Ben Shapiro

We got some more on this in a moment. First, a lot of people assume investing is really complicated. Like you need a finance degree or a lot of money. You need to constantly watch the markets. The reality is for most people, the biggest challenge is not understanding every detail, it's simply getting started in the first place. This is why Acorns exists. Acorns is the financial wellness app designed to help give your money a chance to grow. You can sign up in minutes and automatically invest spare money, even if all you've got is spare change. What I find interesting is Acorn's potential screen. It helps illustrate the power of compounding over time, lets you see how changes to your investing habits today could impact your financial future down the road. Acorns is built for people at every stage. Whether you're just getting started, building toward a major goal, or thinking about the future, sign up right now. Acorns will boost your new account with a $5 bonus investment join the over 14 million all time customers who've already saved and invested over $27 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com apparel or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive deposit of the promote Acorns Tier 2 compensation provided potential subject various factors such as customers accounts, age and investment settings does not include Acorns fees. Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorns portfolio. Investment results will vary. Investing involves risks. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor view important disclosures@acorns.com Shapiro folks, today I'm going to show you what I believe to be maybe the most meaningful clip in the history of the Internet. I'm not kidding. It's why America and the west are good, why the west is great in one clip. And no, it's not a clip of F35s or a booming American business. As much as I love those things, they're outgrowths of something deeper and more meaningful. We are a culture. We are a civilization that values the individual soul. I'm going to show you this clip in just a minute if you're not crying at the end of it. Well, not sure what to tell you. Plus, we'll get to the true evil of America's left wing saboteurs. The foreign campaign against American AI data centers and the latest from Iran. This is the Ben Shapiro show, So maybe I'm just a sucker for this stuff right now. My wife obviously had a baby on Sunday morning. Watch my fifth child be born. He's at Home. My kids are just loving him and spending the day with him, wanting to hold him, wanting to hug him. And let's be real, when it comes to small babies, they are extremely cute, but also deeply dependent. Of course, they're, they're very demanding. You're up at all hours of the night. My wife, obviously more than I am. But there is something incredible and eternal and magical about having a child. And I have many of them. And watching them grow and watching them change over time, watching them become independent, interact with the world, interact with each other, it's just an. It's an unbelievable thing. So maybe that put me in a. A sort of emotionally vulnerable place. Not a place I'm used to, but emotionally vulnerable place. Maybe I'm just a sucker for this clip right now. So I promised you this clip, which I saw yesterday. I was browsing the Interwebs and I came across this clip from a daily wire show, Pints with Aquinas, with our own Matt Frad. He was interviewing a man named Dr. Peter Kreft, who is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. But here, Dr. Kreft is not talking about philosophy as much as he is talking about what it means to be a good human being and what, what love for another human being means. Just. Just watch this.

Donald Trump

This.

Ben Shapiro

This clip is about a minute 40, so it's a little bit long. There are some pauses in it. And when you listen to it, you will see why you should go watch the clip. If you're only listening, you should actually watch it happen because it's. It's pretty astonishing. What advice do you have someone watching this who's newly married or who is.

Dr. Peter Kreft

Do you think that when you are very old and your wife is very old and ugly and wrinkled and fat and not very bright or even nasty that you will still find her beautiful? If so, get. If so, marry her. The last view I had of my wife in the nursing home, about an hour after she died, I fell in love with her again. Here is a wasted, emaciated, wrinkled, suffering body. It's as beautiful as a crucifix. Because that body ain't going to last, but the soul is. So if you don't love her soul, but just love her body, don't get married.

