Yeah.

I had a very personal encounter with that politicization in Vietnam.

It was one of the reasons I decided not to stay in the Army.

And believe me, they made very lucrative offers to those of us who were trained as case officers because they spent so much time training us.

But the headquarters got in the way of my intelligence analysis, and I just thought it was completely politicization and left.

So, you know, it goes on and not necessarily partisan, it's organizational, top-down management.

But we're losing very good people.

I couldn't agree more with you.

Yeah.

I had a very personal encounter with that politicization in Vietnam.

It was one of the reasons I decided not to stay in the Army.

And believe me, they made very lucrative offers to those of us who were trained as case officers because they spent so much time training us.

But the headquarters got in the way of my intelligence analysis, and I just thought it was completely politicization and left.

So, you know, it goes on and not necessarily partisan, it's organizational, top-down management.

But we're losing very good people.

I couldn't agree more with you.

How did, how did you know that? How did, how does, how does some-- 'cause nobody else picked it up.

If you are, uh, as, uh, internet br- uh, brain poison pilled as I am, and you spend as much time on Twitter as I do, which is not something I'd recommend to any of your, uh, viewers, um, you get a sense of what is written by AI, and you can sort of see the recursive, um, patterns of speech that AI likes to use, and there's a few telltale signs.

I wasn't the only one, I'll say, to, um, notice that the Druckenmiller op-ed had laced through it, really from the beginning to the end of the op-ed, the sort of language that AI likes to write in.

And it's this...

And it's not just the use of em dashes, it's the sort of sentence construction that is replicated across different AI models and become sort of easy to spot once you see people using it enough.

Um, but I was the only reporter to say, "Hey, I have this guy's number.

I'm gonna call him and say, 'Did you write this with AI?'" And I don't know if The Wall Street Journal asked, but if it was obvious to me, I'd be shocked if it wasn't obvious to them.

Did he really take aim at the right person with his, with the, the central heart of what he was talking about?

How did, how did you know that? How did, how does, how does some- 'cause nobody else picked it up.

If you are, uh, as, uh, internet br- uh, brain poison pilled as I am and you spend as much time on Twitter as I do, which is not something I'd recommend to any of your, uh, viewers, um, you get a sense of what is written by AI, and you can sort of see the recursive, um, patterns of speech that AI likes to use, and there's a few telltale signs.

I wasn't the only one, I'll say, to, um, notice that the Druckenmiller op-ed had laced through it, really from the beginning to the end of the op-ed, the sort of language that AI likes to write in, and it's this...

And it's not just the use of em dashes, it's the sort of sentence construction that is replicated across different AI models and becomes sort of easy to spot once you see people using it enough.

Um, but I was the only reporter to say, "Hey, I have this guy's number.

I'm gonna call him and say, 'Did you write this with AI?'" And I don't know if The Wall Street Journal asked, but if it was obvious to me, I'd be shocked if it wasn't obvious to them.

And, and I think even more surprising in some ways than the fact that Druckenmiller used AI to write this was that The Wall Street Journal then came out and said yesterday, "We're actually okay with this.

Did he really take aim at the right person with his, with the, the central heart of what he was talking about?

Sure.

I think the, the why it matters is huge, huge, huge, huge, huge parts of the American economy are incredibly, incredibly sensitive, uh, to th- this financial indicator that seems totally abstract and, um, sort of beyond what most people understand.

And basically, the way this works is that borrowing prices are tied to the amount the Treasury Department pays in response to, um, uh, issuing debt.

But it's basically Treasury says, like, issues an IOU that says, "I will pay you back at this rate over this amount of time if you, a private borrower, buy my debt in exchange for immediate cash." And that percentage, that rate that Treasury pays on that IOU, is the benchmark for an, an impossibly large amount of borrowing in the US economy, including mortgages, car loans, your credit card rates.

So it really has a very sort of visceral, immediate impact on millions of small businesses that might want a loan, millions of homeowners that might be trying to, you know, buy their first house, millions of, um, students who are trying to get student loans if it's not... you know, if they don't have a federal, uh, benefit.

