all of it is at all. And actually, interestingly, this was, I was looking this up while you were going through that. There were, there was some talk about this in the Project 2025 circles, but not, I mean, not a lot. This was pretty low key. I think it was Public Citizen that picked up on something a couple of people that were involved in Project 2025 said about purging IGs. But genuinely, like this is, if that was a serious thing

a serious point, it was really low key. And that shows how significantly Trump is literally taking the blueprints that were drafted over the course of the last four years. And a lot of people thought they'd be giving those blueprints to Ron DeSantis, for example. A strict Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, like,

true Chip Roy style like limited government dude, although what's happened at the state level is testing probably some of his old ideological allegiances. But all that is to say, Trump is like just taking the conservative movement's blueprints. And some of it I'm like, oh, yeah, like some of this is, you know, from my perspective as a conservative, I'm supportive of it. But a lot of this is significantly conservative.

testing the conservative movement's actual commitment to reigning in the power of the executive branch. And this is a great example of that. So how many people are going to speak out and get mad about it in the same way that they would if Obama did it? Oh, imagine if Biden did that. Imagine if this was Kamala in office right now and she had done it.

I mean... Or had launched a shitcoin before. I mean, it's just, like, unimaginable. Well, imagine if they had been... Seriously, imagine if Kamala Harris had been inaugurated with the oligarchs. Right. Oh, I know. I thought a lot. It would have been a popular orgasm. Right. If she was there with Zuckerberg and Bezos and Musk flanking her, like...

And then immediately doing a presser announcing basically like, we're going to support these people spending $500 billion, these tech oligarchs, to eliminate your jobs. I mean, that's the goal of these tech oligarchs.

AI developers is to literally eliminate all need for human labor. And Biden might as well have been flanked by them in 2020 because that's the way his administration proceeded. But this is so, so brazen. I actually don't think that's fair because the one place where Biden really broke from the neoliberal, the Obama-Clinton neoliberal consensus and the area where he was most significantly different on economics was this approach to antitrust.

Trump a little bit, too. The Google suit was started under Trump. That is true. He did dabble in it. I don't think we're going to see any of that this time around. But, you know, the thing with Biden is that there was a story to tell.

about, you know, oligarchy and inequality and breaking up these tech giants and why it matters to you, right? Why these aren't just like theoretical highfalutin things happening in some court that really doesn't impact you, like how it connects. But

First of all, I don't think that he really cared that much about this. He cared about, you know, NATO. That was like where his brain was. I think these were people under him that were more invested in this direction. Number one. Number two, like he was a million years old and couldn't articulate anything about anything. So you end up with a situation where he pissed off all of the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world. And genuinely, they felt like, oh, there could be some sort of constraint on

on my, you know, on my endless power and wealth. So they were pissed off. Wall Street was furious. I mean, how many Wall Street Journal op-eds were written about how terrible Lena Kahn was? Blah, blah, blah. Probably over a hundred. And literally. Yeah, literally. That's not an exact—literally. Matt Stoller kept track of them. So they're furious. They hate him. They know what he's doing. But the public has no idea and are never bought in and invested in this project.

And so when it's, you know, usurped and ended with a whimper and by the way, Kamala Harris gave some indication she wasn't going to continue in that direction either. So, you know, keep it's I want to be fair and point that out. But but yeah, so it made sense to them. We're going to line up behind this guy who's going to basically give us whatever we want. But but yeah, if it was Kamala with those guys behind him, like the freak out would be.

insane and, you know, and justifiably so, like rightfully so. But Trump, because he thinks he just thinks he can get away with anything and he might be right.

He can right now because the, I guess the, and this is, you know, in a weird way, it connects back to what we were talking about with AFD and the other block. There have been years, and this isn't to say that Trump is blameless, but there have been years of such terrible policymaking that Trump was able to successfully exploit that and come in. And he now has

the support of the public on a lot of different things. Not everybody, but there are a lot of different, I mean, he has significant support to shake up Washington. And so when you look like you're shaking up Washington, people can't pay attention to every tiny little thing that's going on. So it looks directionally right. And so, I mean, there's just not a lot of energy or appetite to push back on Trump after Democrats. And I think we have a list here of how Democrats, or we have a graphic here showing how Democrats

Crats reacted to the firing of the inspectors general. This is D3. It just...

