What's Saudi Arabia's relationship with China? This is something I have no idea you guys are much more qualified. I don't know a ton about this either. The whole, I mean, I'm totally riffing because I love this shit, dude. I know you do. Your entire Khaliji Arab oil-rich area, right? Your UAEs, your Saudi Arabias, your Kuwaits, Omans, Bahrains, that whole center of the world where oil comes out of the ground in the water, right? Where nothing but oil and fig come out of the ground, right? That, or not fig. Poppy. Oil and dates, oil and dates, right? That was the first, probably most pragmatic place in the planet, right? You're talking about Bedouin Arabs who before 1955 had nothing. They had nothing. There was no natural resource in the desert until the British came and found oil and then started signing deals with families to drill rights to their oils. And that's when everything exploded, right? 1970 something was when you really saw the Middle East transform. They are absolutely super pragmatic. They understand more than any of us that they have a natural resource and the natural resource has a limited time span. And when that natural resources time span is up, the whole world's going to leave them again because that's where they started. If you think about it, the same generation is alive today in UAE that was also alive when they had nothing there. So within one generation, our grandfathers are old enough to have seen the entire transformation of their country from sand to Dubai. Yeah. Wow. Fast. Fast. That's insane. So they know that as soon as that oil is gone, they're going to go right back to dust again, which is why they're trying to find a way to diversify their investments. So their goal is to maximize the resource while they have it. So what's their relationship with China? Whatever is going to get them maximum resources. Right. If you remember, again, ideology. What did Biden get elected on a campaign trail? A campaign promises about what with Saudi Arabia? Do you guys remember? no more no u.s production right so basically was just going to and then he had to call 100 yeah look like an idiot something after yeah yep yeah his policy promises on his election campaign were that he's going to hold saudi arabia accountable for their human rights abuses for their sexism and for their uh their price jiggering with oil right that lasted for about two and a half years until we sanctioned russian oil and the world needed oil and then he reached out to Saudi Arabia and said, hey guys, we need your help. That was just over a year. Yeah. That wasn't that long. Complete reversal of the policy promises he had running into office. Saudi Arabia was like, sure, we're here for you. We know you were talking shit about us two years ago. It's okay. We talk shit about you every day, but we've got oil. You need it. And we know if China needs oil, we got them too. And I mean, look, there is a real grip there. They got sincere mbs in particular he got sincere coverage on the jamal khashoggi thing i mean that was the most obvious like killing a journalist on the foreign soil insane and nothing happened to him you know the sanctions were minimal other nations just said very very bad mbs don't do that again he goes yeah bet okay but that it it just goes to show you you said it on a podcast a long time ago but it it really simplified the worldview for me gdp is the only thing that matters gdp is what drives the world, man. Yeah. And every country knows that and they learned it from watching us. We were listening to a country music song. What was that country music song? It was Rodney Atkins Watching You Watching You Yeah The whole The whole song is about a kid watching his dad and the dad recognizing that the kid picks up his cool habits but also picks up his bad habits yeah and he's like oh it's like an aha moment for dads my kids watching me who sings it rodney atkins yeah it's a great song it's a really sweet song but it applies here too because the whole world has been watching the united states so the that that we've done that works, guess what they're going to start mimicking? Guess what they've been mimicking? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The global war on terror was a war that we invested in and we forced our NATO allies to come along with us. You know who didn't participate in the global war on terror? China and Russia. So what did they do for 20 years while we were balls deep in Afghanistan and Iraq? They built. They built. They hacked. They progressed. They spied. They stole. Yep. They did everything that we were too distracted to catch. Wow. And then we pulled ourselves out pulled our heads out of our asses in 2022 and we were like oh shit we got a problem surprise surprise you pull your head out of your ass and you see shit everywhere social credit scores having glenn yeah before you go to that my buddy eric zuliger oh shit yeah he just messaged me uh right after we took our break if you haven't discovered your natural born spy skills then somebody else might be using theirs against you cia teaches us that there are only three types of people in the world. Those who motivate, those who manipulate, and those who are being controlled by one of the other two. I created a three-minute CIA-style quiz to help you unlock your secret psychological advantage and