And, and then there's sort of a second potential sort of macroeconomic impact that could imp- impact sort of you directly.

And, and that is the higher, um, these yields get, they're called, the sort of that IOU spread is the yields.

Uh, what could we expect to see from the admin?

Just can you walk us through your reporting on this and what you found?

Yeah.

One, you know, uh, upside to not being at The Washington Post is there aren't, you know, 30 other tech reporters that, uh, are also competing on this story, and so it was relatively easy for me to, um, perk up here and say, "I, I wanna look into this." And I think what I found pretty quickly, and we discussed this a little bit, but There's sort of a gap between what people who are seeing this every day have gotten accustomed to and what someone, you know, who has the benefit of fresh eyes like I do in this, in this, uh, field sort of are being told, and it's, it's-- the gap is, is enormous.

And, you know, I started doing one conversation with one guy.

He seemed, like, a little hysterical.

[chuckles] And I thought, "Okay, well maybe that's just one guy," you know? And then I talked to another guy and another guy, and sort of across the labs, and also, you know, people who are in academia and close to the labs and, and follow this stuff well, you really get a sense of the, the sort of sense of, um, shock and, and really hysteria that I think is not being sort of well communicated, um, from the media, um, to the public.

The degree to which the people in the labs, and really in just the last month or two, have said the capacities of these things, the capabilities, and people have been understandably skeptical for a long time.

But when you're talking to people and interviewing them, one's hysterical and you go, "Well, hey, maybe that's just one person." I go, "No, no, no, they're the same level of hysteria." What are they-- what are these professionals, kind of hardened professionals in this industry, what are they specifically hysterical about?

Just can you walk us through your reporting on this and what you found?

Yeah, one upside to not being at the Washington Post is there aren't 30 other tech reporters that are also competing on this story.

And so it was relatively easy for me to perk up here and say, I want to look into this.

And I think what I found pretty quickly, and we discussed this a little bit, but there's sort of a gap between what people who are seeing this every day have gotten accustomed to and what someone who has the benefit of fresh eyes like I do in this field sort of are being told.

And the gap is enormous.

And You know, I started doing one conversation with one guy.

He seemed like a little hysterical.

What are these professionals, kind of hardened professionals in this industry, what are they specifically hysterical about?

So, I mean, is that a pretty fair assessment as kind of like the general vibe of the story crafters podcast when folks listen?

Yeah.

So we while we're not an actual play and while we did want it to feel really homey and everything, it's just kind of baked into me with what I do to kind of market things a little bit to like, hey, this is a really natural way of like how shows flow.

And so I wanted each section.

So we have like, we have a, always have an intro, like you, you know, you have your intro song, you have your thing, whatever we do a little, we do to keep it D and D oriented.

I thought it'd be really fun if we rolled initiative and, Yes.

Yeah.

And as they enter inside, what is it that they see? Describe the inside of this tavern to me.

Hmm.

But the, uh, head of the ODNI apportions the budget and can say, "We ought to emphasize more on this, de-emphasize that, put more people into counterintelligence or counterterrorism, less people into human intelligence.

We should integrate AI into intelligence." That's a very big cutting edge field right now, using AI.

We should spend more on signals intercepts, eavesdropping on foreign conversations.

That's what the ODNI is supposed to do, and it's staffed by a lot of people from these agencies who lend their expertise to the director of national intelligence and say, "Well, this is working, but that isn't working." Uh, also, the ODNI has some control or direction over the Defense Department covert programs, uh, military intelligence, and, uh, spending in science and technology, which is a very important wing that's gotten some bad publicity recently [laughs] because a senior executive in science and technology caught with, with gold bars in his basement and so on, and was running a made-up covert action program.

So it's a big, big job, and it takes not only experience with intelligence, but bureaucratic experience, too.

How to pull together these, uh, all these horses, pull them together, and make them pull the sled in the same direction.

W- what do you think somebody who was more effective than Tulsi Gabbard could do, uh, you know, in this job?

Give us a little bit on that.

Yeah, for sure.

The, um, well, one of the decisions we made early on was to, um, get off of the freshwater wells that were supplying the irrigation system.

