Gene: 0:14

Hey, enjoying me today is Ben. Ben, How are you today?

Ben: 0:17

Doing well. How are you? Gene

Gene: 0:19

Pretty good. unfortunately, uh, the potential nuclear conflict levels keep going up as the tensions keep rising and nobody wants to let off some steam.

Ben: 0:29

yeah, this, it appears that uh, you know, both on the Ukraine, Ukraine front and the, the Russia front, it it is not pausing at all. So,

Gene: 0:38

Yeah. apparently Musk isn't disabling Starling services around the the contested areas of Ukraine. After finding out that Starling was used to trigger the bomb on the Russian Bridge,

Ben: 0:54

Interesting. That is I had not heard that. I, I know that Musk had come on and denied, you know, speaking to Putin. And you know, there, there was a bunch of controversy around whether or not he had been in com communication ahead of, you know, any of his Twitter rampages. But I had not heard that the, the Aon. So what kind of, what kind of precedent do you think that sits though? I. Internet being

Gene: 1:18

company, do whatever they want. Right? That's what Google keeps telling us and Facebook and everybody else.

Ben: 1:23

very true, very true. But you know, some would say that internet and access to internet is a, you know, right. In, in some cases, right. The ability to have information and knowledge the ability to communicate with others and in other areas. But I don't know. It's, it's definitely an interesting

Gene: 1:40

well is gps. Right?

Ben: 1:42

You know, that's a good question. You know, the ability

Gene: 1:44

can flip it off anytime they want. I'm old enough to remember when gps had what do they call it? There was a word for it, but essentially induced errors for the civilian market. So you had to either have a, a military receiver that was able to correct for the errors to provide up to the meter sensitivity or as civilian equipment user, you were stuck with something that was within 10 meter range for this exact reason. Mind you, is, is so that GPS isn't utilized for guidance of munitions.

Ben: 2:20

Yeah, GPS data can be utilized by courts so that there's legal precedent behind that. And there's legal precedent to you know, sell companies in regards to their, what they can use with your GPS data. So, I you know, there's protection's definitely in place on the. On the, you know, as far as company side or enterprise side. But it's interesting to see what the consumer side of that would look like.

Gene: 2:42

Well, and Musk kinda walked into it initially when he, having read nothing at all about the history of the region just believed the the government being on the good side and, and said, Oh, well, I'll, I'll go ahead and start shipping receivers for starlink to Ukraine, and we'll give people free access if they're in that region. And they can do that because they know exactly where every one of the, I think right now there's about four and a half thousand satellites but eventually over 20,000 they're gonna be, And so they can effectively enable or disable the transmission of data selectively, depending on which region that satellite is flowing over. It's the same reason that Musk can do a deal with with China that will turn off the receivers when the satellites go over China and then turn back on once they cross over into Mongolia.

Ben: 3:31

Then the, the, I don't know, that just, it seems like a crazy concept that at the Pivotal moment in which, you know, access to certain resources like internet, right? And gps are, are just now becoming on the forefront of being accessible. Now we're seeing a company like, you know, for instance Tesla or Elon Musk and SpaceX saying we can provide it. To a whim at, you know, to whom we, whom we decide right from that market. So do, do you think that's something that, you know, Ukraine and, and the Russian War side and you know, any, any future conflict potentially with China aside, do you think that's something that is gonna have ramifications in the long

Gene: 4:08

Oh, absolutely. This is the reason that the US government got on a highest horse during Trump's administration with Wuwe and, and their equipment is because they want to prevent the possibility of China when it's potentially in a conflict with the us, which everyone's just counting down the hours until that happens of being able to turn off a lot of the US infrastructure, which they already can do in most of the rest of the world because the majority of the telecom equipment is actually manufactured in China right now. And so having somebody else have the ability to turn things off on you should be a fairly. Good reason to ensure that there's at least two suppliers for everything that a country utilizes not to just trust on any single supplier for anything. In this case GPS has been around forever. It is very easy to prevent gps well, to jam effectively. GPS signals super easy to do. You can watch a video on YouTube, learn how to do it illegal in the us, but doesn't mean it's not illegal in, or that it's legal in other countries, but technologically, it's sort of trivial to jam GPS systems a little trickier to jam starlink because it's new technology, it's proprietary technology and and so, and it, it's made to fix a lot of the problems that GPS had because it's meant for large data volumes, not just a a single, single source. So, you know, hence, if you're going to, let's say theoretically, if you're going to be in the war torn region and you'd like to ensure that the detonation occurs over a specific area, then the, the easiest thing to do is to utilize a system which, you know, the enemy can't jam. And in this case, being star.

Ben: 6:07

and, and that's some of the news that's coming out too, is, you know, I believe Elon posted a couple tweets couple months ago in regards to starlink fighting off you know, Russian jamming attacks faster than the military could even. And that's you know that

Gene: 6:20

Well, here's the problem that Musk is gonna run into is he's not dealing with another company that's competitor. He's dealing with a superpower.

Ben: 6:27

right?

Gene: 6:28

And much like the, there are people in Washington that don't seem to believe that Russia is capable of launching nuclear missiles, which I don't understand how people don't believe that. Absolutely is and will, but much in the same way Russia is fully capable of turning off all the satellites. It, this is something that both Russia and China have tested and it's, it's the same scenario as with nuclear war, because once you start detonating satellites, the debris that you're generating much like, the, the flying neutrons in an atomic bomb are going to damage other satellites at which themselves will be creating more debris. And then there's a name for it that I'm blanking out. But effectively if you damage enough satellites that create debris in orbit, That will propagate. Once you cross over that line, there's a minimum amount of debris that you have to create. Once you cross over that line, all satellites, everything in orbit will just get obliterated and turned into a bunch of dust.

Ben: 7:38

Yeah.

Gene: 7:39

So it is absolutely within Russia's capabilities to shut down all satellite communication and all spice satellites and all, you know, the only satellites that would still exist would be geo stationary satellites. But the only reason they're gonna exist is because there's a lot fewer of them and they're further away. So it would actually take more explosions at the, the height of the geo stationaries to create the same effect. And it's possible just, I don't think there's enough rockets out there that can be launched to do it. But in terms of lower abid, oh my God, there we have like 46,000 pieces of tracted material floating out there, and we're, we're constantly on, on the brink of having things crashing into each other just from random circumstances. So doing that as a targeted approach would not take much and you could wipe out the entire lower earth orbit orbit for anything. It would also make rocket launchers extremely dangerous because you would have to cross through that orbit at which point you may have debris damaging the the rocket.

Ben: 8:46

You think that debris wouldn't be able to be tracked by our current system? So I, I know, cause I know

Gene: 8:50

Well, here's the thing. The, the one Chinese satellite that we tracked that got blown up, that single satellite split off into over a thousand smaller pieces

Ben: 9:00

was that back in 2007

Gene: 9:01

that now, that was maybe five years ago. Yeah, I thought it was like 17.

Ben: 9:06

2015. Okay. Maybe I might move out the decade wrong.

Gene: 9:08

Yeah. And then Russia just did another test that was much more contained. But you know, they've got the, the weaponry, they're they're not, not making them anti-satellite weapons. I remember them from the seventies. This was something that was already a, a worry for both superpowers back in the seventies, that the other guys would start creating space weapons, not necessarily for shooting lasers back to the earth, like science fiction would say, but space weapons that would disable the other country's satellites. And whether that was done with lasers, whether that was done with kinetic you know, debris, Look here's all you really need to do, right? So you, you launch something that is a relatively small and cheap rocket that is filled with ball bearings. Something that is high density. And spherical. And then you just you launch them to a known orbit and you just detonate'em. You don't even have to be close to anything. You just have to spread out. You're doing a shotgun approach, and you just spread out enough. They will start impacting other traffic in that orbit. And once you do that and, and, and there's, you can optimize it too. The first thing you would do is you wanna launch it in a counter rotational direction. So it's you're gonna be going against the, the, the way that most satellites are spinning around the earth, which is west to east. And the reason that's the case is because you get free energy that way. You get free delta V when you launch, when you're launching in an eastward direction. And once you establish orbit, it takes an insane amount of energy to change that orbit. And especially if you want to go the opposite direction. So very few satellites are launched counterclockwise, most are clockwise or west to east. You could also do polar orbits, which are, you know, north, south, south, north for things that where you wanna make sure it goes every over, every part of the globe. But, you know, all, all this stuff is known, It's all calculated. It's. math problem. That's really all it is. If you want to destroy low earth out orbit satellites, the only thing you can't really do is do it selectively, because once you start the chain reaction, you can't stop it. The more debris there, the more chance that something that still works is gonna get damaged and, and once that's damaged, it'll create more debris.

Ben: 11:45

Yeah, the idea of anti-satellite warfare, Being implemented in, in, you know, in a real use case scenario, right. The, the Air Force and other organizations have done projections, right, and have released reports on these projections of what would happen in those scenarios. But it's very, you know, it's acutely concerning because satellites are so important to everything we do in a, you know, everything we rely on as a modern society. And, you know, when you look at how we protect infrastructure on, on the on the ground, you know, both from a kinetic perspective as well as a, you know, cyber perspective, you know, I don't think the general population really knows how vulnerable that, that, that satellite infrastructure is, Right? It's not designed to keep a a person out of it, right. It's more so designed to

Gene: 12:34

Kessler syndrome. Sorry to up Joe, I just looked it up finally while you were talking. It's the Kessler syndrome is where you create so much junk that ends up. Hitting other useful stuff and thereby creating you more junk. And it really is a chain reaction. Much like the same way that the, that Atomical weapons work.

Ben: 12:53

Yeah. Well, it's very similar to, you know, like an asteroid breaking up in the, in the atmosphere or an asteroid. You know, like we, we just did this test on the asteroid on those asteroids or come to break it apart with a sa you know, it's interesting, you know, that, you know, what does the debris field look like that what are the future impacts from an orbit perspective? Of those debris and you know, I'm sure NASA did all those calculations prior to, to launching that project, but you know,

Gene: 13:20

Or did they

Ben: 13:21

did they Right. who knows? Right? It's like, it's like when, when China says that they can't, or they don't know the current destination or a route that, that their that the rocket engines are going to be taking. Because when they launched'em, they didn't take that into consideration

Gene: 13:33

Well, yeah, that's a bullshit story. What I could tell you exactly why I don't bother, because it's, it's a cost thing. So what they wanna do is utilize every ounce of fuel that's in that rocket to actually create you know, upward momentum to, to use that up when they're putting their space station or they're putting their satellites up. And if you don't have any fuel, then the rocket's gonna fall where the rocket falls. You, you better, first of all, hope. It gets dumped, like it runs outta fuel and that stage falls off before you fully leave earth's atmosphere. Because if you don't, then what's gonna happen is, what we did in the US is all of our early rocket launches in the sixties and through the seventies they just created space junk.

Ben: 14:24

oh

Gene: 14:24

You know, there was no thought given to, shouldn't we deorbit and burn this up in the atmosphere? It was more like, no, it, it was the same mentality that China has. We, we've got a limited supply fuel we're gonna use every last drop and do that. We don't really care where we leave the the spent stages. And we had, I think it was in the last year that we had found one of the Apollo stages that was dropped on the way to the moon. I don't think it was Apollo 11, I think it was one the later Apollos. And it, you know, it made a very complex journey going between the moon and the Earth and something else. And we finally tracked that, yes, it looks like that's what it is, and now it's actually spinning around the earth again. It made its way back from the moon, but it's the, the piece that every side has to realize is you're, you're hovering over in abyss, and the only way that everybody gets to stay up, whether it's two or three or 10 or a million people, is if y'all hold onto each other's hands, because as soon as one person let's go, they fall in and they drag everybody else along with them. This is the principle of mutually assured destruction as a preventive measure. When you're afraid of dying, you try to not do things that'll make you die. And what makes you afraid of dying is knowing that the other side if they don't have your cooperation, if you don't hold their hand, that they will start the chain reaction that le leads to everybody's death. And so this principle works as well with satellites, as it does with atomic weapons and lot of other things in life. But it seems to be something that isn't thought of a whole lot these days.

Ben: 16:19

Yeah. It's a, it's a whole new frontier when it, when, when it, when you, you start adding things like warfare into that space and how does that look long term? I mean the, the infrastructure of our, our, of the US military, right? You need look at. Military is worldwide, is, is largely dependent on those systems. So, you know, what does that look like? You know, from a, you know, like you mentioned mutually Sure. Destruction. What does that look like in the future when you run into an adversary that doesn't have that same principle? You know, and, and, and you know, when you think about those organizations or those entities entering that space, right? How do you assure that you don't run into negligence, Right. Or purposeful or otherwise.

Gene: 17:07

yeah. You can have accidents happening. And the, there have been a few that have brought us close to nuclear annihilation over the years and, and luckily mechanisms that were put in place, like having multiple keys and, and, and split codes in order to launch have averted disasters when people decided to say, you know, this seems fishy. Maybe, maybe nuclear war hasn't already started. Maybe we shouldn't launch either. But you know, the, the more, the more you push somebody in that direction, The more you're having to rely on the safeguards, the more you rely on the safeguards, the more likely one of those safeguards is gonna fail.

Ben: 17:48

Yeah. So what do you think we're closer to nuclear war or satellite war? or

Gene: 17:52

Well, I don't, I think nuclear war is certainly on the horizon. I think satellite, let's put it this way, if nuclear war happens, satellite war is guaranteed to happen as well. Satellite war could happen before nuclear war. But I also think that the current administration is stupid enough to start a nuclear war if satellite war happens.

Ben: 18:12

you think I, you know, I

Gene: 18:14

cuz they have to realize that the US does not survive without satellites. We literally, all our logistics, everything that we're doing is based around well, it's, it's relying on satellites, whether it's GPS for tracking, but a lot more of that satellites are, are not just for tracking, they're actually for moving data. A lot of the a lot of the mechanisms that a allow the data to flow they are relying on other, well, you know about this. You're, you're a it security dude that you can't have the control channel be embedded along with the data channel.

Ben: 18:51

No.

Gene: 18:53

So the easiest way to do that is to separate control and data. You run the data on the high speed network, which is terrestrial. You run the control channel along with backup channels on satellite or completely diverse connection points in undersea cables. And so you're by, by the way, speaking of, I should probably do an intro for you cuz we kind of jumped into it. I forgot to do that. People might be wondering who, who the hell is this Ben I'm talking to? Well this is actually Ben. How are you Ben?

Ben: 19:22

doing well. Thank you

Gene: 19:23

Yes. So Ben just happens to be another Ben who's an IT guy whose real name is Ben. And I figured, you know, I already do a podcast with a guy named Ben. No, I might as well talk to another guy named Ben who's in the same field as well. And you actually know the other Ben,

Ben: 19:38

Yeah, I do. Yep. I work with them actually.