Democrats are going to have to come up with a way to make this persuasive. Here you have Chuck Schumer saying this is a, quote, chilling purge and a preview of the lawless approach that he expects Trump to take. Jerry Connolly of Virginia said the dismissals were a, quote, Friday night coup and a, quote, assault on transparency and accountability. And Elizabeth Warren called it a, quote, purge and accused Trump of dismantling constraints on his authority. Now, let's stick with the Connolly criticism there, where he says this is a, quote, assault on transparency and accountability. That

Covering up for Joe Biden for years, by the way, this is not both sides-ism. It is saying that it makes it easier for Trump to get away with a, quote, assault on transparency and accountability when the people who are accusing him of assaulting transparency and accountability have zero credibility to do it. And that is...

one of the two major political parties in this country, and one of them just covered up for a president who was ailing in front of your eyes, told you that your eyes were lying to you, and is now wanting to be upset about transparency and accountability. So it actually is not good for the entire country that Democrats have so little credibility on that question because it'll make it a lot easier for Trump to then, quote, assault transparency by purging inspectors general. Yeah. Unlawfully, by the way.

and given them their notice and done it, that would be another thing. But he didn't. Yeah. And I mean, the same thing is true with regards to oligarchy. Like, if you want us, if you expect the country to take you seriously on these things, you can't be like Ken Martin, the guy who's likely to be the next DNC chair, being like, well, we'll take money from good billionaires. It's like, no, how about just...

There are no good billionaires. How about just it's bad when billionaires, when unelected billionaires run our parties and our government? How about that as a direction? And so in my view, that's the choice they have in front of them. They can either effectively like capitulate to Trumpism, which is the direction they're likely to go in and the direction they have been going and see, you know, supporting the Lake and Riley Act, etc.,

Or they can have a real like whose side are you on moment and decide that they're going to excise this influence of big money within their own party so that they can offer an actual different vision and direction that has some credibility. But yeah, I mean it's just – this is the storyline to watch, not just the moves that Trump makes that are already quite maximalist.

But what's the response? Is there any check on him whatsoever? Or can he just do whatever he wants, even if it's like brazenly unlawful? And does it end up coming back on Republicans in the midterms? A lot of that will depend on how Democrats are able to claw back some measure of credibility if they are able to. But Trump is definitely making that a little bit easier on those questions.

All right, let's go and get to Arno Bertrand to talk about DeepSeek. This is a huge development, which has absolutely rocked Silicon Valley in terms of Chinese AI development. Here he is.

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Very happy to be joined by Arnaud Bertrand. He described himself as an entrepreneur who tweets too much, but I have found your insights both with regards to China in general, but this AI development in particular. I even brought you up earlier, Arnaud, in the context of this fight with Colombia. So great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us.

Right. Thank you, as it was very good to be here. Our pleasure. So I've teased this a couple of times in the show, but this is huge development from a Chinese company which was able with a fraction of the dollar amount to develop an AI competitor to chat GPT and all of the other sort of like big players in the space. In fact, by some metrics, this new release of it's called Deep Seek is outperforming

the prior competitors in the field. This has blown up all sorts of assumptions about AI development, about where Chinese companies were in terms of their technological sophistication, about the success of Biden administration policies trying to limit high-tech development in terms of China. So Arnaud, just take us through a little bit of what happened here so people have the backstory.

So what happened actually started in December when DeepSeq released their first model called V3.

which already made a lot of waves because it was revealed to have been trained for only $5.5 million, which is absolutely nothing in this industry. I think OpenAI spends $5 billion a year, so 100 times less, basically. And that one was already extremely good, already performing a lot of the models on the important benchmarks.

And then OpenAI released a new model called O1, which is supposed to be the top of the range.

