hit.

But let me give you, I think there are five reasons to think it's gonna get much worse.

The first is that the missiles, these are ballistic missiles that are being launched by Russia against Ukraine.

They go up and down.

They don't go sideways.

Russia is increasing the number of those things And they're on the order of allegedly 1,300 a year.

Every one of those carries an enormous punch.

People are more... using it in their everyday lives? Are you worried about it sort of having an effect on society, making people use it like a crutch, like a mental crutch, or breaking down interpersonal relations? Are you worried about its societal impacts, not just its impacts on war?

[laughs]

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's certain boxes obviously that you need to check.

Um, you know, I think genetically was one thing that we wanted to continue to work on when we got here to be able to get better.

Just, you know, the right types of, uh, the right body types.

Um, you know, guys who could obviously, um, you know, hold the point.

They had enough strength, they had enough power.

you know, to the history, how do you prep, uh, for a game against a team you haven't played often?

And for the people that haven't followed it closely, what are the main points of that bill?

Well, I mean, you look at there's a judge now that's talking about, I think it's in Louisiana, that's ruling potentially that guys who are in pro camps can come back.

There's just no eligibility standards.

The unlimited transfer thing is just graduation rates are plummeting because of it.

So it would have set a framework for for the NCA to actually enforce those rules, right? A five-year eligibility, one-time free transfer.

There's some other stuff in there.

Those are the key things, but really the whole idea is to preserve women's sports, Olympic sports, the non-revenue sports, because if you're losing all your...

Did you have any birdies, any highlights, anything that will stand out outside of striping one down the middle on the No. 1 tee with the No. 1 player in the world watching?

Can you talk about the, like, what's the point of the Protect College Sports Act? Where do you stand on this?

Yeah.

So basically you look at college sports is a, is a uniquely American institution.

There isn't anything like this anywhere in the world.

And college football is the number two most watched sport in the country behind the NFL.

And so a lot of people obviously have interest in it.

You also have 500,000 student athletes across the country.

Do you talk to many Democrats on Capitol Hill, Senator Schmidt, who do have common sense, maybe more behind closed doors than they are willing to do in front of a crowd or a podium?

I mean, how do you sit going into this new year? Was the focus put on that? Were you able to find the athletes you were looking for? I mean, give me an evaluation of the offseason here.

Yeah, great question.

I think that ultimately is, you know, the process part that you're talking about, you know, those games that you play in the fall, like those are data points for your process and how you're going about, you know, the things in your building every single day throughout the year.

So I think the first thing is, you know, Joel, we left the field, you know, in Texas in December was being able to keep really our guys, you know, retain our locker room.

I think that's a huge piece of it here, you know, in this day and age of college athletics is making sure that, that you can keep the guys that you've poured into.

And, you know, we were able to do a good job of that.

I think especially, you know, having our quarterbacks all come back, like that's sometimes the hardest part.

But are they anxious? Are they ready to start saddling up and getting back to work at this?

Do you feel as though his legacy is kind of being a little bit more aggressive on the military side? Is that an accurate assessment of who he was and what was the foundation for his purposes behind that position?

Well, I mean, look, he believes in American strength.

There's no doubt about that.

Now, he and I differed a little bit on when and where and how and for how long.

You know, that was sort of, I guess, and some of that's generational.

And he and I talked about it.

So I'm not talking about school.

the republicans to see budgets in illinois right

Why do you think that is, Eric?

Uh, 1000%, I would say relationships, Jack.

I just think, um, you know, and our guys, there's a number of guys on our team that were, you know, fielding calls way, you know, um, even before the season started.

I mean, that's how crazy it can be right now, just kind of how unregulated things are.

But, uh, I just think the guys really, number one, feel like, um, they're getting developed here.

You know, how we pour into them, that's, that's a, a huge piece to everybody's job here is, is to pour into the guys in between the white lines.

I just feel like they, they, they see the improvement.

You know, when you develop that, Schmitty, is it 33%, uh, classroom film study, 33% repetition physically practicing, or is it 33% baptism by fire, put 'em in the game and let 'em learn by mistakes in the game? When you're developing raw, quote, unquote, "raw talent", Schmitty, what, what is the breakdown? That, that's my, that was my question on that.

What I'd love to know is tap into a little bit of your experience in terms of like, what are the habits, the mindset or the behaviors that you consistently see at such a high level working with these athletes?

Hmm.