Gene: 19:40

I kind of always suspected people named Ben's kind of had an inside connection to each other.

Ben: 19:45

Yeah, we all have a uh, a shared Slack channel and we can communicate on a regular basis. I'm just

Gene: 19:50

Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's the the ben, the dude named Ben Consortium and I'm not invited cuz that's not my name. Yeah. That's awesome. Do you get time off work to go to the convention for the Bens

Ben: 20:00

That does require some pto, but yeah.

Gene: 20:03

So, where are you at, Ben?

Ben: 20:05

So I'm located out in Ohio area, so, So the Midwest area, a lot of corn, right? We, we talked about that, or you talked about that a little bit

Gene: 20:13

corn, that's, that's cold word for silos, I believe.

Ben: 20:16

It It is code word. No. Yeah. A lot of corn, a lot of a lot of farming

Gene: 20:21

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 20:22

We also, in the area I live in, in Ohio have a large amount of data centers. And it's, it's. Quite fast when it comes to attracting new manufacturing. You mentioned last, I believe chip manufacturing and you know, Taiwan all that fun stuff and that's going on over there. Right. And you know that Intel is actually investing

Gene: 20:42

The foundries. Yeah.

Ben: 20:43

in, quite a bit into the the Ohio area. So that, that's something that's been quite exciting around here. But but yeah, thank you for the introduction.

Gene: 20:50

I've never understood why, I guess I kind of know because I've worked in the industry for a long time myself, but I think it's inertia mostly that keeps manufacturing overseas because it used to be cost, but the single biggest cost was always labor. US labor was just so high compared to everybody else. That hasn't been true for a long time.

Ben: 21:11

Yeah, and, and I think that's a, a general misconception that you, that you're pointing out in regards to overseas manufacturing being so, you know, heavily invested due to expense when it comes to people. Right. Cuz you, there's a lot of factors when it comes to especially when you're looking at especially manufacturing like chip sets, right? Or certain components you look like auto manufacturing. There's a reason why a lot of that is still, you know, US based as well as some, some other, you know, countries that we work with like Canada, Mexico, right? But there's definitely a good reason why a lot of that's still in the.

Gene: 21:42

there's very little other than that in the us and I think, I did an analysis for a company not too long ago. We were looking at Mexico versus the US for costs for some manufacturing. And you know, the difference was, I, I wouldn't say it was negligible, but it was pretty damn slim between doing something in New Mexico or doing it in actually in Mexico because most of the processes were robotics, right? They're, they're, they don't require a huge amount of factory workers the way that factories used to. It requires certain level of competence in the people that are serving c robots. It requires logistics, understanding a few other things, none of which are cheap jobs overseas.

Ben: 22:24

Nope, that's exactly correct.

Gene: 22:26

once you start adding up those costs and knowing that the human cost is the single biggest factor yes, there's some fixed costs initially if you're building a factory from the ground up that you're gonna put in, but a lot of those are gonna be amortized over decades. And so once you start looking at the actual operating costs US really should be utilized for a hell, a lot more manufacturing than it currently is. And I think that right now on Tesla I'll here in literally three miles from me in their factory in, in Texas they're doing a bang up job of doing exactly that. They're using a hell lot of robotics and they're using people that, you know, are coming in there to both service robots and to ensure the process is moving along. Whatever can't be done by robots, done by people. But these are not like low page cheap labor. These are fairly high cost people and there's a huge demand for Tesla jobs. Like right now, remember the guy's name, but I talked to a guy that was getting ready to start working in Tesla, or he was putting together some stuff. And what he figured out is if you wanna work at Tesla, you first have to work at a company that manufacturers parts for the Tesla cars. And then it's much easier to apply to Tesla. It's almost like the, you've already passed that initial, you know, set of closed doors that you made it through, and now going from a supplier of parts of Tesla to Tesla is much faster process because there's like 10 people applying for every one job available.

Ben: 24:04

no, I was reading a paper, you know, I do a lot of work in the manufacturing space and, you know, it was, you know, you know the buzzword is Industry 4.0, right? The, the move. Manual labor. So the jobs that, like my, my, you know, grandpa when, you know, he retired, working the same job for 32 years, union, right? He worked in a plant, used his hands you know, and he worked, you know, nine to five and, you know, ba you know, didn't have, but didn't have any technical bait background. No, no, you know, no, you know, highly skilled like, you know, skill set, right? On technology or anything along those lines. But, but you know, as soon as, you know, that plant was in Ohio for up till about 2009, 2010 timeframe. And, and you know, has nothing to do with the the economic, you know, decline that happened during that time. But more so around during that time, that company made an investment in automating a lot of that. And so the job that 200 people once did now can get can get by with six or seven people running automated, you know, automation equipment. So these controls engineers, these six or seven controls engineers per shift replaced 200 people per shift. And the output increased you know, tenfold, right? They went from making three or four of these steel rolls an hour to making 10 an hour, right? So, Each one's 40, 50,$60,000. Right? We're talking millions of dollars gaining revenue daily just by automating all that. So, you know, I think that while we'll, and we're gonna continue to see that more and more industry, right? Like, as you mentioned, is, is moving towards that direction. But, you know, I, I, I think it was somewhere in the, the 300 million mark, almost 400 million people will be displaced by, by jobs or will be displaced by this technological advancement within the next, you know, decade or so. So I think it's up to 800 million by 20, I wanna say 20, 30 timeframe that people, that'll be affected by this shift. So when we talk about, you know, where do you place those manufacturing plants, right? At that point, you want them to be placed in, in regions or countries that have highly educated workforces, Right? Because the, the days of the menial and there's nothing wrong with that, right? Like obviously the, you know, working with your hands and, and all that is, is definitely an admired trade. But the days of being able to work in a factory right, and have a, and have a good living and being able to retire and have a pension, right? Those are, those are gonna be over very soon,

Gene: 26:43

Well, I don't think they're over. It's just that there's a lot fewer people that work in factories. Those people will still be able to have a decent living and retire. Just, you know, like you said, the, you're, you got a factory running with 60 people instead of 600.

Ben: 26:58

Well, and that brings up a good question. You know, where are those, you know, where are those you know, when you were growing up in the sixties and seventies, right? Not to say that you grew up in thes seventies, but gen in general, you know, where are those same people gonna go for, for employment in the future? Right? What does that look like now that we don't have all this from

Gene: 27:15

Well, they're all coders. What are you talking about? That's the new, that's the new blue collar job

Ben: 27:20

that that'll be auto, that'll be automated too. There's some, there's some very, there's some very advanced program in AI right now that where you can put in your idea for a code or, or a website even, right? Or even there's, there's AI that can do art. Now you, you give it a concept or an idea.

Gene: 27:38

I've heard about that.

Ben: 27:40

yeah. And, and so these, these, you know, these AI that they're creating can, can do a lot of that for you and automate all of that. For the most part. Right now, there's, there's definitely gonna be the, the QC that needs to be done by the human, but

Gene: 27:54

And I, I think that the, this question was like, Well, what are we gonna do with all the people was answered by the world economic quorum by saying, Well, we just need fewer people.

Ben: 28:05

Well, yeah. I That's one answer, right?

Gene: 28:06

And also nuclear war will help that

Ben: 28:09

yeah. If we, if we look at.

Gene: 28:12

it, it has a onet two punch, It reduces the population and it reduces the technological advancement level back to the 18 hundreds.

Ben: 28:20

It also reduces, you know, the footprint of where people can, can go for, for at least a time being. Right. Depending on where those are used. That's, I, that's why I've, you know, while I

Gene: 28:29

not that long. I think there's a little bit of an exaggeration on that too. And then, you know, they, they, they love pointing out that nuclear radiation leaves its mark for a long time. Fair enough. But, you know, I, I've been in God, I'm blanking out now in Hiroshima. In Hiroshima and There's no fricking radiation there. I was. I literally have my photo next to the building that's on the famous photographs of the observatory. You know, I'm not getting cancer as a result of standing there. And it, and when I was there, which was many years ago at that point it was only like 50 years since the bomb dropped.

Ben: 29:08

okay.

Gene: 29:08

So yes, there's immediate radiation danger for sure, but is it pervasive long term? Eh, you know, if you look at the bikini islands where the US did a lot of its tests right now. Humans are still banned or barred from the islands. There have been some news crews that have gotten down there to shoot documentaries, but all the wildlife, all the animals are there. And those were some large tests of nuclear weapons that we conducted there,

Ben: 29:36

I, I guess too, it also depends on what type of nuclear weapon is used, right? You know, we have the, we have a lot of the intelligence reports right now on the, the, the air quotes, right? The missing Russian sub that is carrying the what, what the news call it, the tsunami bomb

Gene: 29:52

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 29:52

the beside and I believe that's carrying a assaulted or cobalt assaulted weapon,

Gene: 29:57

Mm-hmm. sounds right?

Ben: 29:58

warhead is concerned, you know, in, in that term, right, What, what are the long term effects of utilizing weapon like that, right? In, in a, in either a populated area. So I guess that's a, it just depends on what type of delivery mechanism we see. Like, you know, on your last episode, right? You talked in, in regards to, you know, a dirty bomb, right? You know, if, if, you know, the, the Ukrainians were able to,

Gene: 30:24

scattering nuclear material. Yeah.

Ben: 30:26

If they were able to utilize the you know, the, the materials at you know, the plant that they have back and forth control over, right? what, what does that look like if, if that's used, you know, what are the long term effects and such? So, I don't know. It, it, it's definitely an interesting thing, but I think, you know, when, when.

Gene: 30:40

generational, but I don't think it's, let's put it this way, If there are some people that survive a nuclear holocaust by the time that five to 10 generations of Alaska, everybody that, that had damaged DNA will have died off. And the radiation levels, other than, and you know, some areas that were particularly concentrated will be low enough that the survivors can go on to expand back on the rest of the earth.

Ben: 31:10

Yeah. And, and you know, when you talk about the, the scale of a, of a potential nuclear war, you know, that, you know, how, how, how does that coincide with the population control argument? That that's why, you know, when, when you talk, you know, I see a lot of those posts on like Reddit and such where the people talk about, you know, if, if the global elites, so to speak, right. Quotation marks, again, wanted to thin the population or thin to herd, so to speak. You know, nuclear war is probably the least likely option that they would utilize. Right. There's, there's better mechanisms.

Gene: 31:41

not the preferred option unless you are not really concerned about your own future. Which is to say, I think people in their seventies and eighties are a lot more likely to use the nuclear option than people in their forties, fifties.

Ben: 31:56

So you're saying that the politic, the current politicians,

Gene: 31:59

They won't have to deal with it for very long at all. So it becomes less of an issue. I, I've even found myself just thinking that as well as like, you know, maybe it's time, maybe it's time for a really big reset because the way things are going, I don't know that it's gonna be good for society. Maybe society needs to reset.

Ben: 32:18

Is that every time we get an electric bill in the mail, so

Gene: 32:21

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. It's I think that, that the concerns that are portrayed by the you know, more of the folks we hang out with, where it's like, yeah, they just wanna reduce the population. They, they're very black and white, very shallow perspectives because, While you may disagree with this idea that the elites have of reducing the population, you have to understand that they're not complete idiots either. They're not they're not driven by some, you know, cartoon devil sitting on their shoulder that's that's whispering to them. Yeah. Yeah. Get rid of all those people. So there is a lot more thought that goes into how do we maintain power and prosperity? Well, one of the things to do that is involves controlling the population size. You can't, you can't let something that has a finite amount of resources, such as the Earth be allowed to get to a point where the population growth is so large that it, it, it makes the possibility of utilizing those resources a short term prospect.

Ben: 33:38

Yeah, I, I think that you, you, you know, you hit a good point. One, you know, a lot of, a lot of folks that spout the, the global elite agenda, right. In regards to that. They, they oftentimes, when you, you know, a lot of people don't consider the fact that at the end of the day, everyone has one or two items that, you know, they hold closest, one being self-preservation, right? So, and, and then the second one being comfort. You know, I, you know, I, I think people take that, that concept of comfort far too for granted. And then the desire to maintain one's comfort Right, Like your routine, the, the normalcy of, of things. I, I think people that when you look at, or or, or when people cons, you know, theorize or conspiracy wise around, oh, well the global just wanna wipe, you know, that's something that at the end of the day,

Gene: 34:26

it's Maslow's hierarchy. So the very basic core, and what happens immediately in any disaster situation is you worry about basic needs, water, shelter, food.

Ben: 34:38

ammo,

Gene: 34:39

Yeah. Then the next one is once you cover those is safety. That's where the ammo part comes in is you need to ensure that there you have safety. And when you have those, then you start thinking about social needs like happiness, like, you know, having in an environment that allows you to sleep enough to, to not be constantly stressed out. And then, so including things like now you don't just want food, you want specific food, you want specific things. And then you go to steam needs. And these are things that are purely driven by your, your it, you know, it's the things that you want, not necessarily the things you need, but you think of them as needs because all your actual needs are completely. And so whatever falls down from the next level feels like it's a need, even though it's far from back when you just needed safety. You weren't thinking about the brand of potato chip that you wanted to buy, or the, you know, the, you want soy milk or cashew milk. No, you're worried about getting enough calories and getting enough liquid to not die. So all these things, when you, when you look at the elites, you have to understand that they're coming from a very different perspective than what people that are, you know, constantly on the lookout for elites and, and are worried about'em, are thinking they're, they're not cartoon villains. As much as I, I think it's hilarious and sad at the same time that Hillary has a, a bigger death list than most gangsters in this country. Because I do believe that the Clinton's had a, a hand in all this stuff. But I also understand if you look at the history of where Hillary came from, you could see the path that brought her to exactly where she is.

Ben: 36:26

Well, yeah, it's, it's pretty evident.

Gene: 36:27

When she was a teenager, she was pestering for Nixon.

