Do you think it shows who's

right? Who's wrong? No.

And I think that we kind of have to just address the elephant in the room here, Elizabeth, that to your point, it's ridiculous that the internet's still talking about it.

It's ridiculous that we're talking about it.

It's a $15,000 bird and it's a ridiculous concept in the first place.

The idea that somebody should be purchasing an animatronic bird for a five figure sum.

Let alone feel that they should be entitled to have that happen with no friction whatsoever.

It's a bit of a David and Goliath argument here.

These are three extraordinary American, uh, success stories, uh, that the populist left, the populist right are trying to run out of town, uh, constantly, uh, getting, uh, torches and pitchforks and saying, "No flock cameras, no data centers, no Palantir." What is the through line on this? What, why, why, why is there so much hostility towards successful American technology?

I think the, the flock cameras to me are, are the most interesting element here because there's such a clear sort of non-partisan element to the populist protests that you're talking about.

Um, certainly as-- the same could be said about AI and, and Palantir, but I think the Palantir thing is a little more of a, a left issue and probably anti-AI sentiments too.

But the flock cameras seem to have really activated people.

I have to admit, like the libertarian in me is actually with the protesters who are upset about how these are being deployed.

There's 120,000 of them that are active across the United States, and while they have been used in about 20% of the investigations in any jurisdiction where they are deployed, I do think that there is a legitimate privacy concern because there's not a national sort of set of regulations around how long this data, which by the way, if you don't know, a flock camera basically can track at any time whatever, um, license plates and log the license plates that pass the camera on a road or at an intersection.

And so it's basically a, a database of people's movements.

Why aren't they doing that?

It's keep saying something more and more extreme, keep taking it to the next level, and that's the way that you'll get the, um, the retweets, the monetization, whatever else comes with it.

Oh, for sure.

Um, and, and on top of that, part of the problem too is if you see s- something so outrageous by someone on the opposite side of, of the political aisle and you engage with it because it's annoying to you and irritating to you, that also is just the exact same re- uh, sort of reaction in terms of how the algorithm thinks about it.

It doesn't care if you like it or you hate it, and so we see also the worst of our opponents as well as the most extreme of our, our own side, um, for sure.

I also think one dynamic here that is kind of interesting, um, thinking back to the book that I published in 2023, we, uh, we're talking about this study from, um, the National Contagion Research Institute that they allowed us to sort of debut in the book, um, about how every single time that Twitter had done mass bans of whether it was P- it was Proud Boys accounts or, or alt-right accounts, whatever it might have been.

Um, at the exact same time, there's this platform Gab, which is like a sort of...

I, I don't know if it's like literally calls itself a, a right-wing alternative to X, but that's effectively how it's, it, um, kind of s- situated itself.

So, so what do you think, um, good libertarian communication to younger audiences looks like? You know, what type of themes are we talking about? What type of approaches? How do you think we can kind of capitalize on this environment?

What do you think about these tactics of policing in this nearby city?

Yeah, I mean, I think that this is one of many cases with the second Trump administration where, like, I agree with the sort of initial complaint, and I, I, I think that there is absolutely a crime issue in our major cities.

I think that the repeat offender issue that we have in major cities in this sort of, like, slap-on-the-wrist justice system where we have people that are just, like, in this revolving door, um, and getting let out by progressive DAs is a massive problem.

Um, I think the way that we sometimes treat juvenile, um, repeat offenders is not actually to their benefit at all and has created, especially in DC, a massive problem with, um, teenagers that are, are committing crimes and then actually in the long term destroying their own lives too and creating these horrible criminal records that are really impossible to, um, you know, make a, an adult life after.

Um, but I would say I, I agree with the initial instinct that there is something wrong and something needs to be done, but I don't agree that it's the federal government's place.

Like, I would say the exact same thing in the instance of, like, Columbia University.

There's a huge problem there.

Can you really scalpel your way, could you have scalpeled your way any to real reform? Or does the threat of, "And we're gonna take away $100 million of your funding, yes, even for Alzheimer's research." Did that, do you think, have to be a part of the, uh, proposal or the salvo in order to get any change?

(laughs)

...

I think m- my...

There's a massive disconnect between the genders in- in my generation, and young men are going to the right, young women are going to the left.

There's, um...

It's hard to kind of meet in the middle, and there's a lot of hostility between the genders at the moment.

And so, just, like functionally, finding a mate is difficult for a lot of young people.

(laughs)

Anything to add to that?

Yeah, I, I think regardless of your politics, I mean, it's, it's hard to look at these same people who were very upset about Hillary's email servers and the security of that, who now have no problem with a Signal group chat.

And I, it's really condescending to the American people, who can see this entire transcript.

It is a screw-up.

I don't care if it's classified or sensitive or an attack plan or a war plan, it is plain and clear that accountability and just 'fessing up and saying, "This won't happen again" is the very least that the administration owes their voters.

(audience applauds)

(applause)

I think we certainly need reform.