And then right behind, just last week, DeepSeq released its own new model called R1, which outperforms or is on par with OpenAI's top-of-the-range model on almost all benchmarks.

And they released it, and that's the important bit, they released it open source, meaning that basically anyone can download it for free and use it as they please. It's released open source on an MIT license.

meaning that you can really use the model however you want, which is a huge difference to open AI. It's called open AI because originally the philosophy behind it was that it was meant to be open, open source and so on. But famously, they've taken a much more closed route where they don't release their models in open source and they don't...

disclose much about the model. It's sort of behind sort of a black...

Well, it's sort of a bit hidden. And so that's why a lot of people are shifting to DeepSeek now. And now it's even the most downloaded app in the US. As of today, it's number one. It's overtaken all the other apps, including ChatGPT. Wow.

Our friend Matthew Stoller made an interesting point in his newsletter, Big, where he said when you compare what China was able to do here with what AI technologies based in the United States or AI companies based in the United States have been able to do, it almost makes the United States look Soviet.

It looks like a Leviathan that is just trudging along compared to this alternative method. So do you think maybe there's something to that parallel, Arnaud? Or is there something that we can take away from the way American AI businesses are organized in comparison here? I mean, I think the interesting irony is that

maybe there was a bit too much funding in the AI industry in the US for its own good. They had a bit too much of an easy life because the reason why DeepSeek, I think, was able to come up with such a good and efficient model is because they're very much operating under constraints, right? You had the export controls, the semiconductor export control, and so China...

in many ways doesn't have a choice if they want to compete with the US, given they don't have such access to funding, the latest chips and so on. They need to come up with much more efficient technology. So I wouldn't say it's exactly the same situation as the Soviet versus the West of the time. It's almost a situation where

you know, the U.S. kind of rested on its laurels and, you know, had it a bit too easy and was operating in too good an environment. And China, because of those constraints that the U.S. put on them, they actually have to come up with simply better technology if they want to compete. And I think that's largely what happened.

I think another piece that you've been pointing to, Arno, which I find really interesting, is China does not—our country, by and large, a lot of the smartest grads that come out with technical degrees or technical know-how, a lot of them don't go into science or research. They go into, like, financial speculation, if

effectively. And the Chinese government has looked at that and said, that's not the direction we want to go in. So they crack down on salaries for the financial industry. And that creates incentives for the best and the brightest, lo and behold, to go into this sort of research and tech development. So talk about that piece a little bit, if you could. Yeah, I think it's one of the most interesting angles of DeepSeek because it was actually a side project of a hedge fund.

And that was released quite coincidentally about less than one year after China did crack down against the finance industry, this, you know, overly high compensation in the financial industry, capping it.

And there has been, you know, you hear in China a lot of miscontent in the finance industry professionals because, yeah, they can't make as much money and the industry is becoming less attractive for graduates. And you're seeing a bit of a brain drain from that industry. But that is very much the point. I think that the Chinese government is...

is aiming for because they're looking at the US and they're seeing, which is a shame when you think about it, like a lot of the top graduates from Harvard and MIT and, you know, all the Ivy League schools often go in the finance industry. When, I mean, think what you want about the finance industry, but if you have

pure genius. Arguably, their brains would be of more use to society if they were to develop new technology like AI or working on curing cancer or things like that. And

And I think this angle is fascinating because it's difficult to put a direct correction. Did they do that side project exactly because of that or not? But at least it's an interesting coincidence.

Yeah, and the stock market, and we're already seeing some of the effectiveness in the stock market. Can you talk a little bit more about why it's affecting stocks in the way it is and what we could expect to see going forward as the deep-seat reckoning goes on?

Yeah, so I was looking at it. Actually, I'm at portfolio just now. It's quite depressing. So NVIDIA, I just saw, is losing 12% today. And yeah, the whole tech sector is down.

And basically because there was this assumption that AI was all about compute, like more chips, you could get better models, right? And DeepSeq kind of destroyed that assumption because they don't have a lot of compute and they were able to come with a better model because they had better algorithms, better software. And so...