Ben: 36:31

Yeah, very true. You know, one of the things that I found interesting that, that is, all of this is, you know, one of my other side I guess hustle right? Is I sit on a board of directors for a a gun range and a store and have ownership of it. And during Covid when, when Covid was first happening, we while most businesses were shuttering or trying to find ways to be innovative, we had some of the best months we've ever had from a sales perspective, right? And, and, and it wasn't, you know, you, you know, you got the everyday Joe Schmo, right? Coming in and buying, you know, their first gun or exploring, you know, Oh, I gotta protect my home. And, you know, you hear all these things about looters and riots and such. But the, the real interesting thing was we had, you know, individuals coming into our store who were either influential in the community, who had, were, were, were always, have, always been opposed to, to firearms or that industry as a whole. We had folks coming in that were, you know, businessmen owning, you know, either owners or, you know, executive levels coming in and, and they. You know, when, when, when you look at what they're purchasing versus what everyone else, it's, it's the bulk aspect of it, right? And so it's like one of those, you know, that self-preservation when, when, at the end of the day, when, when, you know, when, when stuff starts hitting the fan proverbially, right? Everyone's gonna have that same mindset. I gotta protect myself, my family my, my assets my, you know, I gotta ensure my livelihood going forward, you know, or at least trying to maintain as close as possible. But to your point, right, that's, it's, it's definitely an interesting concept and, and I think back to the, the earlier discussion about like nuclear war, right? You have to take that mindset and you have to take, look at from the macro perspective too, you know, at the, at the end of the day, right, The, at least we hope the, the folks that are running the, the running, the government agencies and such have that mindset as well before they push any, any buttons or, and, and, and on the other side as well, right? You know, everyone makes Russia out to be this, you know, Maleficent type, you know, organization or, you know, organization or, but at the end of the day, you know, they're, they're looking out for the best interest of their fo their people as well. And, and you know, as much as some people have bad say things about Putin, and, and, you know, obviously I'm not advocating for Putin, but at the end of the day, he's, he's looking out for his family as well, which is, which is, you know, as much as anyone could do.

Gene: 38:52

And it's absolutely right. And that's, Putin is absolutely a Russian patriot. And I've said this many times is he's a moderate, when it comes to Russian politics there are people that are way more hardlined than he is. So in terms of where he stands by American standards, he'd be kind of like, maybe Clinton,

Ben: 39:15

I would say he probably has the same body count too.

Gene: 39:17

as Clinton. Yeah. I don't know, maybe, but he's, I, I would hope higher because he actually worked for the kgb, but maybe not, maybe not. Maybe Clinton's there if there as well.

Ben: 39:27

well, it depends on how many, how many of those body counts you actually think are attributed to Clinton or not

Gene: 39:31

yeah, Yeah. But he is, his popularity has only gone up in, in Russia with what's happening right now because this is absolutely in Russia perceived as a, a war for survival, a war for the Russian, a ethnic kind of spirit. It's, it's the, the idea that we're doing our own thing here. We're, you know, recreating ourselves. We've shed off communism, which allegedly was the thing that NATO was created to fight is the communist menace. And yet this uber militaristic country that is the sole superpower at this point, keeps bringing their troops closer and closer to us every year. And I think when Ukraine flipped, it was absolutely zero surprise to anybody that that move was motivated by the CIA and the State Department. This was not a event that happened in the vacuum. This was a government overthrow. Now, which is the same thing as a revolution. It depends on which side news you're watching or listening to. But the side that got elected initially and then got deposed calls it an overthrow. The side that's doing it calls it a revolution, but in the end it's replacing an elected leader with an unelected leader and then solidifying the power of the new administration with international aid and help. So it's really, it's not an unusual event. It's not that far from what the US did in the US Revolution when we decided to say, Screw you uk, we're not gonna send you tax money back. And then quickly got the help of France to help us secure our newfound freedom. And obviously plenty of'em Americans died in the Revolutionary War, but you know, France saw the US now as the enemy of Miami and somebody that they can help as well. So it's totally makes sense that the West wants to help create turmoil with any other large countries out there, anybody who's growing, because any growing country is a threat to US power. And we've seen that in the Middle East. Where we've seen that with Russia and we've started seeing it more and more with China. What do all these countries have in common is that they were advancing very rapidly towards a greater role in the in the world stage.

Ben: 42:14

Yeah, I, anytime I hear, you know, folks talking about, you know, Russia this, or Russia that, or, you know, I, I can't believe Russia's doing this in Ukraine right now. I, I, I, I like to use an analogy with them. I, I say, Okay, imagine the US today and imagine China. Put silos all around the US borders in Canada and Mexico. Imagine China decides that they wanna occupy or put bases in Mexico, in Canada. Right? Right. You know, right next to our borders. Let's say China starts talking to our out, you know, our bordering states to Canada and Mexico and saying, Hey, you know, we, we'd love for you to, you know, how would we react as a country to, to China doing that to, to us, right? So you, you put yourself in Russia's shoes, right? You're, you're a country who's one very proud of their heritage. You know, they have a, a very fantastic and rich heritage. You know, if you look past the political economic categories that Russia's fallen under in the last, you know, a hundred years or so, and, and you look at specifically just culture and the people you know, and, and I think we miss that as a, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of people don't look at Russia as a culture and a people,

Gene: 43:28

Russia as a country has been around for a thousand years.

Ben: 43:32

right?

Gene: 43:33

The city of St. Petersburg just celebrated their 300th birthday. So just, you know, one of the major cities in Russia is older than the us.

Ben: 43:43

Yeah. Just one.

Gene: 43:45

it, it's and, and really moscow's even older than that, St. Petersburg was a manmade city. It was a city much like Washington DC that was designed on maps first and then built to copy the maps. And it was built as in sort of a inspiration from Amsterdam. Because much like Amsterdam, it's a city with canals. And so there's a lot of bridges and it's built on Delta, but it also, you know, the, the, the people cost was very high to build it because it was built using surf labor. And surfs don't have a whole lot of value. It's good to have live surfs rather than dead surfs. But if a surf die, So be it. And so I, the numbers are speculated anywhere from 20,000 to several hundred thousand people died in the building of St. Petersburg. And mostly in the winter, you know, freezing to death because the the, the way the city was built was essentially every winter for a number of years, once the ice freezes over, they would haul sand and rocks on slaves, horse lays across the ice and then dump it in order to build enough of a foundation to build the city on.

Ben: 45:02

Hm

Gene: 45:02

Cuz much like most deltas like New Orleans, you know, it's a, they're basically swamps until you start building there. But either way I, I can get pulled into a variety of topics. You started talking about guns. I wanna talk more about that cuz I've been talking about like, I've got almost every show, a new gun that I mentioned and you said you'd bought some new guns. What do you got?

Ben: 45:22

So I picked up a Chris Vector recently. It's a nine millimeter so it's got the,

Gene: 45:27

Good video game gun.

Ben: 45:28

It, you know, you know, I, I have a couple nine millimeters same, same form factor as the Chris Vector. I have like a sig sour mpx and nine millimeter. I'm a, I have a collision of cough KP nine in nine millimeter as well, which is a similar form factor as well. More, more AK style. But, you know, I've I've always been a big fan of that one that that round the nine millimeter. And then I, I, like, I liked the Crisp vector. I went to my range a couple times and we had a, a model on display that I wanted to try out. So I, I got to shoot it next to my, my sig. And I liked the balance that it had. The getting used to the controls and the mechanisms was a little bit strange. But once I got my site lined up which, you know, I know you guys have talked about Hoon in the past, but I been using Hoon for a number of years. Never had problems with them. Wouldn't use it for my,

Gene: 46:21

They're, they're all gonna turn off as soon as the US is in the conflict.

Ben: 46:25

Right.

Gene: 46:25

By China.

Ben: 46:26

yeah, but no, but I, you know, I, I've used it.

Gene: 46:29

I think they're fine. I, the, the only issue is just who they're owned by. It's not really quality related. It's, it's more of a who the ownership is for that company.

Ben: 46:38

yeah, no, I 90% of the things we buy anyways are made in China. So, I, I figure, I figure what's, what's my reign, what's my site gonna impact? But no, I do, I do have other sites I use, but generally for like range purposes, indoor range, I use a hall sun. But so I got a nice hall sun on it and no, it just done really well. And then I, you know, I have a a couple suppressors. And so I was able, my put my, you know, I'm able to throw my suppressor on there pretty easily with the sig unfortunately, you had to buy some configuration change some configuration modifications to to get that to, to thread correctly. But but yeah, no, I'm, but like, you know, I have a, the suppressor I use majority of the time, I can, I can easily switch it between my, my Crisp Vector or my, my sig or even one of my ars that I, that I utilize. So, I have a couple

Gene: 47:23

Well, the, the vector's an interesting gun design with the, the it, it's a more modern design for people that don't know it. I'm sure if you see a picture you probably recognize if you've played video games at all, they usually appear in video games. don't know any professional militaries that utilize them, but they're, they're meant to counter muzzle rise by having the recoil actually go at an angle the the, the recall weight in the gun. Have you noticed that? Does it, does it shoot flatter than your cig.

Ben: 47:56

Yeah. So if I, if I'm using you know, I can, I'd say with, with using my suppressor with that, I'm getting a lot less uplift than I normally get. And I will say that with, in shooting without, definitely, you know, by far I'm, I'm not getting hardly any recoil. I'm not getting any of that lift at the end of, you know, at the end of, you know, a magazine, you know, that you typically get. So I, I'm pretty impressed with it so far. I know when I was doing my research on, Cause I research, and again, I purchased pretty thoroughly before I, I, I, you know, I make that investment and I've made purchases that aren't that way, but for the most part I like to, to do a little research. But you know, I

Gene: 48:31

you'll sell your guns, Right? You, you don't like buy a gun and keep it forever.

Ben: 48:35

you know, so, so the weird, So I get being in the, in the position I am, I used to sell guns, but after I invested in and, and bought into that and joined the board on, on the current range that I'm part of, I, I haven't sold any guns privately.

Gene: 48:49

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 48:50

mostly being that I get the guns at cost, so, Typically I'm not paying the full retail for

Gene: 48:57

Right, right,

Ben: 48:57

Yeah. So, so I, I don't have to be as conservative on that aspect. And I, I, by nature for, for guns and other certain hobbies, I tend to hoard them. So I don't, I like to keep ahold of things. But but

Gene: 49:10

Yeah, I just, I don't know. I, I, I've been buying like a gun a week lately, but it's, I don't necessarily wanna keep'em all, I'm mostly just buying'em to test them out.

Ben: 49:19

they make ranges for that too,

Gene: 49:21

I know, but, you know, I've got a buddy with a ranch that I just go out and shoot at in Tucker Max. And then so I don't, I, I guess I could go to a range. I dunno, but it, but it's, I, I think there's, like, I just, I want to keep the gun that I like the way it shoots. And I, I have no emotional attachment to a gun that I've shot and go, Nah, not for me. And I just, you know, I don't mind putting up for sale. Some people never want to sell a gun cuz they don't want to go through the hassle. Other people never wanna buy a gun in a rain or at a store because they don't want to go through a background check. I, I had my fingerprints and background done so many times. I really do not care at all.

Ben: 50:09

Yeah. Unless you have a name that's like, not unless you have a very common name. The background check process anymore has been pretty quick. It's not as like, I know, I know during the pandemic, you know, you probably wait a day or two unless you, you know, in some states, like in Ohio for instance and it's, it's at the discretion of the, of the, of the you know, ffl that you're using. But if you, as long as you have a ccw concealed carry permit or concealed weapons permit, you can usually walk away with it same day, even if your background check has not come through.

Gene: 50:36

Yeah.

Ben: 50:36

Cuz the assumption is that if you have one and the local sheriff's department hasn't taken it from you, that you're a legal law abiding citizen.

Gene: 50:44

yeah. And here it's even, I was just talking to a buddy on the West coast who's, you know, having to wait a week for his freaking guns. He just bought the new Rattler, Or not? Yeah, not the Rattler, the, the new one just came out. You just picked one up sig Is it the Rattler,

Ben: 51:00

yeah. Sig Sig makes the Rattler, they make the Rattler and

Gene: 51:02

the one that just came out? It's something light. It's got the word light in it.

Ben: 51:06

I'm trying to remember the name off the top of my head. It'll come to me, but no, I'm trying to think. It's gonna bother me. The sbr, maybe they had an mcx for a while.

Gene: 51:16

Well, either way I'll, I'll, I'll look it up here. I'll just go to Sig. But yeah, here in Texas where I'm at, the process is super fast. I walk into the store, they walk back to their warehouse to grab my gun. I punch in the data on the computer. They bring the gout, the gun out and ring it up, and just as they're ringing it up, they get the A. Okay. So it's literally five minutes

Ben: 51:42

Yeah, there's, there's talks

Gene: 51:43

and there's no reason it shouldn't be like that everywhere.

Ben: 51:46

yeah. And, and there's talks too. And you know, you know, you look at like the tsa and, and this is a, you know, pivot a little bit, but you look at the TSA and how they do, you know, boarding and, you know, you go through the checks and all that. So they have a, you know, program, you know, you can be pre TSA check, right? So you can get the t what they call that TSA

Gene: 52:03

pre

Ben: 52:04

Yeah. Well, so there's a, a concept that's being, I, I've seen it on quite a few rumblings where you will, you can get almost a pre-qualification where you, you know, annually you'd have to go through you know, rigorous background checks, you know, all of that. But then you would have a way or a means to not avoid weights for those. There's also a number you can get to with the ATF, where it can fast track a lot of that.

Gene: 52:29

Well, I think that's mostly useful if you have one of those names that a lot of criminals.

Ben: 52:35

Yeah, no, exactly. But, but you know, the, like, you know, you know the big argument that we see that from folks that are stringent on background checks and such as you. Yeah, it's really, it's really not that difficult of a process. Private sales are still pretty, pretty common, right? You see folks that'll just sell'em on like gun broker or one of those websites. But you know, for the most part, we, we don't have a lot of problems with background checks. If you're if you're, as long as you're, you know, not, not, don't have any pending felonies or, you know, domestic abuse or anything like that, right? You're, you're, you're usually pretty good to go. It's not not, not a tough process, but yeah. I, I digress.

Gene: 53:13

Yeah. No, it, it, it should go pretty quick. There's no reason to for it to take long and this, the whole, you know, waiting delay bullshit is just that. It's just bullshit.

Ben: 53:25

Well, I will say my, the tax stamp that, that was about 11 months when I, when I was waiting

Gene: 53:29

Yeah. And it shouldn't be. That should be just as fast. You punch in your info, you pay your money. Boom, you're done.

Ben: 53:35

Yeah. And, and that's why, so I, you know, I have two currently, but the reason why I purchased the, my most recent one so I picked up the the Optimist Griffin. It's you can configure, it comes with different configurations. So you can put on like a nine millimeter short config a two config that you can use for like, like flash comp there's a midsize config and then a full

Gene: 53:56

Oh, it's a spear. Spear lt. That's what, that's the one you just

Ben: 53:59

you can shoot, you can shoot rifle, rifle calibers up to 300 wm. You can, you know, 3 0 8 Winchester. I can put it on my, my ar that shoots 5 56 or you know, I, I can put it on my nine millimeter. It has a, has a modification for that. I can put it on my 22. So, so that's why, one of the reasons why I got that was cause I figured, you know,

Gene: 54:17

So, which, which one did you get? What

Ben: 54:19

the, the Griffin Optimist, so yeah, and it comes with different configurations and it runs about a, runs about a, about a K or so, so about a thousand or so. But it was well worth the investment. They had a, I've

Gene: 54:31

Is that a baffle one or, or a ducted one?