Um, so there's, you know, with all the coastal development, uh, those, um, those freshwater aquifers, uh, that travel all the way up from Northern Florida up through, uh, coast Georgia, uh, we decided, you know, we're kind of, kind of, uh, set an example here, being in the state park, being a state resource and, just go for a saltwater tolerant grass type.

And also by that means changing our irrigation source to this coastal lake.

There's like a 28 acre coastal lake that the golf course plays adjacent to and in and around.

So that's where we pull our irrigation water now, which is kind of a, you know, it's a, it's a slightly salty, you know, it's, it's not sweet water anymore, but it's just slightly salty, you know, briny water.

So when you guys like consciously knowing that, know four is going to be four and five and that stretch is going to get all the the publicity um how do you like i guess i didn't even think about like how to frame it as a question but how do you protect it against it just being like this just gets you out to four and really uh doing something unique or setting up the tone of the course uh in those opening couple of holes

Hmm.

But the, uh, head of the ODNI apportions the budget and can say, "We ought to emphasize more on this, de-emphasize that, put more people into counterintelligence or counterterrorism, less people into human intelligence.

We should integrate AI into intelligence." That's a very big cutting edge field right now using AI.

We should spend more on signals intercepts, eavesdropping on foreign conversations.

That's what the ODNI is supposed to do, and it's staffed by a lot of people from these agencies who lend their expertise to the Director of National Intelligence and say, "Well, this is working, but that isn't working." Uh, also, the ODNI has some control or direction over the Defense Department covert programs, uh, military intelligence, and, uh, spending in science and technology, which is a very important wing that's gotten some bad publicity recently because [laughs] a senior executive in science and technology caught with, with gold bars in his basement and so on, and was running a made-up covert action program.

So it's a big, big job, and it takes not only experience with intelligence, but bureaucratic experience, too.

How to pull together these, uh, all these horses, pull them together, and make them pull the sled in the same direction.

W- what do you think somebody who was more effective than Tulsi Gabbard could do, uh, you know, in this job?

So Jeff, I mean, are you surprised to hear that clip and her just word for word repeating somebody else's statement?

Well, it was an extraordinary piece of reporting by John Swain, I must say.

The ties between Tulsi Gabbard and this rogue Hindu guru have been well known in Hawaii for a long time, not just her, but her family.

We reported, as you noted, back in twenty twenty-four about her ties to this.

What's new in the Washington Post reporting is the strong evidence that she took orders from this guy.

He was telling her what to say and what to do for years, going back to her congressional terms from Hawaii as a Democrat, as kind of a peacenik Democrat, a Bernie Sanders follower.

He was sending in the plays like the coach in the sideline in an NFL football game.

W- what do you think somebody who was more effective than Tulsi Gabbard could do, uh, you know, in this job?

But anyway, I

didn't get the internship.

What I did get from Tom was this very detailed email, and he's known for this.

Like if you write him, he'll write you back.

And I got this detailed email about where he was going to be in 2007, where I could find him, where I could visit him, on and on.

And I ended up choosing to meet him in Traverse City at his office.

And I did this sometime after actually I graduated.

But how do those two projects compare to each other?

Right.

There are a lot, there are...

A huge portion of the base is really riled up about data centers.

It's not seeing the benefit to them of this AI explosion and is pushing back.

I mean, I think we saw the head of the Michigan Republican Party express a new openness to data centers because at the ground level, the base of the Republican Party is extremely skeptical of this.

But then at the elite establishment level, the Trump administration, I'm not breaking any news here, is deeply intermeshed with the biggest tech companies Trump relied on, um, you know, the, the biggest players in this game, David Sacks and others, to set administration policy, and that administration policy has been very supportive.

And we're at a point now where because in part of that supportive policy, there's trillions and trillions of dollars.

W- what impact does this have on society? You know, how do you think people are going to, to take in this, this brave new world in terms of wealth that is already being created before our eyes?

A lecturer gave them the idea.

I can't imagine there's too many classes out there that are teaching Carl Lee.

It's a very bizarre sort of topic, a little kind of out there.