So what's happening is simply that those assumptions around building a moat for US AI company with compute, with those massive data centers, like the Stargate project that Trump on OpenAI and so on just announced, those are very much questioned right now. And that's what you're seeing, I think, in the stock market. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so much of the stock market value is built on this sort of like hype around AI. And so, I mean, it's incredibly deflating, literally, to see this company be able to, you know, build a comparable product for vastly less. I will say I've seen some theories that

that they're not being straightforward about the amount of compute that they actually used here. Most notably, the Scale AI CEO, Alexander Wang, I think he was at the World Economic Forum, claimed that he thinks that they are hiding the ball on exactly how many chips, like what size of the megacluster that they're using. Let's take a listen to that and get your reaction on the other side. You know, the Chinese labs, they have more H100s than

than people think. - And these are the highest powered Nvidia chips that they were not supposed to have. - Yes. My understanding is that DeepSeq has about 50,000 H100s, which they can't talk about obviously, because it is against the export controls that the United States has put in place. And I think it is true that, you know, I think they have more chips than other people expect, but also on a go forward basis, they are going to be limited by the chip controls and the export controls that we have in place. - What do you make of that?

Well, it's difficult to say one way or the other, but the good thing about DeepSeq is that when they released the model, first of all, they released it open source, so you can see what's in the model, and they released an extremely detailed paper with

with it. So, AI researchers can just go through the paper and try to achieve the same outcome, which is the model, based on what they're saying they did in the paper and see if that's true or not. Or if the methodology that they're

They're saying the pursuit in the paper is wrong and they're lying about the number of ships.

I can't say. Yeah. Well, I did read – I read some analyses that looked at the paper and said, well, here's the key innovations that they used to achieve so much more efficiency, way beyond my technical know-how. But people who seemed to know what they were talking about were like, oh, that's how they did it. I see. They used very creative and efficient technological development here.

One more I wanted to get your response to, Arno, is Sam Altman weighed in. Obviously, this is a very bad development for him because he has bet so much on now the Stargate program. I know he'd been sort of battling with Microsoft for more and more money for larger and larger data centers. And now this sort of blows that whole direction up. Let's put this up on the screen. D3 from

Sam Altman, he says, "It is relatively easy to copy something that you know works. It is extremely hard to do something new, risky, and difficult when you don't know if it will work. Individual researchers rightly get a lot of glory for that when they do it. It's the coolest thing in the world." And of course, this was largely seen as being directed at the DeepSeq development. What do you make of these comments from Sam?

DeepSeek is definitely getting a lot of glories. So I'm not sure exactly what it means. I think something very interesting, I think a big sign, is what Mark Andreessen is tweeting recently. I don't know if you...

If you followed what he tweeted, because obviously Sam Altman is biased. I think Marc Andreessen is slightly more of a neutral party here because he's an investor. And he literally tweeted, I can't remember the exact quote, but that DeepSeek was one of the most impressive breakthroughs it's seen in its entire career.

And that's Silicon Valley's most legendary investor, the guy who invented the browser. So, you know, it's quite something, right?

He said, "One of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I've ever seen." And just to clarify, that Ullman tweet was from back in December, so presumably about the initial release of DeepSeek. Okay, yeah. The new model is also quite a bit... It's more of a breakthrough than v3, which was the one in December. My last question for you, Arnaud, is, is there a legitimate reason to keep AI closed

closed source as OpenAI has decided because, I mean, there are risks inherent in AI development. I mean, there's a whole field of AI safety, a lot of concerns about what it could do in terms of the labor market, especially when it's being wielded for profit by companies like

Microsoft, there are also some more far-reaching concerns about AI. Once it's AGI and you have this level of artificial general intelligence and then super intelligence that effectively supplants human beings as the smartest creatures on the planet, what does that mean? Do they decide they want to keep us around or not? So there are these sort of further reaching concerns about AI development as well. Do you see any drawbacks

in the open source model that not only DeepSeq has pursued, but also the meta has gone in the direction of a more open source model as well? That's a good question. I honestly see more drawbacks with the closed model