Yeah, man, it's it's I think it's a it's a mixture of what you would probably expect in a high, you know, high performance environment where there are certainly individuals who are like innately skilled, you know, who have.

these, these talents that are just, they, they supersede like logic, you know, it's just like, I don't know how, how this, this happened for you to be so gifted at these particular skills.

So school is a huge variable that I think separates a lot of people, but some of the underlying elements there of being in a high performance environment, I think you, you find people that are highly critical of things that surround their abilities.

So when I say that, I think of like, you know, going from, I've always felt like I can be a pretty personable, you know, I'm pretty personable with people.

I didn't have a ton of trouble in this industry navigating like connection with many diverse athletes, especially in college.

yeah.

But do you think the government should rule this or it should be done by the tech companies or which authority should do it? And the second question is, is it more an international issue? Can you actually do it within national boundaries or is it an international thing? So should it be even some international body deciding about this or what should be the outcome for that? Do you have any take on

that? We appear to be getting rid of globalization for a while.

And so it's probably better to talk on a per country basis.

Perhaps the EU will be a group.

This is in my view very bad, so I'm not endorsing it in any way.

But let me speak to the domestic issues.

I come down in this debate on the absolute importance of freedom of speech, which I define as speech that I don't like.

Do you think there are a lot of competing algorithms out there where you can switch from one to the next? Or is it one big algorithm controlling that? So how do you see that dimension?

All right, so what did take place? This was legislation that's been written up? Tell us what's in it and then where it goes next.

Yeah, so this is the first real bipartisan piece of legislation that kind of addresses the full gamut.

Some of the things that we've talked about on the show before, which is the two – kind of relevant pieces to addressing the chaos in college sports.

And as a zooming out, why is Congress involved? It's a great question.

The answer is that it's the only entity on the planet that can grant antitrust exemption status to the NCAA or other governing body to set the rules.

Because right now, they can't set any rules on eligibility.

They can't set any rules on transfer.

Do you anticipate the conferences, especially the SEC and the Big Ten, going along with this? Do you expect them to fight you on it or to play along with it?

All right, so what did take place? This was legislation that's been written up? Tell us what's in it and then where it goes next.

Yeah, so this is the first real bipartisan piece of legislation that kind of addresses the full gamut.

Some of the things that we've talked about on the show before, which is the two kind of relevant pieces to addressing...

The chaos in college sports.

And as a zooming out, why is Congress involved? It's a great question.

The answer is that it's the only entity on the planet that can grant antitrust exemption status to the NCAA or other governing body to set the rules.

Because right now, they can't set any rules on eligibility.

Do you anticipate the conferences, especially the SEC and the Big Ten, going along with this? Do you expect them to fight you on it or to play along with it?

Now, if we have 430 Americans and entities that are conservative or Republican, uh, getting subpoenaed and getting financial information and getting communication information, could, co- you're, you used to be the AG of Missouri, you tell me, is that legal?

Uh, of course not.

And actually ...

So I was chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association at the time that they subpoenaed the records of that organization.

It was just one of hundreds they were targeting, including Turning Point.

And I think it's important, um, Sean, to put this in context, like, you have, of course, the spying, the Russiagate to try to prevent him from getting in office the first time, then they launder that through the intelligence agencies to sideline President Trump in his first term.

Then you had the FBI engaged in the Hunter Biden laptop, which we uncovered in the Missouri versus Biden lawsuit, to keep him, you know, from having a second term.

And this isn't Comey, but, uh, it is another example where, you know, who's gonna finally be held accountable?

What are the goals of the proceedings today?

Well, I think the assassination of Charlie Kirk brought left-wing political violence, um, really front- front and center, and I think it needs to be exposed.

This- this isn't a one-off thing.

This is sort of an ideology that's taken hold now.

When you have 25% of those who describe themselves as very liberal believe political violence justified, over 55% of those on the left believe it's at least somewhat justifiable to, uh, assassinate President Trump, there's a problem.

And I think if we're ever gonna get in the other side of this and get to healing where we can say, "Free speech, yes, political violence, no," we have to expose the truth, which is that this is overwhelmingly coming from one side.

Democrats say that's unfair, but what's the truth here? Is there actual imbalance in terms of violence in the US?

Well, I think that's part of the hearing.

(claps)

And the, the-... and, and I love all these people who say, "Well, we'll..." You know, the warmongering talk.

Be careful what you wish for, because the other side gets a vote.

When I started working and, and trying to understand what Ukraine was doing, U- uh, Russia was pushed back, and they've come back with a very, very strong second and third round.

So, the enemy gets a vote in this situation.