identify your hidden blind spot. This test was developed to help you weaponize your natural-born gifts and use them to get ahead of 99% of people in power, wealth, and purpose. It was also designed to make sure that you can protect yourself against those who would use their skills against you. All you have to do is click on the first link in the description below or scan the QR code on your screen to start your spy quiz now. I want you to discover your secret spy superpower and use it for good before somebody else uses their power against you. And he just said, yo, can I pass a question off to one of the guys you're in the podcast with right now? I have a little bit of a Turkish problem. I got... A little bit. A little bit. Do you know the backstory of this kid? No. we'll get to it go ahead yeah yeah i got detained again and ran i got detained again at an airport between sarajevo sarajevo sarajevo and athens and i have no clue who to talk to not getting detained again i called the u.s embassy and they were like so what did you do i went to sarajevo who the fuck goes he said he said also they took my phone for like two hours so i'm assuming it's loaded with spyware what we just fucking want to see what your idiot is you know exactly erdogan rules erdogan rules whatever that well that andy he should probably get rid of that phone now so that phone was cloned that phone's not covered in firmware spyware it's been cloned that's that's been duplicated that's things yeah and it's and the numbers and the contact list and all that's whatever he must fit it he must fit a pattern of life profile that has to that turned them on him well he was just on he was just on our podcast He's coming on mine. But yeah. Yeah. What's he do for a living? Give the backstory, Danny. This is wild. So he is a journalist who was writing a book on countries that don't exist. So he traveled to all these crazy countries. He was living in Turkey for a while where he was a teacher. Kurdistan. Some autonomous region in... Liberland. Liberland. Somaliland. Somaliland. I want you guys to picture if Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Seth Rogen had a baby and it lived in Europe and traveled to a bunch of countries that aren't recognized, this is your guy. You mean like, so is that a chunky white guy? Am I right? Yes. Chunky white guy with red hair? He got curly hair Almost Okay Yeah Okay Getting detained in Turkey He was detained once This is the second time he been detained in Turkey He was detained once four years ago because they were on the, or five years ago, because they were on a train and they said, where are you from? And he said, Kurdistan. And apparently that was a big no-no in Turkey. Oh yeah, because you said he was a teacher in Turkey and a teacher in? Kurdistan. Kurdistan. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of reasons he's detained. and Albania so first of all now he's an Albanian citizen where is he okay so he's from California from California yeah is he a US citizen too yes US citizen and gained Albanian citizenship he went into the Peace Corps which you would know something about yes that's how he ended up over there they didn't want him apparently yeah allegedly they didn't want him they want him now so I would recommend a new line of work and a new home base other than Turkey this dude needs to be operating out of Spain Portugal Yep. He needs to stop going back and forth to Turkey for sure. Why do you like Portugal? Because you'll never fucking, never have an issue. Permissive. It's a permissive place to be. If he's going to be traveling to shit, I mean, where he's going is, essentially it's like wearing white pants and walking through mud. Got it, yeah. So then everybody sees the mud on the pants because they're looking at his pants. He needs to go to a country where they don't look at pants. They look at shirts. Yep. That's exactly right. We could still do his same work, but no more issues. But if you're an investigative journalist of any type with experience in Kurdistan where you are actively traveling in and out of areas of high tension, which is all of the Somali land and everything else. And then you have a footprint as a teacher in Turkey that looks like a cover. And then you change your fucking citizenship. If he's traveling in and out in the same name with two different passports, sometimes he's American going in and out and sometimes he's Albanian going in and out. like he looks super super sketchy he was also in the middle of he was in the middle of some sort of big protest in syria okay well there you go so he's really helping it stop going stop going to turkey stop going to go to fucking go to georgia if what he's looking for go to albania if you want a cheap place to operate if that's why he's in turkey he lives in albania why is he going to why is he in turkey because he's you know crazy stop flying through istanbul what is yeah what's the reason behind the turkey detainments he's one of those guys who wants to put his finger on well he's golden hot coffee long enough just to see when it burns well he's he shouldn't be texting yeah he's good yeah well yeah and that's the other thing if he's texting you with the phone you should just toss yours out too fuck yeah son of a bitch and please don't forward anything to oh my god it's probably some guy named