Ben Shapiro

I mean, so an astonishing, an astonishing clip again. I just got to watch my wife have our fifth child. And I have to say, just on a normal level, obviously, when you watch your wife have a child, it is a physically demanding process, shall we say. And it's not when, if I ask My wife is that when you've looked your best, the answer, of course, is no. That is certainly not when she has looked her best, but is when she is at her most beautiful? For sure, in our marriage, whenever she has the baby, the day of the birth, the moment of the birth, that is when she looks the most beautiful to me as a human being. When the baby is put on her chest and she's holding the baby. And that's not because that is when she is at her most physically beautiful. Of course not. Of course not. It's because it's when her soul is at its height. Because here is a new soul that she's just brought into the world. And she's holding the baby and she's looking down at the baby, and she has the same expression every time, this kind of expression of astonishment and joy and. And kind of bewildered happiness all at the same time. And I'm watching this happen, and I'm just looking at her and I'm not seeing, you know, her face or her eyes or her body at that point. I'm seeing something different. And that is. That is what makes the world a beautiful and astonishing place. The soul. That's the concept. It's not just something that we need in order to explain why we're here or why we matter. It is, in fact, why we as individual human beings matter. It's not our bodies, it's not the physical condition we're in. It's why whenever people talk about the purpose of life is human flourishing, they have to mean something more than flourishing in the physical sense. Because the soul is the thing that matters in the world. And all of that's inspiring because it says that you can have a lifetime of meaning. It's available to you regardless of material circumstance. If you can see the soul of another person, and that's doable, it doesn't require magic. It's a plan of action. It's not just pretty words, as Dr. Kreft is saying. It's a way of actually navigating the world. You can make decisions based on that. You can decide who to marry based on that. You can decide whether to have kids, how many kids to have, based on that philosophy. Now, I know there are a lot of young people right now who are black pilling. They've decided that they've basically given up on Western civilization or on agency in their own lives. They say things like, they can't find a woman. It's impossible to get married now. You can't have kids now. No, it really, really Isn't it is eminently doable. It is available to you. Be that guy. Find your faith, find your wife and fall in love. Fall in love with her soul and have kids and build a life and honor the God who created you. The world is an incredible, beautiful place created for us by a loving God. But. But it's also a place of heartbreak and tragedy. What Dr. Kreft is saying there is that it's the same place. He's talking about the beauty in his wife. Looking at. At her, at her body after she passed away. It's not possible to navigate the tragedy of life without also trying to understand the beauty and connect with that beauty. That's what Dr. Kreft is talking about right there. If he can see the beauty in the broken body of his elderly wife after her death, can't we find the beauty in the world around us? A world that's not just filled with physical beauty, but actual spiritual hope and with faith and with family. That's the stuff that life is made of. It's the stuff that makes the adventure so wonderful. It's finding the soul in another human being and recognizing that you have inherent value as a human being, inherent value as a creation of God. And obviously, this has biblical background, right? Dr. Kraft is a biblical thinker. He's Catholic, obviously, I'm Jewish. But this always goes back to the Bible, when God creates man. In Genesis 2:7, the Bible says, then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Right? These are two different things that. The dust of the ground, that's how. That's not what makes the man. It's the combination. It's the dust of the ground and the breath that God breathes into the human being. What is that breath of life exactly? Well, the Hebrew word for the breath of life is ruach, which also means spirit. And actually the first reference to that word describes God's spirit, right? It describes earlier in the Bible, first couple of verses of the Bible, it says that God's spirit was hovering over the unformed waters. And the idea here is that there is something spiritual, something to the universe beyond just the physical things that we see beyond the material. And we can see it manifest most clearly when we look into God's creation. It's a clue. We have the spirit of God, and then God infuses spirit into man. Human beings are special, and it's God's infusion of us with value that makes us special. It's also what makes the west particularly special. And it makes America particularly, particularly special. Because you want to know where the American concept of, of rights that attach to you as an individual human being came from. From that line of biblical thinking that you are made in the image of God, that God infused you a person with spirit. This is why it means something when the Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that governments are instituted among men because they require the consent of the governed. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God. When, when the founders or Abraham Lincoln talk about the equality of human beings, they mean in the sight of God, we all have a soul. Now of course, this doesn't mean that we don't have collective interests or collective identities. Human existence is a bunch of different layers. There's you as an individual, there's you as a member of your family, there's you as a member of your community, there's you as an American. And we as Americans have collective interests. But the most important interest we have is in preserving this worldview where the individual soul stands at the center. And that worldview has to win because it actually has some very powerful rivals. And those rivals are powerful and they are terrible. Now historically speaking, there have been two large scale threats to this idea of the individual soul as a thing is filled with worth. So again, go back to the Bible. Genesis has all this stuff. In the book of Genesis, God posits a few different forms of human civilization. One is the family, right? That's the one that God settles on. God says that human civilizations that are rooted in family are the ones that survive. Right? Noah takes his family on the ark, he survives. God chooses Abraham and his family to generate the children of Israel. That it is a familial based system. Okay, but there are two rivals. One is the anarchic civilization of the pre Noah Flood era. Right? The Bible before the flood describes that civilization as corrupt and filled with lawlessness. Well, what does the Bible mean by that? It means that in that civilization people treat other people as means to their own ends. That human beings are just tools. You use them because they're useful to you. You just do what you want with them. They don't have any inherent value, they're instrumental. The second form of civilization is sort of the bizarro world