Because at the end of the day, if it's closed, it's a limited group of individuals who you don't have control over. And, you know, oligarchs, effectively, like billionaires that take all the decisions when it comes to AI, which you're right, is going to be extremely disruptive. It's an extremely powerful technology. So would you rather have...

that's being controlled by a small group of billionaires who are, you know, very much can't relate to the general public? Or would you rather have the general public, anyone who can, you know, have an influence on that with the open source model? I think, I mean, anyway, that's

that technology has risks, will have a big impact, will impact jobs and so on. But I feel more reassured with the idea that anyone will have a say on how AI develops, that it is open, free, anyone can come up with a startup around it, 3D on his own computer, rather than

it being kind of developed secretly out of our hands. Emily, do you have anything? No, I was just going to say what we've learned from our own private tech companies, semi-private tech companies over the last decade is that you will also have similar levels of censorship and political corruption, whether they're private or public. They get co-opted, Arnaud. Yeah, yeah. And censorship, it's an extremely good point because people...

Often you see a lot on Twitter, you know, people saying that the DeepSeq model is censored. It's true that when you go on DeepSeq.com, because it is hosted in China, it is indeed censored because you have censorship laws in China and so on. But anyone can download the model in open source, tune it however they want.

If they want to turn it into a tool that even generates anti-China propaganda, they can, right? So that's what I mean by me being more reassured that it's open source because anyone can do whatever they want with it. Whereas open AI, if it stands on, it also stands on its own way. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Yeah, that's a great point. That's true. And I did see the comparison of people asking just very straightforward questions about like the Israel-Palestine conflict on ChatGPT versus DeepSeek. And I would say that the DeepSeek version was much less censored in that particular instance than the OpenAI version. Yeah.

Exactly. Every country has their own bias. By the end of the day, open source matters a lot because you can then download the model yourself and input your own bias. Make it your own, right? That's what I need. I need the world to reflect my personal bias. Arnaud, thank you so much. It's so helpful getting your breakdown of these developments and what it ultimately means. Great to see you.

Here at Life Kit, NPR's self-help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio.

What's up, everybody? Adnan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Burke and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst. And boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say. I love you, by the way, on NHL Network.

We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We're into all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL Now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if you asked two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver.

And I set out to explore this idea in my podcast, Mini Questions. Over the years, we've had some incredible guests. People like Courtney Cox, star of the infinitely beloved sitcom Friends, EGOT winner Viola Davis, and former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair. And now, Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions,

including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe, and Cord Jefferson. Each episode is a new person's story with new lessons, new memories, and new connections to show us how we're both similar and unique. Listen to Mini Questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers.

We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Andrew Callahan of Channel 5, who is out with a new documentary called Dear Kelly. Great to have you, Andrew. Welcome. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm a big fan of Breaking Points. I appreciate you guys for the platform.

It's early morning. Thanks to you all. So thank you for having me on. Thank you for waking up for us. We appreciate that. We are likewise big fans. Let me give people a little bit a taste of the trailer here. And then on the other side, you can tell them the backstory of what inspired you to follow this one individual. Let's take a look.

Why did the framework created by QAnon and Trump propaganda cause an innumerable amount of people to jump headfirst down the rabbit hole, endangering their safety, lives, and freedom? I thought I had it figured out. I pointed fingers at the fear-mongering 24-hour news cycle. There's nothing fake about CNN. And at radio hosts who sell supplements and t-shirts to paranoid libertarians. But deep down, I didn't really know. That was until I met a man named Kelly J. Patriot at a White Lives Matter rally.

in Huntington Beach, California, and asked him one question. What's the most painful piece of truth that's hurt you? A guy stealing my home. His name is Bill Joyner. Financially, he wanted to destroy me. He destroyed my 25-year business, separated and devastated my family. So that answers your question. This dude sounds like he sucks.