Ben: 54:34

baffle.

Gene: 54:34

It is baffle. Okay. I've been really tempted to get one of the abducted ones.

Ben: 54:39

Really, What, what would you, what do you see the the benefits there being?

Gene: 54:42

It's cleaner. There's nothing to replace There's nothing to do there. It's it, if you, it won't blow up if you shoot it coming out of water.

Ben: 54:53

I've, I've gotten mine wet before and I don't think I've had any problems with that. But I'm trying to think. I, yeah, I'd have to do more research on that one

Gene: 55:02

Yeah, I, I think it's, it's a neat idea. It's basically just variable diameter, really long vents. So if you look at the thing cut in half, it basically looks like a you know, like an oil filter with paths to go forward, then loop back in towards the back, then change direction again, go forward again, then back again, and forward again, and finally come out of the weapon. So it's, it's, it's able to compress that full stack of air, which is probably about three feet long in front of it while continuously moving that air along. So there, there isn't differences in pressure the way there are in the baffle system in that thing. There's just one continuous gradient of pressure from start to finish.

Ben: 55:48

interesting. Yeah, so I'm reading up on that. It looks so Sigma's. Quite a few of these from what I remember. Yeah, cuz I've seen a couple in our shop,

Gene: 55:56

there, there's, they usually started a thousand and go up from there, which is probably the biggest reason people don't buy'em nearly as much as baffles. And I think the, the idea that you can't really clean'em the way you clean baffles maybe makes people think that baffles are the way to go. But And I haven't pulled the trigger, but I am kinda leaning towards picking one of those up.

Ben: 56:16

Well, you know, what they say about, you know, what they say about suppressors. If you're thinking about picking one up, pick one up now and then, or buy it now, you know, pay for the tax stamp and then put it on layaway until you, until you get your tax stamp back. So

Gene: 56:28

Yeah. Yeah. I guess, the other thing is in Texas here, we've got lawsuits with ATF about Texas, Texas manufactured suppressors not being within their purview,

Ben: 56:40

really

Gene: 56:41

that might be another way to go. Yeah. If you haven't do Google search on that, if you get a chance. Basically, Texas has passed legislation that says that people are entitled to make suppressors as long as it's manufactured and sold in Texas, then it doesn't have to go through any ATF stuff.

Ben: 56:56

Well, I at the end of the day though, the, what the ATF does in general is, is illegal.

Gene: 57:01

Yeah, absolutely. Like

Ben: 57:02

a, a government agency making decision make basically writing law.

Gene: 57:07

They can't make

Ben: 57:08

Yeah. It's, it's like the whole argument about health insurance practicing medicine, right.

Gene: 57:12

yep.

Ben: 57:14

it's

Gene: 57:14

Which they absolutely do. Unless you just decide to just pay outta pocket. But the problem with paying out of pocket for medical insurance stuff or medical procedures is the, the prices are artificially inflated in order for the, the negotiated rates that the insurance pay. To look like they're just a small percentage of the initial claim. But you know, when they charge you$5,000 a day to be in a hospital, nobody's gonna ever make five grand off of that because the negotiated rate with the insurance company is like a thousand bucks a day. But if you're paying that bill out of pocket without insurance, they're gonna want five grand from you. And that's the part that's really just sleazy. It's this idea that large for-profit corporations, the insurance companies are getting charged less for the exact same procedures than somebody that wants to just pay immediately out of pocket. That's just bullshit.

Ben: 58:16

Yeah, one, my, one of my good friends who just moved some, moved to, it was probably within the last two, two years he moved to Germany and he had to get his he get his gallbladder taken out, cost him$1,900.

Gene: 58:27

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 58:28

in the US you, you go bankrupt,

Gene: 58:31

19,000 just to start with.

Ben: 58:33

Yeah, yeah. No, but just the, but you know, it's the, it's the huge difference between the different models. Right? Now, obviously I'm not an advocate for, for universal healthcare or anything like that, but

Gene: 58:44

Fuck this capitalism. Bullshit man. Socialism's the way to go.

Ben: 58:48

at, but at the same time, the, you know, our, our, our health system is, is definitely very similar to the ATF has kind of run wild for the last for lack,

Gene: 58:57

It, This is what happens with monopolies. And you know, I'm a, a gamer guy, so, I just started playing the, what is it called? Cyberpunk 2077.

Ben: 59:09

Okay.

Gene: 59:10

It came out like a year ago, but it was full of bugs. And the advice that all the YouTubers were giving is like, it's not ready yet. Give it some time. Don't bother trying to buy it right now or play it right now. You're only gonna be disappointed. So I took that advice and waited a year, but because of that, it kind of got me all re invigorated on the whole cyberpunk thing. So I started doing more reading and more watching of stuff. And I think that, you know, I've, ever since I was a, a teenager, I've been reading books on this topic, Science fiction books books in that cyber prong genre that, that, that all have this commonality of a a government that is huge and overreaching, combined with partnerships with private industries, which are companies too big to fail and again, are overreaching this fear, I think it's the best way to call it, has been expressed by science fiction writers and readers for easily 40, 50 years. But I think we're truly recognizing that we are in that state right now where companies like Chase Bank can kick out a guy who is, if not a billionaire, certainly a multimillionaire, and say, Yeah, we don't like the statements that you're making. We don't like what comes outta your mouth, so fuck you and your money. We're not gonna do any business with you. Kanye West got his accounts shut down from Chase Bank

Ben: 1:00:39

Oh, because of, No. Yeah. I

Gene: 1:00:42

now, they don't have to like him. But at the same time, you know, the customer was king for like a good several hundred years. That was the mantra of business, That was the mantra of free enterprise. What we have in this country right now even though we keep talking about the Russian oligarchs, but what we have in this country right now is a much more corrupt, large corporate structure or environment for those structures than we've ever had. And I think at this point it's, it's definitely bigger and worse than Russia. We have companies that have their grubby fingers in everything. Look at Google. What does Google not have their hands in?

Ben: 1:01:25

yeah. They have all of our data. They have and you

Gene: 1:01:27

they're the ones that are de platforming guys that speak against them like Alex Jones

Ben: 1:01:33

Yeah. I mean

Gene: 1:01:34

amongst others.

Ben: 1:01:35

Well, amongst, yeah, amongst others. But you know, you look at. You make a very valid point. You know, you look at the, the Russian oligarchs that control, you know, large, the large oil monopolies and, and you know, mining our facilities for mining and such. And you look at the us you know, our companies are our, you know, our Bezos, our, you

Gene: 1:01:53

They have company stores due to, you know, when I, last time I was visiting a friend who works at Facebook, it's like when you're walking into Facebook, it is the embodiment of what I imagined Detroit was like in the 1950s and sixties where everything owned by the company. Everything is provided to the employees through the company. So we're not just talking about, you know, company health insurance, but like, you need to buy stuff. You buy it through the company or the company gives it to you and if they don't give it to you, you get a discount when you get it directly through them. The food they had this is, mind you, this is one of their buildings, but they had three different restaurants with easily what would be a$50 lunch that was just free to all employees that work in that building and guests. So I got a free lunch out of it too. But it was kinda like, this is insane the amount of both money being spent on kind of keeping their employees aligned with the company, but also. The amount of money that's being made by these companies to allow them to do something like this. And the way they're doing it is by constantly finding new ways to get our information, frankly, and then make money off it by selling it to somebody else, or selling products directly to us, or buying companies that we happen to be customers of so that we become their customers.

Ben: 1:03:23

You look at, you look at movies like are you familiar with the movie Legum? With with Matt Damon? Yeah. You look at movies like that. I The, the world is be becomes a basically a giant factory for these global elites who live in this ring right outside the you know, they live on this basically space station.

Gene: 1:03:39

Yeah. But that's also why you need to control the population.

Ben: 1:03:42

Right, exactly. And then you there, you know, there's other movies that've had that same premise. I believe there was one called Incorporated. It was more like sci-fi based, but that also had Matt Damon, Matt Damon really likes that whole cyber punk future theme, I guess. But you know, it has that dystopian future, right? Where corporations rule the world that, you know, if you work for a corporation, the higher up the chain and the ladder, yet the corporation directly correlates to the class you are in. Right? Or if you're, if you don't work for a corporation, you're, you live in a slum, right? So it's a, and

Gene: 1:04:11

Yeah. It's, it's the destruction of the middle class and. Where you have essentially only the upper classes and the surfs. And if you're not in the upper class, well, you're a surf, whether you know it or not.

Ben: 1:04:26

You know, I could, and you know, I think we're closer to that future than, than any other future

Gene: 1:04:31

Oh, absolutely. I I, I totally agree. And that's, like I said, after kind of getting sucked more into this black hole of cyberpunk and watching some of these videos. Like one, the, I watched a documentary about it just recently, which was great. I definitely will post a link to that in, Actually, I'll post it in this episode too, but I'll post it at No Gen, The Social. But there's a lot of movies that have been made over the years that portray a future, and like movies made in the seventies, eighties, nineties, that portray a future where the corporations basically are more important than governments. They're the ones actually running things. And the, the job of the government is essentially to keep the people being the corporations

Ben: 1:05:16

Right

Gene: 1:05:17

In, in, in a nutshell.

Ben: 1:05:18

me to be a devil's advocate here? You know, when you look at, you know, obviously those movies oftentimes portray being in a, in a very villainous way. But realistically, you know, and this is being devil's advocate, right? I'm not saying this is something I support in any matter, but realist, you know, if you, if at the core of it, right, government governments have always failed no matter, you know, their, their success rate, you know, you know, us has it's lifespan, you know, however long that might be after this, right? And whatever form that may take, whether it be a civil war otherwise. But corporations are for-profit entities in the, for the most part, right? So they have every f you know, how, how bad realistically would a, what a role be run by corporations where you know, you, you'd have that security of, you know, profit. Oh, go

Gene: 1:06:14

and obviously I'm, I'm, you know, been a capitalist my whole life and believe in that. But I think that there's a distinction here in why, why governments exist. And a corporations main government governing tenant is the profitability for the owners, stockholders, or single owner, or whoever the owners are. So any action that the corporation does has to be measured by will this increase or decrease profitability? now beyond that, you have other factors to view. But there are lesser factors than the profitability. And those factors are things like risk factor. Am I increasing the risk factor for the sustainability and survival of the company by doing something, even if it's profitable. And then you have to balance one against the other. But nowhere does the idea of altruism come into play with a corporation, with a a set of tenants like the us government established at its creation. The, the freedom of speech, is that profitable to anyone?

Ben: 1:07:22

Well, and that's the thing too, you know, I, I just, I just went through HR training recently,

Gene: 1:07:27

No. I, I'm sorry. I feel bad for you.

Ben: 1:07:29

No, it was, it was, it was interesting to say at least, it's definitely changed a lot since I last took an HR training. But one of the things that it, it, it specifically said was freedom of speech is while recognized you know, as being a government given writer, you know, it was interesting it said government given, right? It is not a right that, you know, corporations have to realize. Right. So you, and, and it even applies outside of the work, right? So what you post on Twitter, what you post on LinkedIn, what you post, you know, in a podcast for example it is not, you know, if you associate yourself or it can be associated to you where you work and you say something that the company doesn't like, they have every right to take action against that, Right? Which,

Gene: 1:08:11

The, which is absolutely true and, and it un underlines my point, which is that there may be things that are preferable for us as a society, which are not preferable for us as a corporation. And free speech is a good example of that. The Second Amendment is a good example of that because as a corporation, you absolutely do not want all your employees to bear arms while they're working for you. You will, you will select and designate certain employees security to do that job, but you don't want all your employees doing it for multiple reasons. One is very simple, which is accident prevention. You don't want people having any chance of accidents, and if they don't have the guns with them, they don't have gun accidents.

Ben: 1:09:03

lower insurance.

Gene: 1:09:04

But in, but that's lower insurance because of the lower risk. So if you're a big enough company, you're not buying insurance, you're self-insuring. So it's really reducing risk and potential loss for you as a society, as a country. You want to ensure that all citizens have certain rights, including the right to, to self-defense, the right to be armed, the right to be able to utilize those arms. So there are country, you know, drivers here for a corporation versus a a country. If I'm, if I own a corporation and I'm a gun guy and I tell my employees, Hey, feel free to bring your guns to work cuz we believe in that shit. What I'm doing is I am accepting a risk that is contrary to the principles of maximizing profitability and reducing risk to the corporation. So I'm doing it in spite of what's good for the company, not because it's good for the company. So I think it's, that's the danger that lies, and again, coming from somebody who's very much capitalist, but that's the danger that lies in letting the ization of America keep moving forward, which it's absolutely been doing. The other factor that you have to keep in mind with companies is you, the point of company, obviously, again, is to be profitable to make money. Part of what helps you make money and ensures your profitability is the elimination of competition. So, A company that has reached the pinnacle of its ability to be profitable, has killed off all competitors either acquired them or disrupted their business enough that they are no longer competitors.

Ben: 1:10:54

So then you run into saturation.

Gene: 1:10:55

So you, you end up with all mono companies. So you have one company in each sector and no competition between those. And then what ends up eventually happening naturally from that is a consolidation of those companies to where you start having these multinational companies like BlackRock that literally own full stack sourcing to distribution, to production, to manufacturing, to sales to, you know, insurance

Ben: 1:11:30

Yeah.

Gene: 1:11:31

to housing markets. It's like they literally own every piece we, like, we joke about everything you buy is made in China. Well, everything that you buy, you buy from a company old by Black Rock, doesn't matter what it's cause they, they own the piece of everything.

Ben: 1:11:48

Yeah, I think there's what only about four or five actual companies that rub pretty much run everything. There's a, there's a good graphic that I was looking at the other day, and it shows, for instance, like the food, the food industry as a

Gene: 1:12:01

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:12:02

you know, the fast food train chains out there, you know, you're Taco Bell versus your McDonald's Yum. Brands, right? So they're

Gene: 1:12:09

Yeah, exactly. It's all the same company. Yeah.

Ben: 1:12:12

they're all coming outta the same tubes. They're just being put in different molds. From a shape perspective, and I'm talking about the meat

Gene: 1:12:18

Yeah. And that's, and that's because that's what's efficient, That's what helps drive profitability is if you're constantly having to deal with a competitor, a much better thing to do would be to collude with the competitor or just for them to acquire you, or yolk to acquire them.