reverse of that. That's the tyrannical civilization. That's the Tower of Babel story. An entire civilization that's built for a single goal. Build a giant thing, but designed without reference to either God. Right, it's designed to attack God. Or without reference to individual human beings. The Midrash, which is sort of a Jewish commentary that Adam breaks. The Bible suggests that the building of the Tower of Babel took so long and was so arduous that it would take weeks for bricks to move from the base all the way up to the height. And so workers would actually cry when a brick would break. When a brick would fall, they would cry. But if an individual human being died, that was not a big deal because the labor could easily be replaced. And these two rivals to the soul filled civilization of the American way, they still exist. The secular utilitarianism that says that all human beings don't have a soul. Basically a nihilistic universe in which everyone is either an obstacle or a tool. And tyrannies, tyrannies that see the collective as the chief mechanism by which the world moves. So French Revolution idea that the revolution eats everything in its path, right? That would be Chinese communism or Russian tyranny or the Iranian Molocracy. All of these things are very live, right? These are not old examples because all old pathologies are simply poured into new bottles. Coming up, we'll get to a worldview that really, really degrades the value of the individual soul. First, let's talk about your business, because let's see. 1. One aspect of you being made in the image of God is that you are made as a creative human being. That means you have creative output and you ought to control that creative output. And that's part of what modern free market economics is all about. This is why you should be working with Shopify. The truth is, most businesses don't start with venture capital in a boardroom. They start with one person deciding to give it a shot. And that's what Shopify is built for. At the daily wire, we use Shopify for our storefront. Whether it's facts, hats, books, daily wire, merchandise, Shopify helps make the buying process simple for our customers. Because Shopify handles the checkout experience, customers can buy quickly and easily. And because Shopify handles the back end, business owners can focus on growth instead of technical headaches. The same platform used by brands like Mattel and Gymshark is available to anyone with an idea and the willingness to start with Shopify. Nothing stands between your idea and a real business, so go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com Shapiro that's shopify.com Shapiro to start your free trial today. Shopify.com Shapiro take for example that first that first secular utilitarian view that human beings only have value if they have value to you. They don't have any inherent value. So a truly horrifying story that is sort of indicative of this worldview emerge from Canada. This this story is about a Canadian same sex couple as reported by the New York Post, suing a woman who carried their now two year old son because she refused their demand to abort the fetus because of a minor birth defect and a cleft lip. According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Ontario Superior Court in May and obtained by the National Post, the parents claimed the surrogate did not adequately keep them informed about the baby's health, put the child at risk, violated confidentiality and caused them emotional distress. According to the New York Post, the relationship started off strong but soured in June 2024 when she told the couple about an ultrasound revealing that the baby had a cleft lip, possibly a cleft pallet and a minor heart defect. The surrogate said she would have agreed to an abortion if the child was unlikely to survive after birth, but would not abort a 22 week old fetus. And 22 weeks is essentially a survivable outside the womb fetus. I believe the the earliest surviving fetuses are at 21 weeks. Certainly by 23, 24 weeks you actually have a survival rate among fetuses. The parents agreed to proceed with the pregnancy after doctors in Mount Sinai said the baby was generally healthy and had no major problems beyond the cleft lips. After the child got treatment, the parents took the child home and ceased contact with the surrogate who asked them to cover around 10 grand in outstanding expenses, lost wages, transportation costs and skipped contributions to her pension plan. So again, it sounds as though originally she was willing to agree to an abortion demanded by them if it hadn't been so late and the and the defects had been more severe. The fact that this is the way that we are discussing a human life demonstrates the sickness here again, my wife and I just had a child. One of the decisions that you make in the religions that that believe in the individual soul when you have a child is that God infuses soul into children well before birth, that human beings with potential are human beings with potential, and that you can cannot deprive that individual human soul of its interests in the world out of convenience for yourself. And yet this is obviously a child being treated as a convenience. This is not why you have children. This is not how human beings ought to be treated. And a civilization that treats human beings with this sort of disposable mentality is a civilization that loses its moorings utterly. It is a culture of convenience. And a culture of convenience it comes to other human beings is a culture of death. Because it turns out human beings are not convenient. Human beings are highly inconvenient. The people you love the most are by necessity the most inconvenient people. You know, my children are highly inconvenient to me. I love them more than anything. My wife, highly inconvenient to me, I love her more than anything. Doesn't mean that they, they deprive me of something. No, the inconvenience is the point. Because the inconvenience generates obligations that matter in the world. And those obligations matter even more than it would to a normal non familial human being. Because I care deeply about these human beings and that's because they have inherent value, value beyond what I ascribe to them. You want a civilization that's worth its all. You have to reject this viewpoint that human beings, particularly unborn children, are somehow just tools for you to use. That is one threat. And that threat exists all over the political spectrum. This idea that human beings are simple conveniences for you to sort of do away with when they get in the way, that individual souls are to be discarded at will. And then you have the collectivist people who believe that individual souls don't matter because the only thing that matters is the collective. The only thing that matters is the sort of great common good collective. Now again, this isn't to imagine that communities don't have communal interests. Obviously they do. And sometimes individuals have to lose to a communal interest. But the key rule there has to be that that communal interest is in line with what God wants from a civilization that values the individual soul. This is why rights matter, is why immunities to government power matter. Because your life has value, inherent value, not just as an instrument of the collective. Well, if you find yourself on the same side as regimes that disparage the idea, the very