I don't think he's a good guy. In my opinion, he's a bad guy and he's hurt a lot of people. But then again, look what the Democrats are doing to others. Kobe Bryant was assassinated by the twins. I hope you fucking die, homie, straight up. So what was it that caused you to be sort of captivated by this guy and to really follow up with him and figure out what was actually going on there?

I think that it came from like just not being satisfied with like my kind of deep dives into like the MAGA far right for a long time. I had just followed Trump's campaign trail across the country filming for my first project on HBO. And I felt like I had sort of been able to document the craziness and like a time capsule, but never really been able to understand what economic and social factors actually cause people to become radicalized, especially politically.

dude through later in life like Kelly. And I never really was able to actually dig deep. But in his story about Bill Joyner and the foreclosure of his house and his family being separated, I saw a window and a chance to actually figure out the why of how people get like that in the first place. Yeah. And it's you're probing this like central chicken or egg question that a lot of your work is based on, which, you know, I think one of the reasons people love your work is you come to this idea that like there are opportunities.

a lot of very good people who do a lot of crazy things and get caught up in the fringes and you include some interesting stats about January 6th and for example people's debt levels like whether they were there on January 6th if they had particular levels of debt there's just a big proportion of people I hadn't even realized that there were numbers attached to all of this. I mean you could see it when you were there but can you tell us a little bit about how this experience with Kelly either

changed, modified, added nuance to the way you see the world that maybe there are some people who come into all of this stuff with prior difficulties and then it changes them or is it just a one-way street?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, before I started documenting Kelly, and this is filmed over the course of four and a half years, I didn't realize that so many people who like were so deep in that QAnon rabbit hole had just normal lives like in 2020 that were completely derailed by financial hardship and particularly how that coalesced with like political psychosis.

I don't like using the word misinformation because it's not like everything they read is totally false or consumes false, but it's just being locked in this echo chamber of like 24 seven outrage content for a long period of time. And, uh, definitely learned a lot about just people like that in general.

But also about myself as a documentary filmmaker and how emotionally invested I want to be in the outcome of like a subject or someone that I'm documenting. Like by the end of the film, especially like after the intervention, to spoil it a bit, not too much, I was so emotionally invested in Kelly turning over this new leaf that it became like more important in my own life.

And I don't think I ever want to get that involved again. Because, I mean, I had filmed 350 hours of footage in total. And I ultimately baked it down to 89 minutes. But it was like my personal expectations were tethered to his in a way that I'm not sure was super healthy. I think for me as a democratic socialist who thinks a lot about, like, class analysis—

The way you approach this really played into some of my sort of mental preconceptions because you're like there was a material harm that happened to a lot of these people and it sort of pushed them in this direction of radicalization. And that's both true and not true in Kelly's case. Like he did genuinely go through this foreclosure, which for anyone is a horrific situation. But –

The way he portrayed it was also not entirely accurate. And then when you're still many years past that financial hardship and there's still, you know, and you've had these this severing of relationship with your kids and you're not being there for them as, you know, as a father and they're having to have these, you know, again, I don't want to spoil too much, but they're coming to you saying this has really hurt us and you have a chance to turn over that new leaf eventually.

And that's not necessarily the direction that you want to go in. It just makes the picture a little more complex, right? It's not as...

simple and straightforward, a sort of math equation of, you know, financial hardship plus loss of connection. I mean, you actually have a sort of like formula you lay out in the beginning. Doesn't have to lead to this. Doesn't always lead to this. There are other choices. It's not always like as clear a picture as you're telling yourself in your head. You know, did it kind of challenge some of your conceptions coming in as well?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I started when I was 22 and I finished when I was 27. Like the first shoot being the White Lives Matter rally on April 11th, 2021. And the last shoot being three and a half.

a half weeks ago with our friend Uncle Pill at a skate park in San Diego. You can see my approach like kind of morphed throughout the whole thing because midway through like 23, 24, I'm like, I'm going to be able to figure this out. I've got everything diagnosed. I have all the ducks in a row. I'm going to make sure that he's able to turn over a new leaf. The one thing that I noticed too is that I didn't mention this in the movie very much, but the whole, the idea of self-narrative was also very important in his sort of inability to turn over that new leaf over time.