And I feel like myself and my colleague probably know all the people that are teaching on Carl Lee.

And they have no idea who has created the site.

I'm Jeff Stein.

I've been covering national security issues for about 40 years now.

It shared a number of details from intelligence agency sources.

So, tell us what you're hearing here.

So, the core of the problem here is that, you know, US interest rates are already very high, and the tax bill could add between, estimates vary, $2 to $5 trillion to the deficit.

And what that means is the US Treasury Department will have to go out and auction more bonds, auction more debt to cover up the gap between what the US government spends and what it brings in in revenue.

The problem is that we've already seen that there's a question about the demand among investors worldwide for these US assets.

And the big problem potentially, and, you know, it's really hard to know exactly what could happen, but what Wall Street is concerned about, what they're telling us, and what they're telling the Trump administration, is that if demand for new Treasury debt, these new bond issuances, is insufficient, you could see basically the US government have to increase the premium, the yield it's called, on what investors recoup in return.

So if there's, uh, insufficient demand, the price goes up.

Basically, what the US government has to pay to get people to buy this debt goes up.

Mm.

You know, how does that fit with a lot of the reporting that you have from behind the scenes?

Uh, I thought it was funny, uh, that the secretary used that phrase because, um, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, definitely no MAGA person, uh, in 2021 said, quote, "America first must not mean America alone," which is almost exactly what the current Treasury Secretary said.

I don't know if they realized that they had (laughs), you know, said something almost exactly what their predecessor had said or if it was just a, a coincidence.

I think, um, to your point, there have been a number of very high-profile fights in the last, sort of two or three weeks over the scope of the tariff policy.

And whereas previously, Peter Navarro, who is the, you know, uber-hawk who wants more and more and more confrontation, more and more trade barriers, more conflict with our international economic, uh, allies, has... was initially, sort of carrying the day in the initial round of tariff, um, debates, Bessent is actually, sort of on the ascendance.

And you can really see that in, um, sort of the, the tone and, and the message he's conveying there, which is so contrary to the actions that the White House was taking just a few weeks ago.

I mean, we imposed unilateral tariffs on every country essentially, dozens and dozens of countries, over 70 I think was the, was the final number.

I never had any plans to do so." So, what, what's going on behind that? Because I feel like his decision-making around the Fed is important for us to try and at least understand his mindset, with respect to tariffs or any of these other big things that he says.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I would have said if I was the Agriculture Secretary, even though the idea that a substantial proportion of, of trade could be rerouted through an island with, like, 12 penguins and no people on it is probably overblown.

Like, that's what she could have said in response.

Even, I mean, s- according to the trade experts I've spoken to, even more kind of shocking about this formula that they use to determine country-specific tariffs, which are different than the universal one that they applied on all countries, which we can talk about sort of the, um, the criticisms of and the very strong criticisms of, the, the country-specific tariffs hit countries based on essentially their trading deficit with the US.And so you have countries like Lesotho, which is a big miner... a diamond exporter to the US, which is an incredibly poor country.

Of course we buy more from Lesotho than they do from us.

That has nothing to do with the things that the White House and Trump are talking about as being the impetus of this global trade war, right? Because they're saying, look, which there is some truth to this part, that the US has, um, you know, is a global, uh, p- purchaser of stuff across the world, that we have a global trade imbalance, which is all true, that it is, you know, particularly bad with some countries like China, and that they want to do something about it.

But Lesotho is not a net, um, sender of exports to the US because they have a nefarious, um, currency arrangement-

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

While, while we have to take those issues seriously, I think it's worth saying that, you know, Trump has been very clear for over a year now that he sees tariffs as, um, able to do several different things.

These things or intention, he's-- The, sort of the most generous possible interpretation we can give him, I think, is that he views these, these goals, these separate goals for tariff policy as sort of, um, all, all worthwhile, but maybe not all worthwhile simultaneously, or maybe some can be accomplished and others can't, and that's okay.