idea of the soul, that treat individuals as simply cogs to be worked into the machine that resemble the Tower of Babel civilization, you're on the wrong side of dooming civilization. Which brings us to China and Russia. So China and Russia, these are not places that respect the individual at all. At all, at all, at all. They do not care for China. It's all about the Chinese collective, the power of the Chinese Communist Party. They're willing to discard literally millions of human beings to, to kill off tens of millions of unborn children and in many cases born children in the greatest infanticide in human history. They're willing to do that all in the name of the collective. Russia is all about the power of one man, Vladimir Putin and his oligarchic buddies. And they are willing to sacrifice the well being of tens of millions of their own citizens for the simple power of Vladimir Putin or for an idea of a collectivist Russian power in the world. That's the thing that really, really matters. Not on behalf of a vision of the world in which individuals matter, in which rights are spread. One of the weird things about American foreign policy is that American foreign policy is not purely about preserving America's interest in the same way that Greek foreign policy is about preserving Greek interests or Russian foreign policy is about preserving Russian interests. There's always been a moral component to American foreign policy because we take seriously our role as a, as a lighthouse on behalf of certain values. That's not true for China and Russia. So I would humbly suggest that if you find yourself on the same side as China and Russia in any debate, you've sold out your civilization. That reduces all the way down to the policies promoted by China and Russia domestically in the United States. So one of the things that's been happening in the United States is a very fraught battle over AI data centers. Now, it seems totally unrelated, right? And let's be real, you can have lots of thoughts on AI. You can talk about whether AI is a net positive or a net negative. I'll say that I think that it's a net positive because it's one of the most sophisticated tools that will ever be developed for the betterment of the physical status of humans. Now again, that doesn't mean that your soul is going to get better, because physical status and soul are not necessarily connected. You have very poor people who can be filled with purpose, fulfillment and soul, and very rich people who have none of those things. But the goal of an economy is to enrich. And when it comes to the private property system, and the private property system is in fact very much connected to the idea that you have individual worth as a human being. Socialism is rooted in the idea that you as an individual human being, do not have any control over your own creative capacity as a Human made in the image of God, with the power to create and the power to control your destiny. Socialism and communism are based on the opposite that all of those powers belong to the collective. They belong to the government. Okay, but again, there are open questions that can be asked about AI or data centers in your neighborhood. But there is a reason why China and Russia are trying to destroy the sort of data center movement in the United States. They are trying to destroy the economy of the United States. This is an overt op. Well, it is an increasingly modern world. But the reality is if you look in your garage, there's a bunch of stuff that ain't modern there. Like a bunch of old photographs that are falling apart, film reels that are falling apart. You know, that's your family history. And when it's lost, it's just gone. These formats don't last forever. And again, once they're gone, they're gone permanently. Legacy Box is your solution. I've used Legacy Box myself. I send in all my family memories from when I was a kid. VHS tapes, me growing up, and I can watch those tapes with my kids now, me as a child, with my parents. My parents can do the same with their parents because we did it for them as well. Legacy Box is the world's largest digitizer of old home movies and photos. The process is incredibly simple. You pack your box with all your old media, VHS tapes, film reels, photos, DVDs, and then you ship it in. Their team professionally digitizes everything by hand right here in Tennessee, and they send it all back to you as digital files on the cloud or a thumb drive along with your original items. No media gets lost, nothing gets outsourced. Just your memories preserved the right way. Over 2 million families have already trusted Legacy Box to do exactly that. Don't let your family's story disappear on your watch. Right now you can shop Legacy box incredible America 250 sale visit legacybox.com Shapiro get started today. That's legacybox.com Shapiro according to the New York Times, a state owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Virginia, writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans physical and financial well being. A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet. Created by OpenAI's ChatGPT by people in China. So hilariously, they're using AI in order to fight AI in the United States because they want to win. They understand. The Chinese understand that if they control the mechanisms of Distribution for AI. They can control your mind. If all the information that you're getting is coming from a Chinese app, you will be brainwormed. That is their goal. If China is able to develop sophisticated military technology based on AI while preventing the United States from doing the same, they will gain real world power and spread their toxic ideology, harming legitimately billions of people in the process. So what are they trying to do? They're trying to convince Americans that actually there is a large scale domestic movement worth its salt trying to stop the development of AI. So China started circulating these comics on X, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. And it showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash. As always, socialism is a foreign import to the United States. Socialism in the United States is not a domestic development. It never was. In some forms, it came from German progressivism. In some forms, it came from English Fabianism. Originally, originally. In some forms, it came from, you know, classical Marxist sources in Eastern Europe. But the reality is that it has never found fertile soil in the United States. And so you sort of have to convince people that it has an outgrowth in the United States. And that's what China is doing. Meanwhile, a video shared on X by a known covert Russian influence operation questioned the viability of a data center that an American company, Firebird, is constructing in Armenia, the small Caucasus nation that has been the focus of Kremlin pressure. The video's narrator says the country's electrical grid instability may render it useless. All are examples of a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence, verging at times on hostility about the spread of data centers needed to power AI in the United States and elsewhere. And you are seeing this work on the Horseshoe. You got Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who of course is fully in line with the Chinese on everything. You got Stephen K. Bannon, who has been very warm toward Russia for a very long time.