Because it's a comforting self-narrative for him to have this heroic black and white, good versus evil, Bill Joyner screwed me over. And the way that morphs with the political movement in general is very two-dimensional. You know what I mean? The idea that there's this nebulous, dark force out there that's just – it exists. We don't know what it is, but it's there to rob everything from the hardworking, red-blooded American patriot. And it might not be – my boogeyman might not be shared by yours. However, we're all –

united in our fight against the evil forces. And in a way that's comforting to people in his position because it stops them from actually picking up the pieces, right?

That's why I was, you know, he was spending 15 hours a day putting up leaflets saying Bill Joyner stole my home. That time easily could have been used at, you know, maybe getting an entry level job and trying to save up money to start from the bottom. But that's a lot. It takes a lot of humility to be able to bring yourself back to that level and start from scratch. It's easier to revel in the past while simultaneously leading a hero's narrative that keeps you in a revenge mindset. Well, and actually, I just want to jump onto that point.

point because one of the interesting things that you touch on is how he grew up in a mobile home, and I think it was Iowa. And so he may have been ultimately a bankruptcy attorney, but there was something I think traumatic, and I'm curious what you make of this, for him about

losing his kind of upper middle class, if not upper class status. And that for him was maybe like the truth that he didn't want to grapple with. You hear his kids saying that it was like the house. He could not give up the house. And he's still driving his banged up BMW, even though it's got a big dent in the hood as your camera's caught. It seems like there was something about growing up poor that made him cling to the kind of fantasy of having made it.

Yeah, definitely, because he sort of achieved the American dream, which is just class mobility in general. I mean, especially nowadays with the cost of living, very few people can go from living in a mobile home in their lifetime to being cemented as a community member in an upper class gated community. So he hit that point. And I think the material obsessions were his way of holding on to what that meant to him, like,

And you see this all the time. People hit the lottery. Rappers get a bunch of money. They spend it more on material items because they have a sort of imposter syndrome in general because they didn't grow up in the same way that their peers did because most people who are rich grew up rich. There's very little crossover. And so I felt like he felt it was a huge blow to his ego and also, yeah, self-perception and self-narrative to be foreclosed upon. Are you still in touch with Kelly? Is he happy? Is Guy back in the White House?

Yeah, I mean, he's actually pretty excited about the film. Like a lot of people look at the end of the film and they think like, oh, my God, he must feel so bad about it. You know, but at the end of the day, there is a lot of small victories that have been secured throughout the process of the film. Him not caring so much about Bill Joyner, which is his boogeyman, evil, predatory, leather guy that he claims ruined his life.

him not caring about Bill by the end is a huge stride forward if you consider that in the opening scene of Planned Parenthood he's almost like passing out from anger yelling about Bill so I mean it may not be the Hollywood ending we want yeah he's never met him and you know I'm being sued by Bill right now which sucks but I also haven't met Bill either

Wow. So there's more story to unfold there with you versus Bill Joyner. Maybe you'll be the next one. Bill Joyner ruined my life now. Next time you're on, Andrew, it's just going to be you talking about Bill Joyner. There was one other thing I wanted to ask you about, Andrew. If we could put F1 up on the screen. You put out a very, like, you know, pretty aggressive post here about Elon Musk.

None of which I disagree with. But in any case, it felt like a little bit of a break from the way you normally approach things. Because a lot of times you sort of let your work and the characters you follow speak for themselves. And I just was curious what led you to take this more aggressive approach. And after having watched the documentary, actually, it made me wonder if that was part of your evolution to make being more directly, personally outspoken.

Well, I mean, just like Elon Musk has been doing Nazi dog whistle stuff on Twitter for five or six months now. I know this because I grew up on 4chan back in the day. The pre-censorship free internet when half the people were Nazis and half the people were anarchists back in the day.