Uh, but t- but to go on, uh, the rough way in which war will evolve is first, things will have to be very, very mobile, and very much not in fixed places.

This takes out most of the military infrastructure that exists in the world.

Uh, some of the historic values of the West seem to be un- you know, kind of under a, a, a state of transformation right now.

Your take on this committee hearing, and, uh, then I wanna get into your NatCon speech.

Yeah.

Look, I think, um, Maha is rising.

Um, in...

For good reason, because I think what the American people saw, particularly during COVID, the lies that were pedaled by the medical establishment, um, by the CDC, um, by all these public health officials who, you know, on one hand said you couldn't go outside but it was okay to riot at a Black Lives Matter protest, that's okay.

I mean, they lost complete credibility.

And what RFK Jr.'s trying to do, what the Trump administration's trying to do, is restore the credibility by telling the American people the truth.

Please, the floor is yours.

Is there any appetite in the Senate conference to make changes to our legal immigration system as we have this, this very unique majority?

majority?Yeah, so I've got a bill actually, Charlie, (clears throat) that we want to make a priority that would expand the expedited review in which allows you to get rid of people who've been here.

Right now, you're kind of limited to people who've been here for two years or less for expedited removal.

Um, we want to expand that, larger classes, longer period of time, so that more people can be, um, you know, deported quicker.

Um, I think that would have a lot of support in our conference.

But let's not forget too, kind of going back to the Big Beautiful Bill, there's funding in here for more detention beds, more resources for mass deportations.

That's what we need.

Mm-hmm.

Tell us about it.

Yeah, I mean, um, she, we were actually honestly working on this, um, on this remittance, um, reform, so the House put...

We don't ha- like right now, if you're an illegal immigrant and you send money back to Mexico, there's no tax on that, right? So in the House version they put a three and a half percent tax on that.

We were already working to double that, like, on the Senate side as that's come over here.

That's a, that's, I've filed that bill, that's an issue that's important to me, I think it does a couple things we can talk about like discourage illegal immigration and fairness, 'cause a lot of these folks are being paid under the table, and, um, they oughta, you know, like Americans pay taxes, they should pay taxes too.

And then the, the president of Mexico issues this threat that if, like, if this remittance tax goes in, you know, we're gonna rise up.

It was ju- it was very strange, um, and so I went on X and said, "Well, that's interesting.

I don't want to speculate too much, but are they threatening the United States of America?

They discuss what, if any, are the limits of AI, ethical questions about its rising use across various sectors, and why the AI revolution, as Eric puts it, is under-hyped.

Eric Schmidt, thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

You said the arrival of non-human intelligence is a very big deal.

What did you see that the rest of us might have missed? In 2016, we didn't understand what was now going to happen, but we understood that these algorithms were new and powerful.

There was a new move invented by AI in a game that had been around for 2,500 years that no one had ever seen.

Technically, the way this occurred was that the system of AlphaGo was p- uh, was essentially organized to always maintain a greater than 50% chance of winning.

[laughs]

Is that the gist?

So that's how we started, and it turns out that the universe of successful characteristics appears to break out fairly early.

It appears that at age 15 or so, you can begin to identify these exceptional people, and that furthermore, the current systems tend to reward a very specific kind of intelligence.

We know it collectively as the SAT problem.

You know, you're brilliant at doing SATs and you're not particularly good at anything else.

And so through your research and others, what we came to was sort of a list which was brilliance, integrity, empathy, and perseverance.

We concluded that you needed all four, not just one, to really get to the pinnacle.

I think this idea that the straw man is often this either/or dichotomy where either you have individual agency and individuals matter, or structures matter, and societally-created affordances matter, I agree with you, is really actually both/and, right? But I think it's pervasive that people think if you're talking about finding a few young people to make a difference in the world, then you must actually not care about structural change.

More broadly, I know that you have to keep your cards close to your chest, but if we're talking about an increase in the defense budget, where else can these cuts come from?

Sure.

And, um, and you're right.

I think that, um, it's coming into focus now.

We spend more, we spend a trillion dollars a year on the interest on that $36 trillion debt.

That's only gonna grow as some of these things become more matur- mature and they need to be refinanced, um, with higher interest rates over the last few years because of high inflation, right? So that problem is only gonna get more significant unless we can find real savings.

I think there, there's two ways to look at this.

How is, how are your major industries in Missouri thinking about these tariffs? And what is your message to some of the audience that might be a little worried that, uh, tariffs might be, mean higher prices, uh, and that we might have a little bit of, uh, economic uncertainty coming down the, the, the, coming down the next couple of months?