Ashik Sadiq

They are.

Ben Shapiro

They are following divisions in the United States, the Chinese and the Russians. They're trying to exacerbate those divisions. And it is working. It is working because if Russia and China can convince the United States to disarm itself in the war for the future, then toxic ideologies like communism or Russian tyranny become significantly more prominent. Well, New York naturally is first off the line in going after AI. According to cnbc, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday signed an executive order barring the construction of new large scale data centers using 50 megawatts or more. Of power for up to one year. She said, quote, we're in the midst of one of the most significant economic upheavals in generations, perhaps ever. These hyperscale AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, truly threatening to outpace our grids capacity that drive up costs for local ratepayers. I refuse to let those costs get passed down to New Yorkers. And data center moratoria remain popular in the state. 46% of respondents in New York believe that a one year moratorium on new permits for large data centers in New York would be good for the state. Only 21% said it would be bad. And that is bipartisan proposition. Well, again, that is because there is this idea that the collective is somehow being robbed by businesses that are actively innovating and generating tools for the use of individuals, which is what happens with technologies. Technologies are innovations that bleed down to the level of individual use. That is true for every single innovation. You are the person using ChatGPT. You are the person who is using AI at a company level in order to increase efficiency and generate economic growth. And this is an attempt to stop you from doing those things. And then hilariously, Hochul's press office put out an image of her with laser eyes surrounded by her dumb advisors with a sign in front of her saying protecting New Yorkers, Leading the nation. By leading the nation, does she mean preventing technological innovation from happening in her state? Again, there is a reason why foreign influence ops are fueling the anti data center movement. And it is not because China and Russia have our interests at heart. According to the Washington Examiner, Chinese English language outlets like cgtn, China Daily and Global Times have run aggressive campaigns against American data centers, blaming them for higher energy prices, environmental harm and grid strain. At the same time, those same outlets tout advancements China's AI sector while conveniently downplaying or omitting Beijing's massive subsidies that cut energy costs for major data centers by up to 50%. Meanwhile, the wildly anti American Singham network aligned with the CCP is spreading its money everywhere. That Web of Us based 501c3 nonprofit groups is primarily funded by Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai based American expatriate. It includes of course, Code Pink and groups like Tri Continental. The messaging with Chinese state media basically in alignment. There are other foreign billionaires who are directing money into climate activism directed at sinking AI. According to Manhattan Institute's City Journal, an estimated $130 billion in data center projects have now been blocked or delayed. So I mean, first of all, let's just point out that a lot of jobs that people aren't going to get. But second of all, it is in fact a foreign influence operation that is largely behind not, not entirely. Again, there's always going to be a Luddite strain of American politics, a a populist, progressive strain of American politics that says technological innovation is bad and we should all go back to the farms, neglecting the fact that of course our agricultural sector has become highly productive thanks to the use of modern technology. With fewer employees, we generate more agricultural output than any time in American history by leaps and bounds. Not close. And as for the idea that somehow AI dentist centers are the reason for your high power bills, that's not true at all. City Journal has done a major breakdown on this and what they find is that the largest price increases on energy are concentrated on the west coast and in the Northeast, where state policies have made electricity more expensive to produce and deliver. Renewable mandates require utilities to procure growing shares of wind and solar net metering programs, shift grid costs from rooftop solar owners onto other customers. The sharpest increases in energy prices are found in the states with aggressive climate policies, not the ones with the big data centers. In Virginia, where data centers consume more than a fifth of the state's electricity, they've experienced price increases near the national average, if anything. Actually, data centers, as the Manhattan Institute, have placed modest downward pressure on retail rates, large new loads, often lower rates for everyone by spreading the electrical grids enormous fixed costs across a broader customer base. So again, in many cases what's happening is that these data centers are coming in and seeking to help the building of new electrical grid of new power in order to facilitate their cost reduction. A new working paper by one Asa Watten and Jeffrey Blanchard of the Electric Power Research Institute finds that data centers pushed residential rates modestly down between 2015 and 2024. Again, not, not a shock because it turns out that additional supply of power, which is what you are going to build, is going to reduce the price and all of that reduces inflation. So in good economic news, inflation had its biggest drop since 2020 in June. Part of that is the sudden drop in oil prices because of President Trump's mou. But some of it is also because of increasing productivity due to AI and those developments. It's the largest one month decrease since April 2020. Kevin Warsh, who is going to be the new head of the Federal Reserve, was testifying in Congress and he says, listen, I don't want Americans to have to think about inflation.

Kevin Warsh

This committee had long committed to a 2% inflation target. That is our resolution. That's what I'm here to say and double down on. But as we discussed privately, I'll say publicly, my broader definition of price stability is a change in prices such that households and businesses don't have to worry about it, don't have to think about it.

Ben Shapiro

Warsh is an excellent pick, by the way, for the. For the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He suggested that AI would be disruptive, but it's going to create a lot of jobs, which of course is true.