It was like either you were part of Anonymous or you were like a seriously like like Charlottesville person. And so I know that he's been doing these like weird not even dog whistles, just like straight up following Nazi accounts, reposting Nazi shit. And then when he did that, I don't know. I just got triggered. I kind of felt bad when I posted it because I'm supposed to be like neutral and maintain composure. But that was for sure a Hitler salute. And it's you know, it's a Hitler salute, not just because of the obvious body language, but because the guy has been paying attention.

homage to Nazi ideology and accounts on X for the past six to eight months. But the comments are crazy. So many people are going to bat for Elon. They're like, he's just giving his heart out to the people. I was like, dude, if you give your heart out to the people, you go like this.

Appreciate you guys. Thank you guys. Heart goes out to you. You don't do the Sig Heil. But, you know, I think we're in this era where, you know, he could do it and say Sig Heil. I don't think people would care. They'd find out a way to rationalize it and be like, dude, he's just so autistic. You don't know if you met an autistic person, but they're always hailing Hitler, I guess. Yeah. Have you considered you're just being ableist right now, Andrew? See? Now the, what's it called?

The sights are on me. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I was just like, that's the thing with, we're all like downstream of 4chan culture now that people who are not being ironic get away with the like shield of irony. And in some fairness, it actually does make it hard to, you know, it doesn't mean that irony trolling is right, but it does make it hard to like sometimes decode. But I guess, Andrew, having spent time on 4chan, you speak the language probably better than me.

Yeah, I definitely do. And not to mention, he's not from the United States. And there's a lot to say about migrants coming here and ruining shit. Whereas this guy is from South Africa, of all places, the most racist place that ever exists in the history of the world. And he's coming here and he's manipulating information. That seems pretty treasonous and like some foreign interference to me. It's just crazy to think that Trump ran his whole campaign on getting the deep state bureaucracy out of office.

And now it appears that he has like a private, you know, council of tech oligarchs backing him entirely. So it appears that the deep state was elected. Well, I personally appreciate the new outspoken mode of Andrew Callahan. So I hope we hear more of it. And of course, always look forward to your work. Tell people where they can watch Dear Kelly.

You guys can watch Dear Kelly at www.dearkellyfilm.com for the low rental cost of $5.55. Or if you're feeling generous, you can buy it forever for $15.55. It's worth it. And he's got some lawsuit costs against Bill Joyner. So help him out with that, guys. Shout out to Bill. Shout out to Kelly. Shout out to Breaking Points. Thanks, Andrew. Great to talk to you. Thank you so much. Appreciate you guys. All right. Really interesting. Getting to talk to Andrew. I really did...

I found the film very thought-provoking. Yeah. Yeah, you enjoyed it too, right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, I did. And I actually, one of the things, I know you talked a little bit to Andrew about what moved you, but one of the things that really moved me was, this isn't a spoiler, he just ends up

becoming very emotionally involved in Kelly's life. Yeah. And weirdly, like, close with him. Yes. And it surprises you towards the end of the film. It's not a spoiler. I really recommend people watch it play out because that experience as a viewer is really compelling. Yeah. It was interesting to hear Andrew talk about, like, that

that that was something he really had to learn as a documentarian, that that took a very emotional toll. I mean, Andrew's really young, right? That was like a real emotional toll on him and a learning for him through this process. But in any case, I hope you guys enjoyed the show today. Definitely check out the documentary. Sagar's supposed to be back tomorrow, so he will be in his chair, and Emily and Ryan will be here on Wednesday, so you got all normal shows, normal shows planned for the week. In any case, hope you guys have a fantastic day, and I will see you back here tomorrow.

Here at Life Kit, NPR's self-help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio.

John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend John Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind. Listen to The Daily Show Ears Edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, everybody? Adnan Virk here to tell you about a new podcast. It's NHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers. Jason Demers here, and after playing 700 NHL games, I got a lot of dirty laundry to air out. Hey, I got a lot to say here, too, okay? Each week, we'll get together and chat about the sport that we love. Tons of guests are going to join in, too, but we're not just going to be talking hockey, folks. We're talking movies. We're talking TV, food, and Adnan's favorite, wrestling. It's all on Le Table. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Virk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.