Ben: 1:12:34

or if you can control the entire supply

Gene: 1:12:36

and you can maintain the brands so that people have the appearance of competition, but in the end, all the money is going up the same chain. Yeah. And that this is not good for the consumer. It's not good for the individual. And that's where we need to ensure the rights of individuals, not of groups. Groups should have no rights. That that is a concept that that is flawed. There should not be such thing as group rates. Only individuals should have rights.

Ben: 1:13:05

Yep. And there's there's 11 companies that control pretty much everything consumers purchase at this point. I think it's like Nestle Craft, Johnson Johnson Mandels General Mills, Mars, Kellogg, Pepsi Co. Unilever, Coca-Cola, p g, So and they,

Gene: 1:13:22

and I, I've worked for five of those.

Ben: 1:13:25

that, that's But yeah, I and if you look at the acquisition, so I, I'm looking at a chart here that shows recent acquisitions. They, they do, they, you know, anything supply chain related, so downstream that can make something more efficiently just purchase the

Gene: 1:13:37

Yeah. Yeah. And it, that's the right move for them. You know? There's nothing inherently, and that's why, kind of tying back to the beginning of our conversation, this is the problem I think with a lot of conservatives, libertarians, thoughts on this idea of the elites, is they're thinking these elites are just evil. They're not evil. They're doing what they should be doing in order to maximize their comfort, their finances, and their business success.

Ben: 1:14:09

Yeah, one of my good friends told me there's no such thing as evil. It, there's only such thing as making your shareholders happy. So

Gene: 1:14:15

Yeah. And that's, that's exactly right. And the shareholders and this is the other part, is that the, a largest reason why these companies have been allowed to get as big as they have, why they're so little competition is because everybody keeps their money in mutual fucking funds.

Ben: 1:14:32

401ks,

Gene: 1:14:33

Yeah. This is the problem. This is what's created these mega corpses. Back when people had to keep their money in a bank or they made individual investment choices decisions, there was no opportunity for somebody to come along. And be able to make billion dollar plus investments on the whim. You know, the decisions of who gets the aggregate of all the money, of all the people that all have it in the same fund as you, is literally done by a handful of guys. If you watch the show Billions, and I know it's totally fictional, but it gives you a little bit of a sense of just how little you should really rely on these folks to make you money.

Ben: 1:15:14

Well, it also, you know, that's a that's a great show to reference the fact that when, when you mentioned the, you know, the, the evil aspect, you know, the, the main character in that, in that show, you know, are his actions. Would you consider those evil or would you

Gene: 1:15:29

No, not at

Ben: 1:15:30

No. Yeah, cuz his end goal, whether he, you know, is screwing over another company by purchasing them or, or you know, cutting them out or even, you know, shore selling them, you know, at the end while he's impacting their lives. Right. And making, you know, either banking erupting them as a company, you know, in their eyes that could be perceived as, you know, Ill contended or what you would say would be evil Right. Quotation marks. But at the end of the day, it's just business. Right? He's,

Gene: 1:15:58

E exactly. It is just business and in the end the, the best course of action that you can do is just to grow big enough that it makes it harder for companies like his to disrupt you. So companies typically make good decision. For themselves in a vacuum. The aggregate of all those decisions made in a vacuum that's good for the individual companies creates an atmosphere that's bad for all the consumers and employees.

Ben: 1:16:29

yeah. So you know, and that ties into the main problem or one of the, I think, main problems currently in government, which is super pacs and pacs in general. Right. So, most of the

Gene: 1:16:42

Yeah, that's a, that's a tough one because putting limits on who you can give money to really empathizes the fact that you are a slave and not a Freeman.

Ben: 1:16:52

Right. No, I think that's to that exact point. Right. But it also shows that the, the true independence from government as a, as an entity and corporations as entities, that they're very fine in line. You mentioned BlackRock earlier, right? How many, how many BlackRock executives have served as Secretary of Treasuries or in the secretary or in treasury, or as some type of financial advisor in, in a government capacity, and then gone right back to BlackRock after they served their, serve, their term,

Gene: 1:17:21

Yeah. And again, these people are all doing what is the most optimal course of action for themselves.

Ben: 1:17:27

the self-preservation

Gene: 1:17:28

you can't, you can't fault somebody for taking a job that makes the most sense to take, you know, it, it's, it's not corruption. In the sense that they're, they're keeping somebody else out. Everybody is making the right decision for themselves. If you are starting up a new administration and you want to have the most impact on business, would you rather hire somebody that was a university professor or somebody that's on the board? Directors of BlackRock?

Ben: 1:17:58

Yeah. It's the whole premise behind the private versus public argument in regards to, you know, you, we you know, the, one of the companies I've worked for being in cybersecurity, you know, the, the biggest issue in the public sector. Side of things for cybersecurity is, is retaining talent due to due to the fact that they just can't pay, right? They're, they're not a profit generating entity. In, in, in, in the most of the senses. Right. They're typically a service right. Government governments are typically services to their folks, right? So when you look at private versus public, it's hard to retain good talent on the public side

Gene: 1:18:31

Yeah. I don't know, dude. When you start looking at the actual payrolls of a lot of government employees, I think people would be very surprised. The average salary for a policeman in the US is over a hundred thousand dollars average. In California, it's over$200,000 for a cop. Now people already dislike.

Ben: 1:18:53

Is that bribes included? No,

Gene: 1:18:54

No, no, no. That includes overtime that, that includes like$120,000 salary and$80,000 of overtime because all cops work overtime. That's like a standard thing that, that's part of the gig that they, you're gonna be expected to do. But also you understand that you're getting paid substantially more with overtime. So I'm not saying that they're, like, they're base salaries or 200 grand in California, but the average cop in California, including, you know, small cities, so they're balanced out by the large cities like San Francisco their average is over$200,000 a year in taxable income.

Ben: 1:19:34

No. Is that, that, that's probably scales though, based on the municipality that you're

Gene: 1:19:39

Absolutely. So the, the San Francisco cops, there's some making 300 grand and that, that means there's some cops in Bakersfield making 110.

Ben: 1:19:47

And then, and then there's cops in, in pod towns where I live that make 30, 40. So

Gene: 1:19:53

Well, but again, I think you'd be surprised base maybe, but if you actually did a, a public records request for salaries, which you can absolutely do from any municipality you'd realize that even the cops that have a base salary, I don't think anyone has 30,000 right now, but they probably have 50. But even the cops that are on 50,000 base salary, when you look at their total taxable income for the year, is probably pushing a hundred.

Ben: 1:20:15

yeah, I, I'd say it's pretty, the amount of hours that some of the guys I know work, especially

Gene: 1:20:19

Yeah, and, and I've talked about this too, the personality type of a person that goes into police work is just a hair different than the personality type of a person that goes to prison. It's the same freaking psych profile on both of those

Ben: 1:20:34

or goes to prison

Gene: 1:20:36

Oh, no, no, no. It doesn't work in prison. They get caught and put in prison. It's the same psych profile for both types. This well, well known fact. And, and so what you have are people that on average can't maintain relationships. Neither criminals nor cops. They, they can't they, they are, what's the phrase? Hyper predictive personality disorder to where they, they get obsessed with things and they bring'em to extremes. Very true of the average policeman as much is of the average criminal out there. There, there's an awful lot of commonalities that you find between the two groups. And one of the things that the police do to alleviate their frustrations, let's say, is doing that overtime work because they're making more money and they're getting to do more stuff that could result in getting and actually, Spiking down adrenaline. Cuz that's the other thing that both of these groups have in common is that they, they both tend to be adrenaline junkies.

Ben: 1:21:43

Well and that same topic too. IQ plays a lot in that too. IQ and eq. Cuz getting caught I think is the biggest differentiator. Right? Right. In a lot of that, cuz

Gene: 1:21:51

There's a lot of cops getting caught lately. That's

Ben: 1:21:53

Well, yeah, that's

Gene: 1:21:53

cameras everywhere now is that more and more cops are getting caught.

Ben: 1:21:56

But I think the average American breaks, what, 260? I'm actually, I just Google it. 260 law. The average American breaks 260 laws or 200 breaks the law 260 times a year. Couldn't get that out. Right. So the average Americans breaking about

Gene: 1:22:11

thought you were gonna say per week

Ben: 1:22:12

No, if not, per week two. So, so the average person breaks the law 260 times a year or it's five times a week. So on any given day, you're gonna do something that breaks. Now it's one, are you gonna get caught? Are you, you know, and then, so, you know, and that ties probably a lot to like intelligence. Like how often, Oh, you don't have to answer that on, on in a public manner, but, but how often do you think you break the law?

Gene: 1:22:35

I never break the law.

Ben: 1:22:36

Okay. But just in general, like, you, you'd be surprised, I imagine, like if you, if you,

Gene: 1:22:42

Oh, I don't know about that. No, I, I think that the, There is, I mean you bring up a fun point. I've got a big smile on my face here cuz it's topic I've heard before, which is that the view of criminals is very skewed because the only criminals that we have perspectives on are the ones that get.

Ben: 1:22:59

Yeah.

Gene: 1:23:00

The, the guys that are the professional jewel thieves, art thieves, et cetera, that go on for 40, 50 years, making money in that way, and they're part of polite upper class society never get caught and nobody knows about'em. And that's why the typical view of what a criminal is, is really technically not a view of the criminal, It's the view of the criminals who are bad at their job.

Ben: 1:23:29

Well, it's the, you know, you also have to consider too, like white call crimes versus, you know,

Gene: 1:23:34

Yeah. No, that's, that's absolutely true as well.

Ben: 1:23:37

You know, versus like, you know, actually violent crimes or drug related crimes. Right? Like we just saw Biden basically, I don't know if that was considered an official pardon necessarily, but, uh Right. He, he basically is, is looking to wipe. And you know, I'm not saying positively in any manner cuz I'm not a fan of Biden by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm, you know, he, he was able to string together a sentence in which he said that he was, you know, basically allowing anyone with a previous possession charge for marijuana. Right. To, to not either have that on the record anymore or not impact their ability to get student loans. Like So Fafa loans. Right. Cause that was

Gene: 1:24:14

Yeah. It still impacts your ability to buy a gun though.

Ben: 1:24:16

Correct. Yeah, no, I mean,

Gene: 1:24:18

very selective with their words.

Ben: 1:24:19

well, of course we,

Gene: 1:24:20

And the only reason he is saying it is because we have a midterms coming up and as soon as the midterms are over, he is gonna walk it back.

Ben: 1:24:26

Yeah, but he's, he's, he's, I think he's looking at the wrong, how many heads do you know that vote I think he's looking at, I think he's talking to the wrong crowd when he

Gene: 1:24:33

they don't have to vote. The Democrats will vote on their behalf.

Ben: 1:24:36

Well, that's true. Or the old, Well, you know, the

Gene: 1:24:38

So the problem is when you start going through the voting records and you realize that people that are voting are actually not allowed to vote,

Ben: 1:24:44

we're not alive,

Gene: 1:24:45

well that's always been the case, but you know when, when a lot of the names they're using to cast those Democrat votes are people that have criminal records that aren't allowed to vote and that didn't bother going and voting cuz they know better. But nonetheless, their votes have been put in the system and counted. That's a problem for the Democrats.

Ben: 1:25:06

Yeah. But no, I just, I think that it's an, it's an odd thing for him to him to do. But I think you're right. It's definitely a play for the, for the midterms. So, but I think there's a lot of other things going on that are not going so well for, for him. So, but no back to what you were, what you were talking about a couple minutes ago in regards to you know, we, we kinda lost our train there, but but the, the, the cop thing and, and going back to, you know, in regards to pay scales and, and such, you know, I from a, from a government percentage, you know, I, I, I can definitely see where you're going in regards to, I'd be surprised from a public to private perspective what, what people are making. But you know, I would also say that yeah, there's, you know, a gap in, in, in some of the industries in regards to private versus public,

Gene: 1:25:53

Yeah, there, there might be a gap, but I, I think it's it, it's not so much a problematic gap, it's just in a symptom of how slowly the government moves, because at some point there was no gap within that industry, and the government was paying exactly what private industry was. But as talent became less available or as the, the need for that talent increased, private industry was able to change its pay rates much faster than government does. But another one is like FBI agents. Tons of a FBI agents right now are over the$200,000 mark. And again, when it comes down to is don't just look at the base salary, look at the full package that these people are making. The government is very successful at recruiting new hires to the fbi. And because typically when they're hiring to the fbi, they're not looking for somebody coming right out of college. They're looking for somebody that's in their late twenties, early thirties. Somebody that's got like a decade of experie. And you know, whether it's for the cyber crime task force, whether it's for you know, the anti drug task force or, or whether it's for international related task forces, but they're, they're typically looking for people that they don't have to train from scratch, but that they just have to kind of get them into the FBI mindset.

Ben: 1:27:13

Yeah, I, I wonder if that's regional though. So I'm, I'm looking at an fbi the title exactly. It's the fbi,

Gene: 1:27:18

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:27:18

Agent Cybersecurity Technology. And obviously I'm using the cyber security as a

Gene: 1:27:21

Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

Ben: 1:27:22

the field I'm in. But you know, the benefits show a range of 66,991 to 86,000

Gene: 1:27:29

yeah. That's the base rate.

Ben: 1:27:30

That's the base rate. Right.

Gene: 1:27:31

Yeah. Yeah. But you're gonna get at least double that when you start adding in the the travel pay, the overtime pay, the special task force, bonus pay, and all these other categories that all add up at the end of the year. This is, this is the distinction you have to make and, and what people use when they try to obfuscate the issue is they show you the base pay for that particular level of government job. What you need to look at is what are the actual taxable incomes of the average person in that position. And obviously somebody in their first year working there isn't gonna get those top salaries, but I've, I've interacted with folks on a business perspective that have retired from the FBI in their forties. And so they're still gonna be making a pension for the rest of their life. And in their forties, they're young enough to go off and, and have a, a, you know, a new career making six figures at their, whatever the other job, or starting up a new business and be entrepreneurs about it.

Ben: 1:28:32

Yeah, that's a

Gene: 1:28:32

There's a lot of benefits that come to a government job. The insurance coverage is unsurpassed. And with my other co-host, Darren, he just talked about it, I think last week or two weeks ago. His wife has a government job now, and he's just raving about all the benefits that she's now able to get, which, you know, she didn't have at her job in a, a commercial company.

Ben: 1:28:54

Yeah, that's a great point. I'm glad you I'll have to little do a little more research on that. I've

Gene: 1:28:58

Why? You wanna go work for the feds? Is that what you're saying?