Kevin Warsh

My own best guess is that the advent of the technology will be augmenting existing work, that employees that were there will be more productive. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I don't believe in the lump of labor fallacy. All the jobs that are there have already been created and the technology will remove some. Well, it might be disruptive. In the near term, it'll create a lot of other jobs, just to give one example from history. And then I'll close. Who knew at the creation of the Internet that the Internet would create a million and a half Uber and Lyft drivers? I certainly didn't. So I want to be very open minded about the job producing elements of it.

Ben Shapiro

Now worse points out is that AI investment soon is just going to be called investment. By the way, whenever you do a poll and you say, should there be new data centers built? People are like, okay. And then if you add AI to the beginning of it, people freak out. Because people have been scared about AI in ways that I think are wildly disproportionate to the actual threat of AI. And again, they're not questions. There are questions to be asked about AI. We'll get to those in a second. But here's Warsh at the Fed.

Kevin Warsh

We don't yet know fully the extent to which the economy will benefit from AI. Yet it seems inevitable that which we're now calling AI investment will soon just be called investment.

Ben Shapiro

That of course is right. And the bottom line again is this. When it comes to AI or economic development or any of the rest of this stuff, if you're on the side of China and Russia, you are doing it wrong. Anthropic co founder Daniela Amodi notes that we do have foreign competitors in this space and that if we just decide to abandon the race in AI, we are going to lose.

Daniela Amodi

Any one company can choose to say we're not going to barrel ahead, we're going to stop, you know exactly right where we are, not do anything else. And the challenge is there are competitors and there are also, by the way, other nations that have a desire to catch up to the strength of the models that Anthropic is producing today. And so I think the approach we have taken is to say there absolutely might be cases where more globally, more worldwide, we might want to slow things down and in the interim we need to be the best, most powerful actor in terms of thinking about safety. Right? We need to say, hey, how do we actually build and design and develop safety tools and systems such that that becomes a requirement now again, there are

Ben Shapiro

open questions about AI in the same way there's open questions about Google Search or questions about Wikipedia. Many questions about Wikipedia. When it comes to the informational environment, it can obviously be biased. There's a story from Fox News today pointing out, based on research from the Media Research center, that there was a large scale blackout in coverage over Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo and Reddit posts, and that that blackout and coverage began after a poll released in late October suggested that Platner was the most formidable Democrat to unseat Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins. The blackout ended following The New York Times's May 30 report about Platner's sexting controversy. Apparently Apple News and Google News failed to promote at least 112 news stories pushed by conservative leaning outlets scrutinized Platner during that November through May period. MRC President David Bazelle points out that the tech platforms were running what he called a protection racket for Graham Platner. Meanwhile, a Washington Post analysis showed that most chatbots share left leaning positions. Open AI, meaning ChatGPT uses left leaning arguments. Deep Seek uses left leaning arguments 70% of the time. Gab uses it 50%. Anthropic, believe it or not, is at least both sides 57% of the time. But at no time is their right wing argument presented. Grok is most even not a shock there. That's Elon's AI XAI 40% left leaning arguments 27% both sides 33% right leaning arguments. Google Gemini is presenting both sides 93% of the time. Okay, but obviously there can be bias in this. Here's what I promise you. I promise you that if China or Russia controls the AI, the answer will be 100% of the time what China and Russia want it to say. Herein lies the problem. Do not align with America's enemies. Now speaking of people who align with America's enemies, I have to say it is astonishing how far out the left has gotten when it comes to aligning with America's enemies and enemies of civilization. So you remember Ro Khanna. Ro Khanna is the clown congressperson from California. He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He cosplays as a socialist while his while his financial advisers trade based on maybe some inside congressional information. Maybe, just maybe. Well, Ro Khanna started a completely fake firefight over a completely fake incident where he went to Judea and Samaria, the so called west bank. Drove off road into a closed military area, was stopped by local security, they called the cops and they let him through. And this was turned into an international incident. Well, Ro Khanna is trying to run an entire presidential campaign based on the idea that he is the most anti Israel person. Well, he ran up against the hard left, like the very hard left. He was on a show for Drop Site News, which is again a radically anti American site. Drop Site is, is a raid against everything pro America, everything pro Western. They are identified wholly and thoroughly with America's enemies. While the Drop Site News co founder Jeremy Scahill went after Khanna for not being anti Israel enough, he said that, that Khanna should make the case that Palestinian terrorists have a right to murder Israeli soldiers. It's not enough to simply say that Israel's an apartheid state the way that Ro Khanna lyingly claims. In order to gain credence on the left wing, he's got to go even further. This is how far the left is out. They are so aligned with enemies of America that they are now calling for the legitimization of the murder of soldiers of a key American ally in the Middle East. The full scale moral justice. They're asking Ro Khanna over and over for like eight minutes. There's only a one minute clip. They did it for eight minutes asking him to say that it was morally justifiable for Hamas to murder Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and people who are observing, for example, the Gaza fence, including young women, which is the people who were murdered on October 7th. Here's Jeremy Scahill just justifying October 7th and asking Ro Khanna to do the same. You're never going to be able to satisfy people who hate America. You're just not.