like fucking conter on the other end of that text You're going to get something better. Here's what you're going to text this fucking guy. Oh my God. He shouldn't, so the good news is he shouldn't be in danger. No, definitely not in danger. He'll get detained. Worst case scenario, he might get detained for multiple days while an investigation gets carried out, but he's not going to come up with dirty hands. There's not going to be any dirty laundry to hold him or put him under arrest. But his life is going to be very inconvenient if he keeps going to Turkey. The whole internet seems to think he's a spy. I genuinely don't. Oh, well, all right. So there's published pieces of the fact that people think he's a spy. Well, it's comments. It's not published. It's comments. But still, it's out there. I genuinely, and I'm just a guy, but I don't think he is. Well, he did work for private intelligence in the U.S. for a while. Yes. He was analyzing terrorist beheading videos. Open source is terrible. I feel bad for those guys. Poor Eric. I hope you get out of there, buddy. Anyway, social credit scores. so continuing on on eric eric that's 13 grand oh wait your part that's 26 000 um i guess the question is i think we talked about this a little bit before but how extensive that fucking smell of salt is still going Yeah it still going How extensive is that in China versus what we are seeing through the videos that purport to show how deep it is? How real is that? It's a real thing. There's a cultural term for that. Oh, I lost it. It's like Huejo or something like that. Your actual social credit score. It's a very real thing. It's like our resume or like our credit score. that anybody i just i just i just bought property recently they ran a credit score credit check right it's a very real thing in china you can't leave one municipality to work in another municipality you can't get accepted to college you can't get certain levels of jobs depending on this social score it sounds like some sort of travesty and total injustice to us but we have the exact same thing just somewhere else right you have a credit score if you if you you're not going to get hired by a big company if you haven't got a four-year degree we have the same thing here it's but if you're talking about like they're trying to they're saying like oh we're going to move to a totally cashless society we're already very digital obviously but like you know once you get to things like that it's like oh if you don't if you have a bad carbon footprint they won't let you buy food at the food store or you know what i mean it could get to that type of dystopian thing sometimes i feel like that stuff is a bit of an over alarm bell on social media it's not practical it's not practical this is a problem of social media yeah they come up with dystopian shit that's not practical what is practical what they do in the uae and saudi arabia right now they just auto fine you can you explain that yeah you you did a naughty thing your credit card is already tied to your national id which is already tied to your license plate so when you speed too fast on the highway they just auto bill you and pull money right out of your credit account and it goes right into their tax account you don't have to sign there's no permission there's no nothing it's like it's like you just got pulled over ticketed and you went to court already to pay the fine only did it all in a half a second they don't have an appeals court do they yeah it's it's not very good well it's crazy because we're i mean we're already doing this to a level with like insurance like with car insurance they make you put these trackers now in your glove box or like if you want a discount if you want to pay less for your car insurance well we'll just track you everywhere you go in your car and people say that they're going to do this with health insurance where you want to discount your health insurance, wear one of these iWatches and we'll track your heart rate 24 seven and you'll be able to get 20% off. Right, except we have a choice. That's the difference, yeah. We have the choice of being like, oh, then I'll just pay full price, right? But there they don't. Most people are going to take a discount. Then that's okay. Yeah. Like that's the other thing where, yeah, when you're chasing a budgetary life, poverty mindset, you'll cut any corner and that's a predictable human behavior. So you can't blame the government for people doing what they're going to do anyways. That's how business runs. But in the case of like, is China going to start denying people the ability to buy groceries? No. They're just going to bill them automatically and increase the GDP. You said two nasty words about Xi Jinping. That's 150 UN. Boom. You have no say, no appeal. It's gone. That is dystopian. It's completely dystopian. It's also not America, so I don't give a fuck. It's interesting though, with tracking, you know, just in that, in your instance, right, the car insurance, health insurance, gathering information. Oh, yeah. Right? Who knows who the fuck is doing that? Or who they're going to sell to. Exactly. So that's the scarier part. Yeah, the inconvenience of, but hey, I need to save 200 bucks. I'm like, help my car insurance this year. Next year. Next. Okay, you know, I'll take a chance. Roll the dice. Thank you.