Ben: 1:29:00

no, not, not, not at all. I'm quite happy with my current career and investments that I made, but you know, we, we have you know, it's just good to know and, and, you know, you, you take those misassumptions, right? And, you know, you just kind run with them for a long time and you don't do any research or and then it's nice having someone with

Gene: 1:29:17

yeah. Well, you also look at the teachers and it's the same thing everyone. Oh, teachers are underpaid. They're underpaid. No, they're not underpaid. First of all, if you want to make sure that your kid gets a first rate education, you're gonna send'em to private school anyway. You're not gonna, or. Better yet home school, that'd be the ideal. But if you can't do that, then it's a private school. But even in public school with what they're complaining about, Okay, let's look at teachers. So teachers work for nine months out of the year. Most of'em don't just sit back and chill for the whole summer. They work summer school jobs or other jobs. So again, you can say, Well, the teacher salary, that's only$55,000 a year. That's not enough money for what they do. Okay, but that's for nine months. Let's look at what the actual taxable income for that average person is. Oh, it's$80,000 a year. Well, all of a sudden maybe that's not so bad for a teacher.

Ben: 1:30:10

That's a good point with the the month's work and such.

Gene: 1:30:13

Yeah. And they get, and they're in jobs that get overtime.

Ben: 1:30:16

I think, I think the argument there stems from that the from a teacher's perspective, if you are working nine months out of the year in one job, the ability to get a second job that would pay as well

Gene: 1:30:28

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:30:29

would be difficult just for those three months to make up

Gene: 1:30:32

But there, but there, there are a lot of opportunities either within the school district or, you know, it's like you are, what are you really being paid for as a teacher? You're hurting kids.

Ben: 1:30:41

Yeah. And, and

Gene: 1:30:42

not hurting her, ding, hurting kids.

Ben: 1:30:45

There's a lot of, there's a lot of options too right now for online colleges, in schools. You know, I just recently graduated my master's and I did it 100% online, and the, the, the teacher that, or the professor that I had he is a, a doctor in cybersecurity and, but he also

Gene: 1:31:02

Jesus. That's hilarious to hear.

Ben: 1:31:04

no, there's, yeah, there's doctors for cybersecurity, there's cyber, cyber forensics you know, all that fun stuff. But but as I graduated my master's and, and he, I was talking to, to him when I was submitting my, my final paperwork for that. And I was like, So do you do this full time? He goes, No, I also work at a high school.

Gene: 1:31:20

mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:31:21

And it's a private school as you mentioned. And, and he he teaches a couple classes there during the year, but he also does work online and he makes quite a bit of money doing that on, He's like, I can do this. You know, the nine to five with the, with actually signing nine to five. It's, you know, like eight to eight to two with the kids, and then I can go grade papers for college and make a ton of money doing that online. He goes, I can work for as many college as I want. They don't have non-competes.

Gene: 1:31:47

or be a tutor for rich people for that topic. There's a lot of, lot of things that you can do. There's nothing that says that you have to make all your money from one single job. In fact, more and more Americans can't do that because their single job doesn't pay enough.

Ben: 1:32:05

Yep. And.

Gene: 1:32:07

So I, you know, I'm not. Like, I'm not an anarchist. I would never categorize myself into that category, but I also feel like I'm a lot more anarchistic, anarchistic, I guess it's the word than lot of the conservative friends that I have. I don't see a huge amount of benefit to maintaining a lot of the institutions that we currently have in their current form. I think that they've grown fat and not horribly useful and counterproductive in some measures. And that doing resets on these things with some regularity to get them back to inefficient and lean state would be very advisable. But of course, it, it'd be disruptive and people are always bitching about not wanting to be disrupted.

Ben: 1:32:58

Middle management has always been a, been a, been an issue, whether it be corporations or government entities, right? the, the lean organization is oftentimes the most efficient and quickest to be able to pivot. And I think that's the big issue we run into is there's a lot of bloat when it comes to the, the people that you talk to or the people that you interact with in an organization versus the, the folks actually, you know, running shop. So,

Gene: 1:33:24

Yeah. No, it, it's, it's very true. And part of it really has to do with the fact that what do you do with people? like, you don't wanna lose them, so you gotta do something. So you gotta promote'em

Ben: 1:33:38

you know, I,

Gene: 1:33:39

And then that's who becomes middle management

Ben: 1:33:41

I, I've worked in leadership positions before and there's been people that we've had to eliminate roles and, and these were union positions that, that I managed for, for a while. And so it's a d it's a little bit different, right? Cuz they, there's, you know, you have to go by the contract and, and whatnot. But it's the same mindset as well as when, you know, when you're downsizing like that and you, and you have folks or that you wanna retain. There, there's ways to retain them without creating bloat in the organization. You know, finding, finding something of value that they do and maybe but the, but I guess at the end of the day there's, there's

Gene: 1:34:11

ge tried to implement the system to prevent that kind of blow from happening. And I think it worked out pretty well for them initially. And then they started getting a bad reputation about it. And that, I can't remember the actual term for this process, cause it existed before GE implemented it as well. But the idea is that every year you cut 20% of your workforce. So your, your lowest performers always get cut every year. And then you just, you're hiring continuously throughout the whole year. And so you're really trimming, It's like trimming the fat off the, the slab of meat. Continuously at every opportunity. And eventually getting to a situation where not only do you have the best people, but even the people that are getting trimmed off now that are the bottom 20% would be considered pretty good performers in other companies. And that gives you a huge competitive advantage in only having top players. Amazon did that for quite a few years. They actually emulated GEs policy. They got a really bad rap for that as well. And they changed their tune back about five years ago, I believe. So that right now there's a lot more bloated Amazon than there used to be.

Ben: 1:35:28

Yeah, they call it the Vitality Curve typically. The company I worked for

Gene: 1:35:31

there you go.

Ben: 1:35:32

prior to the last two companies, I, I, is, is a very large telecom company. Who, who their logos blue and they notoriously,

Gene: 1:35:41

telecom company's logo's. Blue dude,

Ben: 1:35:43

Well, there's, well,

Gene: 1:35:44

I guess not Verizon.

Ben: 1:35:46

no, no, there's not, not Verizon and not T-Mobile. So

Gene: 1:35:49

is a German company. It's not even a real company.

Ben: 1:35:51

Yeah. Vodafone is another big one too. But, you know, you look at like vitality curve

Gene: 1:35:55

Yeah. Deut Deutsche Telecom.

Ben: 1:35:57

Yep.

Gene: 1:35:58

That's T-Mobile.

Ben: 1:35:59

Yeah, you look at a vitality curve. So it's, it's the same, It's, it's that mentality. It's, it's top 20% of the workforce is the most productive. So you allocate pay raise to top 20% of the highest amount. The, the vital 70% receive a, a range between, you know, let's just say five and 10%, or three and 5% raise every year. And then the remaining are, you know, the bottom 10% are cut. So then that leaves, right? So that's 70 89. So then the bottom 10% are cut every year. And then you hire right after they get, you know, two months after they leave you, you then post their position again,

Gene: 1:36:33

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 1:36:34

and you go through that whole cycle. So,

Gene: 1:36:36

So there is something to be said for that, but it, but it, I don't know that it works for the entirety of the company. I think it works for a certain position, like anything having to do with sales, that's a great way to do it. You or you're, you're, you can have people that work great for 2, 3, 4 years and then Slack off, and then because you have this process in place, you, you get rid of'em as soon as they start slacking off. So it keeps the, the company only full of people that are interested in being competitive and staying on top.

Ben: 1:37:05

And there, there's a lot of KPIs. So even for non like sales oriented organizations, there, there are KPIs and measurements that they, that, that they use for like project completion or other things in, I

Gene: 1:37:17

But I, the point I was getting to is that you can do that for every job, but there are some jobs that it makes more sense to do that for than the others. Like even in a company that implements those policies and principles. I would look at certain functions within the company that should be excluded from that type of competitive approach. And these are typically jobs where the, the persistence and soft skills are more important than immediate targets.

Ben: 1:37:50

soft skills are definitely measured by companies these days. So

Gene: 1:37:53

Yeah. But the wrong ones, I

Ben: 1:37:55

Well, yeah, there,

Gene: 1:37:56

obviously everything I'm saying is my opinion, but

Ben: 1:37:59

So I was at a cyber series conference back in, what was it, Back in last, back in April. And there's a company that has basically a, it's a tool that a company can purchase and. It analyzes communications from employee to employee emails, and it looks at tone and other metrics around soft skills, right? So how people talk and it measures and employees you know, either loyalty, happiness you know, basically if a new new policy comes out, you know, what are, what are, what is the general consensus from like a, a mood and it's very big brother when you

Gene: 1:38:38

it, it is. And that I, again, I'm smiling here. You can't see my face, but because you know, I've implemented some of this stuff, but the problem you run into is then you have the meta to deal with, which is unless nobody knows you're doing this, you start having the things you're measuring in, in your example, emails be specifically crafted to achieve a positive measurement by the system and not representative of the actual conversation.

Ben: 1:39:11

Yeah, I

Gene: 1:39:13

Cause that's what I would be doing.

Ben: 1:39:15

yeah. And a lot of these tools out there, they, they monitor across the board, right? So not, we're not just looking at emails, they're looking at chat communications. They're looking at you. Whether you use Slack teams, you know, WebEx, et cetera they can monitor facial expressions. It's just, it's a, it's a and, and, you know, if you don't think companies don't utilize the webcam on, on your computer when you're working remotely, you're in for a rude awakening

Gene: 1:39:39

Oh yeah. No, absolutely. And that, this, this is why you know, I, I never have a webcam plugged in. This is, this is one of those areas where people don't realize how much they're giving up. By having video turned on. It's amazing to me that, that this did not result in any kind of pushback during Covid, when it would became a lot more of a norm. Because there there's absolutely no reason for it. There, there's not a justifiable reason from the company's side to look at your employee.

Ben: 1:40:10

yeah. And, and you know, the, a lot of the MDMs out there for mobile device management tools can even analyze your, you know, text messaging voice calls.

Gene: 1:40:21

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:40:22

So it's, it's very, you know, and you, and you look at all of this that companies are doing now and, and in the example you know, there's a company out Columbus, I think it's called like a, where Columbus, Ohio, and they're headquartered in like Columbus area and met a few of folks at some of these conferences, but when, when they gave you their spiel, it's, it's very like nine What's that? What's that? 1984, right? It's very

Gene: 1:40:41

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:40:43

It's very, Oh yeah. We can, we can monitor, we can give you people insights. We can tell you the mood of the company departments individuals. We can tell you if, you know, if you had a one-on-one discussion with somebody and you provided them a poor annual review, you know, what are they telling other people or what, what's the general And they can, you know, tell, and, and these had these algorithms they used to measure longevity of employment. So how long does that person, you know, do you anticipate having that person in, in the company? And it's just, and, and if you don't, and, and one of the conversations I had with one of my peers after we left their booth, I said, I said, And if you don't think the federal government or, or some divisions of the government don't use these tools or have similar tools like this and they're not utilizing them on the population I was like, I wouldn't be surprised.

Gene: 1:41:27

absolutely. Absolutely. I, I had a, a client project back in the nineties where we were doing this kind of stuff in Israel.

Ben: 1:41:35

Yep. And that's a.

Gene: 1:41:37

full communication measurement analysis literally over 20 years ago.

Ben: 1:41:43

Israel seems to be a, a great area for, for new cybersecurity companies to develop one. I've seen a lot of them come out of that area, but two, the is the cybersecurity companies that come out. Israel seem to be very lenient on the the morality factor when it comes to what they're doing. You know, you look at like the Pegasus software that, that came out, you know, one of the cyber security companies in, in Israel, and you look at what that does, right? So sell not Clickless malware on your, on your iPhone where you can send somebody a text message and, and just be able to view camera, you know, files, you know photos, you know everything, text messages location, et cetera. Don't even have to click a button, just send'em a text. Now it's on their phone. And you know, our, our government's used it before, right? So we

Gene: 1:42:28

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Ben: 1:42:30

but, but that's but Israel, I mean there's a lot of companies that are coming out Israel now, they're very military defense contractor related.

Gene: 1:42:35

Well, that the whole industry in Israel is driven by money from the military complex. So most things that we get in the US that are created by Israeli companies within, certainly within security, but other areas as well, typically were startups that were created to provide those types of products or services to the Israeli military. And and the Israeli military has a lot of grants and programs specifically for creating new, new products that could be beneficial to them.

Ben: 1:43:10

Yeah. And I think, cuz I think the NSO group was a, you know, most of the folks that worked there were prior Israeli defense forces. Actually, I think, I think two of'em were generals in the Israeli Defense Force. And then quite a few of'em were for the intelligence. But if you look at American companies as well. Right. A lot of the

Gene: 1:43:26

But that's not hard to do because Israel has a mandatory draft, so everybody is in the IDF at some point

Ben: 1:43:33

yeah. What, what are your thoughts on that mandatory draft?

Gene: 1:43:35

for com, for a company, for, for a small country. I think it's probably the right move.

Ben: 1:43:41

What about

Gene: 1:43:41

I, I, it makes sense for Switzerland. Makes sense for. Countries that the, the population is not large enough, I think, to have a professional military. The US certainly is big enough. China's big enough. Russia is big enough. All these countries are big enough to where they can support a full-time professional military in the millions of people. I don't know that you need to have more than that in the military at any point in time. So there's no reason for that mandatory draft.

Ben: 1:44:09

Well, so there's, there's the there's a

Gene: 1:44:10

Soviet Union had one, by the way, back before it broke apart, but not because they needed people in the military. It was a way to indoctrinate people. It was really an extension. It, it, it was basically a a way to get students outta high school before they go to college and innate them in Communism.

Ben: 1:44:31

So what, So, and there's a, there's been a couple movies not recently. I think it was probably primarily in 2009. And the name will come to me, but it wasn't around mandatory military services around military government or some type of service. So, so, you know, you go to go to school, government pays for your specific education in whatever area. You, then you then work for the government for X amount of years. The government does that now. So the US government, you know, if you wanna go to cyber security, they'll pay for your cyber security degree, then you have to go work for the, you know, the nsa or ca, you know, CIA or, or whomever. For, for, I think it's like, what, five years, 10 years, something like that.

Gene: 1:45:06

I think it's four.

Ben: 1:45:07

four years, what, So what do you think about mandatory services like that where, you know, if folks want all these things from the government for free, go work for'em for five years? You know, we're, I don't know. I, I've always

Gene: 1:45:19

Well, I it is the definition of indentured servitude.

Ben: 1:45:22

well, if, Yeah, that's very true.