Jeremy Scahill

Was it a terrorist attack when they. The first targets that were hit on the morning of October 7th were multiple military bases. Did Palestinian forces have a right to attack those military bases?

Donald Trump

I am not for violent violence in any way. I mean, I am for making sure that we end the operation to do it.

Jeremy Scahill

Congressman, do they have a right to attack Israeli soldiers? I Bet if we were talking off the record privately, and I said this to you, you would acknowledge that people around the world have a right to resistance by all means necessary. I've always been for peaceful resistance, you know, but how is peaceful resistance saying the Israeli, you know, I mean, just like it's under segregation.

Donald Trump

I wouldn't have said that. Go kill people who are engaged in segregation against you. I mean, I'm much more Dr. King than Malcolm X. I mean, I.

Jeremy Scahill

Are you? Much more. Slave rebellions were justified against people that were raised raping, hanging, murdering Africans who had been kidnapped. I mean, I'm sorry.

Ben Shapiro

Hey, hilarious to watch people who hate America even more than Ro Khanna hates America go after Ro Khanna for not being pro terrorism enough. But this is where we are. A significant percentage of Americans really despise the civilization. Really, really despise the civilization. Understand that presumably Jeremy Scahill would make precisely the same argument about Iraqi terrorists during the Iraq war killing American soldiers. That they have a right to do it because American soldiers are foreign invaders and such. Well, DSA co chair Ashik Sadiq is out there making the case that America ought to essentially imitate and become our own enemies. Sadiq is saying that socialism is the way forward and blames propaganda for Americans not liking socialism. Again, socialism is a system that utterly denies the soul, totally denies the value of individual human beings.

Ashik Sadiq

There's been a lot of propaganda since the Cold War and red scares in the United States where very powerful people in the United States felt threatened by the politics we represent. So that's why, you know, a lot of people never learned about the history of democratic socialists in the United States and that it was organized workers who pushed for things like a 40 hour work week or ending child labor. And these are things that are part of the legacy of democratic socialism in this country. And that's really against nationalism and fascism.

Ben Shapiro

Okay, by nationalism and fascism, democratic socialists, the dsa, who are actual communists, mean just Americanism, Right? They're just lumping all those things together and calling it fascism or whatnot. This is the same person, by the way, who says that we should simply abolish the United States Senate. Don't worry, he's not a revolutionary, though. Somebody that the Democratic Party ought to treat with.

Ashik Sadiq

We just don't see the point of the Senate. Historically, it was meant to serve very wealthy people who owned a lot of land. And that's still a system that we have today. And it's something we would change. We would expand what the House of Representatives does and make it more actually representative of people who are live in this country.

Ben Shapiro

So would you like to abolish the Senate?

Ashik Sadiq

That's, that's part of our platform. And we don't think that's extreme. We think it's, it's a change that would help make this country more democratic.

Dr. Peter Kreft

Hmm.

Ben Shapiro

Well, the Democratic Party is trying to ingest all these people and use them for their own purposes. The problem is that when you allow the scorpion to ride the frog, as the President likes to say, the scorpion is going to sting the frog. But Nancy Pelosi seems warm to this idea. She says, don't worry. These DSA candidates, they're very exuberant, but in the end, they'll come along for the ride. Enjoy that ride, lady.

Nancy Pelosi

So there are elements, exuberances in the party now that should be heard and the rest. But when we have that vote the first couple of days of January, we will all. Not me, because I won't be there. They will all be voting for Hakeem Jeffries for speaker. And then they will, as I said before, you build the consensus. You recognize the importance of every voice, and everybody doesn't think alike. That's not what a democracy is about. We could just go home and let one person speak for all of us. If that's the attitude that people want the party to have. We are the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has a different and attitude. They just do what they're told.

Ben Shapiro

Amazing. They're. They're a party of diversity, you see. Oh, man, it's going to be fun to watch the DSA eat them. Terrible for the country, but kind of fun. I mean, the DSA don't worry. They're not extreme. They just say that you should never pay your bills again.

DSA Member

And you don't have to have a job just to pay the bills because you don't have a lot of bills. Right? Bills are no longer a thing because there's no not for profit businesses that are constantly trying to exploit you and trying to put you into debt. And then you might just have a normal day. Right? Like, you could actually have the freedom to move around. And so part of what we're trying to do is dispel the idea that socialism is just about, like, bureaucracy, meetings, order, or anything like that. It actually is about freedom. It's about people being able to be. Be themselves. It's about people being able to actually flourish under a system where they're not constantly being exploited and where they're not constantly worried about these basic things it

Ben Shapiro

takes to live oh, there'll be. There are no wow. Utopia. There won't be no bills anymore. No bills anymore. All you have to do is give up all your rights to your own labor and creativity and productivity to the state. And in return, you will gain unending freedom. Yeah, I'm sure it's going to work out precisely that way. While the Republicans are fighting back on all this, and it's interesting, the polls, the congressional generic polls are beginning to close a little bit. So about a month ago it was D plus 8. Today it's D plus 5. Momentum is moving in favor of the Republicans because in large part the Democrats have decided to embrace their most radical selves. Speaker Mike Johnson gave a speech yesterday pointing out once again that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

Mike Johnson

I am often reminded these days of the writings of the founders, the warnings of the people who put together the principles that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. They warned us against times like this in recent, more recent times. When we were kids, you know, in the 80s, Ronald Reagan used to remind us all the time, you hear me repeat it. You have to understand, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not passed along in the bloodstream. Reagan said it must be fought for, must be protected. It has to be taught, passed along to the next generation so that they too will understand these principles that hold us together.