So just to, to back up and, and try to explain this a little more clearly, Trump has said, I think, really, really importantly to understanding Trump's motives, that from his perspective, the US is getting screwed by the existing state of trade barriers, where they believe, with some reason we can get into why there's-- This is more complicated than they say, but that other countries have far higher import duties on our exports than we do on theirs.

So that's a-- that's clearly a goal, I think.

But there's also the goal of can we raise revenue? Because we know that Republicans are trying to pass $4 trillion in tax cuts, and Trump is not wrong that if you impose massive taxes on every import coming to the US, even though it would be devastating for a lot of poor Americans who depend on imports for cheap food and, and other necessities, it could raise a lot of money.

Now, these two [laughs] things don't mesh together.

It's like, "No, we're actually going to take your land, and mine your minerals, and let our oligarchs like buy up the pieces of your country that are gonna be valuable to them."

Give us your latest.

We understand that, you know, the president has so far imposed tariffs on about a trillion dollars worth of stuff, give or take.

He has said and put in motion plans to impose tariffs on an additional two trillion or so.

So I think people really need to, and I think part of what we saw in the markets today, was a realization that, that this is not necessarily bluster or a threat, that this is something that they are quite serious about following through on.

My sense from people in and near the White House is that there's a bit of a division between advisors who think that these tariffs can be used to negotiate a trade, a sort- some sort of trade or currency agreement that would a- allow the US to i- you know, increase exports, domestic exports.

But the Trump administration is sort of hopelessly double-booked on what the tariffs are for, right? They say it's for reaching deals, but they say it's also for revenue.

They say it's to close the deficit.

We're gonna be making T-shirts and phones and all of this stuff here." So- so the president has this right argument to make for people that come from the manufacturing world, but there's no one who stood up and said, "And now we're gonna make that stuff here, and for the same prices where you're- that same $200 TV at Walmart that you're getting that's made overseas, we're gonna make it here." Not one person.

Jeff, you know, y- you got terrific reporting on Elon Musk and all of his efforts here. How much of a change do you expect from what was announced today?

Yeah. Well, thanks for the kind words, and I just want to emphasize that while everything Jon is saying is completely correct, that Musk, um, seems to have been dealt a bit of a blow in, in the White House today, we know that Musk is not just dependent... and I think this is a really crucial point, is not just dependent on cabinet secretaries with independent power bases confirmed by the Senate to execute his agenda. And what I mean by that is that Doge has very successfully gotten Musk allies, Musk deputies installed at crucial sort of nodes of power within the government, whether that's the Social Security Administration where an ally of Musk is currently, um, the acting commissioner, the, um, General Services Administration which is in charge of all federal buildings, the, um, Office of Personnel Management. I could go on and on because this is sort of the, um, HR department for the government. Musk has people throughout the government that are kind of his people, and while, you know, it might be useful for Trump to say, you know, Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Rubio, "You don't have to do everything he says," he has allies who can do quite a lot on their own. And, and just, you know, further to, to emphasize the point that Musk might have a lot of, um, runway left, a lot of the Trump, you know, cabinet appointees ag- agree with Musk substantive changes to the government. So, they are on board with a lot of the things he wants to do. They might want more consultation, they might want more sort of, um, uh, ability to recommend things, but, but there's, I think, still very... a good reason to believe that we're in the very early innings of Doge.

Where do things actually stand with this right now?

So I guess the core thing that I think people need to take away from all this is that, you know, I've been writing not just this week, but for a couple of years now about how senior Trump people and Trump himself.

have been very clear that they think that they should have way more unilateral authority over canceling spending.

And this debate gets bogged down really easily in very boring terms like apportionment and impoundment and sequestration.

It's all these DC insider terms that make people's eyes glaze over.

But the fundamental core thing here is like, When Congress and the White House do a negotiation to pass a bill to spend money, is that just a starting point for what the White House wants to do? Does the White House actually have the authority to just be like, no, we don't want to spend the money that we legally agreed to do with Congress? And the Trump people are like...

Actually, this whole system, like this 1974 law that dictates when the president can and can't stop spending money that he agreed to spend with Congress, they just kind of want to throw that out.

He's not a cabinet official who's being confirmed by the Senate or anything.