Gene: 1:45:25

If you like that, then go for it.

Ben: 1:45:27

I, I've always been a fan of servitude, so I'm just

Gene: 1:45:30

uhhuh, Surfs are us. Yeah, I I think it's, ideally you would never have something like that. But I can see some benefits. I think what, what they're trying to address are two different things. One is they're trying to address a way to give people that have few options, a way to out of their area, their predicament, their situation, their, you know, where, where they're currently stuck in. And transition that by doing a job for the government. So I think that that maybe has a good Initial cause for it. Now how it's executed could completely corrupt it as well. But I don't know. I I don't know that you really need something like that for most people though. Or certainly. Does the government need this for them? I don't think so.

Ben: 1:46:26

Well, I it, it, it's a similar concept to what, So, I if I'm a, an 18 year old graduating high school in a rural town and I want, and I want to, and I can't afford college, Right? And I don't wanna get loans,

Gene: 1:46:37

Mm.

Ben: 1:46:38

I can go serve in the military and then get, get out and get, get loan. So,

Gene: 1:46:42

Yeah. And I, I literally went through that process. You know, I went and I was gonna join the Navy and went to the recruiter office and everything. And then shock, shock of shocks, found out that I'm too fat and that I need to first lose 20 pounds and then they can take me. That was the end of that That was, that was my military experience. It's like, Oh yeah, Yeah. No, soon as you lose, like, 21 pounds. Yeah. Come back.

Ben: 1:47:09

and

Gene: 1:47:10

I guess I'm gonna go to college.

Ben: 1:47:11

Well, I'll see you guys later. No but but I think there should be, you know, regularly and very widely spread awareness of programs that would do the same except for maybe not have to go to the military. Right. So I think giving options to, and, and like you said, right, that's, at the end of the day, that is' indenture servitude, right? Your, you're trading your time, your freedom for the most part, Right? For some type of

Gene: 1:47:36

it doesn't have to be the government. And it didn't used to be like IBM used to pay for college degrees. If people signed the contract that once they graduate, they're gonna work at IBM for next five years.

Ben: 1:47:48

And they still have in IBM and companies like IBM and, you know, a, a lot of the large fortune,

Gene: 1:47:53

I don't even know, Are they even around anymore? Is IBM's whole thing?

Ben: 1:47:55

oh, they're, they're huge. They they're, they play a pretty big role currently in in, in a couple different industries. They're doing a lot in Quantum right now.

Gene: 1:48:03

yeah, that's right. They've got their quantum thing.

Ben: 1:48:04

And they do a lot in cyber security currently, but yeah, and a lot, they do a lot in consulting and professional services for companies. But

Gene: 1:48:11

that was my last experience actually. A buddy of mine out here in Texas was working for IBM as a consultant, but like he'd never had to go to the office. He just worked out of his house for a decade.

Ben: 1:48:23

yeah, and you know, I, I think that that whole realm of, of employment is fantastic if you can do it. I I work from home, but I definitely think that traveling and getting outta the house is important. But but yeah, no, IBM's I, to your point, like IBM's, their quantum plays huge right now. But I, and I obviously I don't wanna go down that path, but today at least but

Gene: 1:48:44

Yeah. Well, we could, we, we could talk about quantum but you're right, we, we are kind running out time here for the episode.

Ben: 1:48:50

But did you see the, the most recent news in regards to to Quantum and

Gene: 1:48:54

I don't know. What was it?

Ben: 1:48:55

the Nobel price that was recently given out? So, let me see if I can find, So, yeah, so they announced it in October 4th, so about a week and a half ago. But the there's a couple quantum physicists that won the Nobel Prize in physics this year. So, John Klauser, Anton Zullinger and Aon aspect all won the Nobel Prize, but it was specifically in around the quantum phenomenon as they named it of entanglement. So, the, the mindset where two separated particles appear to share information despite having no conceivable way of commut. So, so, you know, this particle A and particle B are identical and whatever happens to particle A, you know, is instantaneously happening to particle B or or so on, right?

Gene: 1:49:39

Okay. So quantum physics though, not quantum computing.

Ben: 1:49:42

no qu yeah, quantum physics. Now they're doing, IBM is also doing work in, in quantum physics, quantum computing. They're, they're going down that path pretty hard right now. Ton of research going into that. And, and the, in the two, while there are different subsets of quantum, right? They, they're very theoretically they, they're tied together in a lot of the concepts, so,

Gene: 1:49:59

Yeah, I played around with IBM's quantum computer back, I dunno, two years ago, two or three years ago. I think it was pre Covid. In fact, when they first made it available publicly, I, I figured it was a good opportunity to learn a little more about writing code for it. But I think it's still a, it's a ways off distance. This is, this is still not, this is kinda like space travel in the 1960s.

Ben: 1:50:29

I, you know, I, I would tend to agree with you. I would, I would ask that. So go look at what China's doing right now with quantum internet and quantum computing in general. So, I, you know, I, I, probably about two years ago I wrote an article for it was, it was an organization I worked for in the telecommunications space. And I, I wrote an internal article on our blog for the, for the company I worked for on why we need to start in investing. Our, our company was really big on investing in, in fiber optics and building out, you know, basically DOCSIS 3.0 And I said, Why are, why are we pouring billions of dollars into this technology when we could be looking at d different, you know, the newest, newer forms of technology that are gonna be out there, While you still need a fiber, strong fiber backbone for a country in order to maintain communications and free flow of data. There are developing stages. Well look at how, and the figures I have were from like 2020, I think, or 2019, the amount of money that China is investing in quantum. Internet quantum computing versus the US as a country as a whole. Not, not alone. Private industry, private industry wise. The US has some big players that are investing quite a bit, but, and then China is often oftentimes skewed too because big industry and China is oftentimes govern as well. Right,

Gene: 1:51:51

Well, it can't not be by law. Every company that's in China has to have a, I can't remember what the minimum percentage is. I think it's 12% owned by the Communist

Ben: 1:52:02

So, so you almost have to combine that number when you look at China versus us. And a lot of people don't realize that. But I, in my, in my breakdown, I, I highlighted, you know, the combined private and public sector industry investment from China and the US to kind of showcase both. Cuz I didn't wanna be skewed, I didn't wanna have any skewed numbers in my, and, and the, the difference was, was, was massive, right?

Gene: 1:52:25

Oh yeah. And I, and I think that's true in a number of different sectors. They're doing a lot more reinvesting in research and they're, they've always had a lot of people that, you know, excelled in the hard sciences so that there's no, there's no vacuum there in China of intelligent scientists whatsoever. The piece that historically China has been more lacking on is the freedom that entrepreneurialism requires to be able to create new ideas.

Ben: 1:53:01

Yeah, I could definitely see that. You know, there's, there's two mindsets to that. There there's the innovation that comes from military, so war, right? So there's the innovation that basically is born of war and, and, and necessity of war. Then there's, there's the innovation that comes from free thought, right? So you look at like ancient Rome, the, the innovation that came out of just the, the freedoms, the, and then obviously the, the subsequent class many decades later. But you, you look at the flow of information and the freedom that came from that versus you look at like, let's just say World War II and the amount of technological advancements that were made during World War ii because of, of war, right? What driving?

Gene: 1:53:39

wanted the same. There's no difference. It's just the application is a.

Ben: 1:53:43

Well, it's the, it's the ne it's the underlying need, need to survive. That drives in both of those aspects, right?

Gene: 1:53:51

Yeah, well, the need to survive doesn't make you discover things any faster. What it does is it lets you focus within specific areas which you could focus without the war as well. It's just most people are not focused as much. But in terms of the number of inventions that are happening during non war time versus war time, there, there's no discernible difference between the two.

Ben: 1:54:16

Hmm. Interesting. Very interesting. But no, back to

Gene: 1:54:19

you, you may not have a light bulb invented in the middle of a war, but you'll have a more efficient you know, gun invented during the war. But in terms of just the number of inventions coming out, they're gonna balance out.

Ben: 1:54:30

it plateaus eventually in that

Gene: 1:54:32

And the same thing, you know, like NASA loves to talk about all the cool technologies that have come out of NASA's need for them, like Velcro and I dunno, Velcro's pretty cool. I always like Velcro. But but again, it's not that these things wouldn't have been invented or the only way they came about is because of nasa. It was just that NASA created a problem that then a larger group of people were focused on trying to solve.

Ben: 1:54:57

Yeah.

Gene: 1:54:58

The idea of Velcro. Has preexisted humanity for millions of years. It's just that we never had to solve a problem by utilizing Velcro. Birds have, and, and so feathers utilize the same mechanism that Velcro uses. It's, you know, we, we borrow technology from nature, like most technology already exists in nature anyway. It's just a matter of finding examples of it. If you like this topic, by the way, then look up the word trizz or the acronym trizz, T R I z. Trizz is a system a formalized system of invention

Ben: 1:55:37

So it's a Russian acronym,

Gene: 1:55:39

yeah, it's a Russian acronym. Yep. Correct. And there are now a whole bunch of books in English. When I first started getting into tr there was very little in English. Most books were written in Russian only. And a, a friend of mine who's next NASA guy, wrote one of the first books in English about it. And but now there's a whole bunch of'em. I, for a while was thinking of writing a book about it, but then I was like writing an academic book is so much more work than just writing a, a business book or a fiction book. I don't know if I wanna put myself through it.

Ben: 1:56:07

peer review and all of that.

Gene: 1:56:09

It's not even peer review, it's just that you don't wanna have obvious errors caught. Like my last business book I wrote, I know that there's at least seven grammatical errors in that book, in the published version. And I'm too lazy to fix'em, frankly, right now. You know, at some point I should, but I know they're there. But I've had like, maybe five people out of thousands point them out to me. So for most people, they, they just don't care. But when you're writing a book that deals with an academic topic, all the people that love pointing out things that are wrong, just come out of the woodwork.

Ben: 1:56:45

Yeah, they definitely, you know, cause

Gene: 1:56:47

I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah. This is a piece of trash. He couldn't even get this right.

Ben: 1:56:50

well they have an extra grind, right? They're trying, you know, in the academic levels. Yeah.

Gene: 1:56:55

yeah. But definitely if for anybody listening and for you, if this is a topic that, that is interesting to you and not boring read up a little bit on TR because it, it's a fascinating system that basically breaks down all inventions into one of 40 categories. And you can take any idea that's currently in existence, go through and apply these 40 different modifications to it, these alterations, and you'll probably come up with an original idea that no one's patent.

Ben: 1:57:22

Yeah, that's pretty interest. I was looking at one of the, one of the interesting portions is the law of ideal. Basically any system tends to become more reliable throughout its life through regular improvement. So yeah, no, definitely interesting. I'll have to do more features of that, but, but no I was

Gene: 1:57:38

But we are, we are over two hours, so we should probably wrap up here. Anything else you wanna jump on and

Ben: 1:57:45

well, I was just gonna say, so, on the 12th, so yesterday there was a, an interesting article just real briefly on they, in Brooklyn, they opened a basically a new organization for Quantum Network. So if you're, if you're interested in that and wanna see what we're doing in, in the United States as far as experiments with new types of internet technologies and connectivity Quantum's definitely gonna be the the next flagship type of internet outside of probably satellite, but that's more of. Satellite internet is more so gonna be utilized. I, I see in the future as far as availability. Right. Having those

Gene: 1:58:18

it's if we don't have a, a Kepler event, having

Ben: 1:58:21

Well, yeah. You might need your geier counter. Right. So,

Gene: 1:58:23

which one

Ben: 1:58:25

Well, I had, Take your pick, I guess, right.

Gene: 1:58:27

now? I've got, I've got a. I got a bunch of masks with anti radiation shields that just came in. And then I'm waiting for some large shipments coming in tomorrow, so I, I am definitely prepared. I just don't think most people are

Ben: 1:58:41

Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like we were talking about earlier, the iodine topic. I, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to see if I can buy some off you

Gene: 1:58:48

Yeah, well check Amazon first. They occasionally have a available from that company.

Ben: 1:58:53

Yeah. Yeah. How's the progress on, on your product line going before we.

Gene: 1:58:57

Well, the first one I should be getting like literally tomorrow, but then it's been delayed by like a week. So who knows if it's actually gonna be tomorrow or next week. But this will be the first shipment and you know, we can even talk about it. So this initial product is really, it's useful. It'll be for sale, but it's as much to test the manufacturing capabilities of the company is anything else? Because I have a lot of plans for, and like, again, I'm kind of bitching about the timing of the whole Ukraine situation. I wish it had happened a year later so I could have my products salary. But one of the products I specifically designed was for a post nuclear attack. And I'm, I'm afraid that it may not be manufactured and available before the attack actually happens.

Ben: 1:59:41

Well, the the

Gene: 1:59:42

God damn. It's interfering with my ability to get rich

Ben: 1:59:45

well, you, you know, I

Gene: 1:59:47

I've been telling Putin just, just hold off, hold off a little bit, just a little longer.

Ben: 1:59:52

if, if it does subside, then you'll, then you'll win. So for, for who knows how long though, Right?

Gene: 1:59:57

Yeah. Because all I need is just, just enough, you know, FUD in there to get people to buy it.

Ben: 2:00:04

Well, it's kinda one of those weird things too. Cause you think about it, if you're, you're, you're selling products for a, a nuclear event of some sort, right?

Gene: 2:00:11

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:00:12

And, and you want to profit off those said products. But, but, but instead, vent, what is that profit going to do for you?

Gene: 2:00:19

Ensuring my, my space racket ticket to the Lium

Ben: 2:00:23

No. Let's, There you go.

Gene: 2:00:25

What do you mean?

Ben: 2:00:26

here you go.

Gene: 2:00:26

question,

Ben: 2:00:27

I guess. Or, or your bunker, Right? Whatever.

Gene: 2:00:30

bunkers. The real fun events are happening up in space.

Ben: 2:00:34

Yeah. That is very true. I guess so.

Gene: 2:00:37

You may be too young for this, but one of the great movies that kind of presented a coverage of this topic very early on was Moon Break, the Jameson Melvie.

Ben: 2:00:47

Okay. Yeah, no, I, I didn't watch that as a kid.

Gene: 2:00:49

Okay. That came out in 1979. I remember watching it when it first came out, and I was like, Holy shit, this is so cool. But the, the central idea of that movie, and I know it's a bit of spoiler here for a movie that literally came out 40 years ago is that there is a very rich American billionaire who has a private fleet of rocket. And is basically building rockets for, for NASA to use. But he's got, you know, his own rocket as well. And he's seen as this very, somewhat eccentric, but basically a positive character. And then what you realize towards the end of the movie is that he's actually been building a space station up above earth, a private space station, and his plan is to bring the best genetic specimens of each ethnic group of humans up on the space station and then kill off the entirety of the planet. Just the humans, not, not anything, not no animals. So the best way to do that, of course, is with a biological weapon. So it doesn't harm animals, it only harms humans DNA based, but it literally will kill everybody.

Ben: 2:02:00

So I never looked at it like that, so I didn't, So, so Bond effectively has a has an arc or a flood story then, except in,

Gene: 2:02:07

story.

Ben: 2:02:08

Well, it's the same concept as no ark, right?

Gene: 2:02:11

yeah, I guess so. Well, James Bond's job is to go blow up the arc

Ben: 2:02:15

Well, yeah. He's, he's the antagonist in that, in that aspect, right?

Gene: 2:02:19

Yeah, well it, yeah, it depends who you see as the protagonist, but

Ben: 2:02:21

yeah.

Gene: 2:02:22

Drax Drax is the name, the, the main character that's this, this Elon Musk type. You know, his goal is to basically, He sees all the corruption and the bad aspects of humanity and much like a lot of rich elites, his goal is to just say, Screw it. Let's just start from scratch. Let's start over. So he's gonna go, he's gonna be the God figure up in space and he's gonna breed his perfect genetic specimens and then repopulate the world with a new society based on his laws and teachings and philosophy and all that good stuff while he lives his days out, up in the space station. And of course when the British find out about it, because you know, the British are clearly the top spy organization in the world they they're, they're gonna try and disrupt this from happening obviously, cuz they don't want the whole planet going extinct. And the Americans bring up their space shuttle because it just got built and it's available to go fight this guy. And we have a laser gun battle up in space between people jumping out of space shuttles. It's, it was so cool to see that it literally, that movie came out before the space shuttle was flew its first flight, which was very cool. So you got to see what the space shuttles gonna look like before it actually flew.

Ben: 2:03:44

And that was pre Star Wars then too, Right

Gene: 2:03:47

That was after Star Wars, It was before Empire Strikes Backs.

Ben: 2:03:49

okay. After. Okay. Just trying to get my timeline correct there.

Gene: 2:03:53

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:03:54

but yeah. Very interesting.

Gene: 2:03:56

And I think partly influenced that they decided to do a big space sequence because of Star Wars is my guess.

Ben: 2:04:01

Yeah, it's probably

Gene: 2:04:02

the people like that lasers and space thing. Let's do it.

Ben: 2:04:05

what, And there's nothing better than Dinosaurs in space, too on the

Gene: 2:04:08

oh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, there, there's one thing better than dinosaurs in the moon. That's Nazis in the moon.

Ben: 2:04:14

Oh yeah. There's another good movie that's, that came out a little bit later than that one though, but

Gene: 2:04:17

Oh, way later. Yeah. That's just like seven years ago. Eight years ago.

Ben: 2:04:21

Oh, I think the original was in like the eighties though, wasn't it? There was one that came out like late eighties and early nineties.

Gene: 2:04:26

not one that I saw. I know. That'd be something new. If you look that one up now, the one I'm talking about is Iron Sky. So that came out with I think seven or eight years ago.

Ben: 2:04:36

Okay. Yeah. I'm, I saw it's thing that's on Amazon. You can watch that.

Gene: 2:04:40

Yeah. And, and it's a great movie. I really like it. It's definitely tongue in cheek. It's not meant to be serious. It's meant to be funny, but you know, there's a few characters in it that are acting as though everything is serious. And I love that they have Sarah Palin basically be the president.

Ben: 2:04:57

That is hilarious. I was thinking of space balls that came out in

Gene: 2:05:00

Oh. But that's just a full on parity of Star Of Star

Ben: 2:05:03

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why I thought there was dinosaurs and I dunno why I thought they were

Gene: 2:05:07

No, no, no. That was just Mel Brooks got some money and decided to, you know, go make fun of Star Wars.

Ben: 2:05:13

when I had the same guy from Ghostbusters as well, playing the the guy, that gentleman wears the giant hat or helmet.

Gene: 2:05:21

Oh, Rick Morans.

Ben: 2:05:22

Yeah. Eric Morass. Yeah.

Gene: 2:05:24

Yeah. Rick, I, I, I always liked him. He was funny. He is an old SCTV guy which was Second City up in Canada, a comedy T troop that was kind of the, the Canadian sister of the uh, Second City outta Chicago where John Candy Rick Morans, Eugene Levy those were all guys that came out of sctv Second City up there. And they, so they had a a weekly show that was called sctv or Second City Television that had like a budget of a hundred dollars. It was ridiculously cheap, super low budget. Basically the kind of stuff you'd see on Kbl access. And they were shooting this boy, I wanna say like 81, 82, 83 time timeline right around there. But in fact, yeah, both Rick Mirandas and John Candy were, were in space balls.

Ben: 2:06:09

Okay.

Gene: 2:06:10

So both those guys,

Ben: 2:06:11

And you know, I, I was thinking of, so I was trying to look for the movie I was thinking of when I, when you were talking about that. It's 2001 A Space Odyssey when we find it.

Gene: 2:06:19

that's, that's definitely not a parody, and that's not really dinosaurs

Ben: 2:06:22

no, it's not Dinosaurs. I, I was, I was looking, I was like, I was like, Why, why? I was like, why am I thinking of this movie? And I looked at the, the storyline. I'm like, No, that's, that's super Computers not,

Gene: 2:06:32

2001. What year did that come out? That was probably like, yeah, that was one of the first real sci-fi movies ever made.

Ben: 2:06:40

Well, that and Battlestar Galactica, I think

Gene: 2:06:43

that was 75, I think, Battlestar 76

Ben: 2:06:48

that was also seven.

Gene: 2:06:49

Okay. Yeah.

Ben: 2:06:50

But

Gene: 2:06:51

Yeah. And that, that was definitely cheesy battle Sarica was the, the original was much easier than the remake.

Ben: 2:06:58

the remake was, was pretty awesome

Gene: 2:07:00

Oh, it was awesome. I love the remake. That was, I, I had so many just like holy shit moments watching that show. I couldn't believe the writing was great. The acting was really good. The tension, they kept going, but like every other TV show like three seasons and it starts getting worse.

Ben: 2:07:18

Well, it's kinda like a Stargate universe. That, that was a really, I enjoyed that one. I know a lot of people that hated that series. Very same premise, right? Like just getting lost in a different part of the universe, not knowing where you are. Origin story type stuff, right?

Gene: 2:07:32

Stargate Universe just went dark and I think it lost a lot of the people that enjoyed the, the kind of comedic timing of the the regular Stargate.

Ben: 2:07:40

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, sorry,

Gene: 2:07:42

it. I love the Ship and Stargate Universe. That was such an awesome ship. Just having a ship in the shave. Yeah. Shave in the shape of Doris Hammer. It was just great.

Ben: 2:07:51

Well, and the fact that too, that it wasn't, you know, it's supposed to be a technology that's far more advanced than current technology. It almost had that, I don't wanna say steampunk type vibe,

Gene: 2:08:00

Oh, totally, totally. Yeah. It was steampunk.

Ben: 2:08:02

it was very steampunk and that definitely was a huge, like, attraction for that show. I think for me was, was that that with the mindset that they also had to fix it up, Right? It wasn't, it wasn't like highly technologically advanced and also like in perfect condition. It was something that I had to actually fix up.

Gene: 2:08:17

and it, Yeah. And it, and what I like is that they did create a whole aesthetic that wasn't organic, which is very tempting with sort of higher life form stuff that we see in, in TV and and movies. But, but it was kind of steam punky, like the color pad and the color palette was like brown and gold, you know, It wasn't steel and it wasn't like organic looking. Did you ever watch Oh boy, what was that there? There's God, I'm blanking out this problem getting old. It was an Australian TV series that had an American astronaut in it

Ben: 2:08:52

No.

Gene: 2:08:53

and it had Claudia Black. I remember the actress's name cuz she was really hot.

Ben: 2:08:57

yeah, not sure on that one.

Gene: 2:08:59

Here, I'll tell you, I'm typing that in as we speak. Got she got old. Hate it when people get old that are hot Farscape. Do you ever watch Farscape?

Ben: 2:09:06

So is that the one with the the, the, They try to make it look like an alien, but it was it was kinda cheesy looking like one of the characters.

Gene: 2:09:13

It had a few alien, It had a bunch of aliens. It was a puppet. It was a puppet based thing. It was a Jim

Ben: 2:09:18

Yeah.

Gene: 2:09:20

It was like Jim Hansen puppets, sci-fi made for adults.

Ben: 2:09:25

Yeah. The, well, they had like, the, the, one of the aliens look like from Lord of the Rings looked like a dwarf. Right. Had like the beard and all that. And then, And then they had,

Gene: 2:09:35

a puppet.

Ben: 2:09:35

Yeah. And then they had one that was like, Yeah, it was like gray almost, or blue.

Gene: 2:09:40

yeah, they had a blue chick that was very like into sex.

Ben: 2:09:43

Yes, yes. Like the lymphoma maniac. yeah.

Gene: 2:09:46

her, religion. Yeah. So you watched clearly enough to remember that?

Ben: 2:09:50

I watched it as a kid, actually,

Gene: 2:09:52

I would reco Yeah. That's probably why you don't remember as much of it. I would say next time you got a colder flu or something and you're like, got, like, you're not working, do a marathon, a watch, a bunch of those. They're definitely not up to the budget of American science fiction at the time, but they are very, they're, they're a lot more adult than you, I'm sure. Remember like the themes that, that they talk about and the problems they deal with. They're, they're very much adult.

Ben: 2:10:22

when the antagonist from, I'm, I'm looking back at pictures now from that show, The antagonist is very much dressed in a BDSM suit.

Gene: 2:10:29

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ben: 2:10:30

like, like, yeah. So, I

Gene: 2:10:32

Well, and Claudia Black, who was the, the main good guy, Chick in that show, she was also on a Stargate. She came in the later seasons as a minor, God, I can't remember her character name, but she was, you know, she basically was like a God. And then ended up joining the Stargate crew.

Ben: 2:10:51

Yeah. Well, she, I think she also was a like a thief too, wasn't she? Like she was,

Gene: 2:10:56

Well, she was, she was, you know, she was like a Lokey type. God. She was She was definitely not straight laced.

Ben: 2:11:04

Yeah.

Gene: 2:11:04

was trying to just get people to do what she wanted to.

Ben: 2:11:08

Well, I, I'm not, Before I Google it, did she age well?

Gene: 2:11:10

No, no. That's why I said did Agero, like, she's definitely looking old, but it makes sense. She's 50 right now. So it, she's not, she's not spring treating, but when she, in those, like, especially when she was in in Farscape, when she was in her twenties definitely had that kind of, I don't know, type that I like, which is like kind of a, a strong woman type and not in the politically correct sense, but like a chick that when you look at her, you know, she can kick somebody's as.

Ben: 2:11:38

Well, she reminds me of the person that you know, when you think of like Terminator two, she, I, I see her, I could see her playing

Gene: 2:11:45

Sarah Connor. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Ben: 2:11:46

Yeah. That's very

Gene: 2:11:47

exactly. So, so like a, you know, physically capable female is the, I guess, would be the way I would describe it.

Ben: 2:11:55

Yeah. Not like Xena Princess wearer, but more modern

Gene: 2:11:58

To some extent, like, that was, there's a lot of makeup there. There's a lot of makeup and wire work involved because Lucy Lawless was not, not a weightlifter, she was not like a, a sports person. She was you know, she's typical outdoorsy chick for sure, but she, she was not like an extreme athlete or something like that.

Ben: 2:12:18

Now Claudia back did make a, make a appearance on Xena Warrior Princess back

Gene: 2:12:24

really? I didn didn't know that.

Ben: 2:12:24

Yeah. Back in, back in 2000. She played Karina and it was episode lifeblood for

Gene: 2:12:30

Hmm. Well, she's Australian and they filmed that show in New Zealand, so that makes sense.

Ben: 2:12:35

Yeah. She was also on Farscape Stargate SG one. Well, that's N C I S. Yeah.

Gene: 2:12:40

I didn't see her in nc, but the character she plays in, in, in Farscape and in Stargate is similar in their kind of snarky personalities.

Ben: 2:12:50

She's all, she also plays in Rick and she also plays in Rick and Morty, which makes sense. Yeah.

Gene: 2:12:55

I did not know that

Ben: 2:12:56

she's, she's Mar Marsha the vent, vent wide quiver. And she does their, their voices.

Gene: 2:13:02

Ah, I don't, I don't watch that show. I know a lot of people like it, but I've never gotten into it

Ben: 2:13:06

Yeah. But, All right. Well, I do

Gene: 2:13:08

anyway. Well, we just talked for another half hour, but that's all right. So there you go. Hopefully everybody enjoys. Now we have a replacement, Ben, this episode, but you know, one Ben's good and is another, That's the way I look at it.

Ben: 2:13:18

Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Gene: 2:13:20

Yeah. Good to have you on. Maybe we'll have you come back some point in time. Have fun with the new toys, the new guns. That's always enjoyable to start getting something in. In fact, I just bought just the last comment related to guns, cuz I forgot to mention it. I just ordered something I've been teetering on getting for probably 25 years, but finally got lazy enough to order is I, I I just got an, a commercial ultrasonic cleaner

Ben: 2:13:45

Oh yeah. That's a, that's a must have.

Gene: 2:13:47

mm-hmm. and I've, I've always like, nah, it's not worth the money. I'll just do cleaning di old fashioned way. But at this point I'm like, fuck it, I'm gonna buy one.

Ben: 2:13:56

Yeah. I'll say that's one of the perks of, of having ownership of a, a range is, is having access to that without having to buy it.

Gene: 2:14:03

Yeah,

Ben: 2:14:04

Well, I, I, I guess I bought it, but in, in, you know, with corporate

Gene: 2:14:08

hopefully profits bought it, not you,

Ben: 2:14:10

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So,

Gene: 2:14:12

So I'm, I'm looking forward to having that. I actually, I had a range that was close to me. Would clean your gun for 20 bucks. And so I utilized that quite a bit. I just bring my guns to them, but they just jack those prices up to 55 bucks and I'm like, Fuck that.

Ben: 2:14:28

Yeah. For something that's probably already been paid off long ago, so.

Gene: 2:14:33

Yep. All right, man. Appreciate you being on. So we'll, we'll be back probably like I mentioned to a twice a week schedule on Seine Speaks. And Ben and I will be on the new show and we'll definitely update you all. I, I will keep updating you all and, and putting links into this show with the URL to the new one, which is just to good old boys.com, I'll put in the actual link to the podcast page in there.