Ben Shapiro

And as Speaker Johnson points out, we have moved beyond sort of arguments over tax rates. We are now talking about the fundamentals of our civilization at this point, domestic policy.

Mike Johnson

They were arguing over, you know, marginal tax rates and the shades of regulation and how large the government should be. You know, there wasn't a huge difference. The chasm between the two parties those days are gone. Right now domestically we are arguing, we are debating, we are fighting. The election will be over whether we're going to maintain our freedom in a constitutional republic. The greatest experiment in self governance in the history of the world. The longest surviving constitution on the planet. The nation that everybody wants to emulate and everybody wants to come here. We have to seal our borders so they won't flood over them. We're the only nation in the world that has that distinction. We're the last great superpower. We are the greatest nation in history world. We are fighting right now in Congress over whether we're going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic or we're going to trade that in, dismantle the foundations and go down this dark road of death to communism.

Ben Shapiro

Well, again, this is the battle at this point and it has some pretty far reaching ramifications because if the far left were to win, go back to that sort of biblical breakdown earlier. If the far left were to win, you end up with alternatively either secular materialism that ignores the individual or you end up with a collectivism that ignores the individual. That is where you end up. Ok. Meanwhile, on foreign policy, the president did what I thought he would yesterday. He backed off that 20% tolling, the straight routine. He says that there will be a blockade on Iranian oil coming out of Iran, but we won't be charging a toll. Instead we will find other ways to do business with countries that are benefiting. He said oil is flowing like never before. This is on truth social media, thanks to the awesome power of the United States military, by the way. This is true. There is oil that is in fact flowing. There are various lanes that are in the Strait of Hormuz. The lane that is furthest from Iran, from its shores goes near Oman. And that lane is increasingly open, he says. A special salute to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Diane Kane and Commander of the US Central Command Admiral Brad Cooper. Because of them and all members of the most powerful military any in the world by far, this, the Strait of Hormuz is open to all ship traffic except for Iran. And that is because of their lying, violent, malicious leadership which is taking them down the path of total destruction. We'll therefore have a full blockade, but only on ships coming to and from Iranian ports or carrying anything having to do with Iranian cargo. Based on highly productive conversations with Middle east leadership, I've decided to replace the 20% U.S. reimbursement fee with trade and investment deals that the various Gulf states will be making into the United States. Those investments will be massive, but at the same time you extraordinarily good for them and their future. As everyone is aware, we have the largest dollar investment into the United States of any country in history. These new investments will make that number even larger. We'll see factories, plants and equipment pour into the United States at historic levels, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Since the days of Iran killing hundreds of thousands of people, including 52,000 protesters are over. Most importantly, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Trump explained what that looks like in a press conference yesterday. The Oval Office increasingly gold. Every time you look at it, it gets more gold. Actually

Donald Trump

I was called by different people, different countries, kings and Amirs and all of the People that we all know and we all love, and they've been, frankly, they've been very strong partners. And they said, we'd love to do it a different way. We'd love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars and continue our record setting because we're, we would. There's never been a time like this with the United States, with the factories, with the plants, with everything else. And we would like to invest tremendously in the United States as opposed to charging a fee.

Ben Shapiro

Okay. So again, as I suggested before, the United States is in fact absorbing the cost of keeping the strait open. And so the idea that the United States ought to benefit not in some sort of generic sense, but that other countries ought to contribute to their own defense, that if we have to do the work of the Japanese, for example, or the Europeans in keeping the strait open, then we're going to need some form of cooperation with them. That's not a terrible idea and it is fair for the President to ask for it. There's a quote from Lindsey Graham that I think is, is really fascinating that came out yesterday in a piece from the Atlantic by Richard Fontaine. He's a really interesting thinker and writer. Richard Fontaine talks about a conversation that he had with Graham, what that has to do with foreign policy. And it is fascinating, he says, at what point in his career, I wondered, had Lindsey Graham gathered the boldness to assert himself so overtly in foreign policy? When I was first elected to the House here, occult, I looked for the they. They who run things, they who know how things really work, they who know what, what they are doing. But I couldn't find the they. And then he says, I went to the Senate, but there was still no they. And then I started to get invited to the White House and to closed door briefings and to meetings with top officials. No they. What I finally realized, he concluded, is that there is no they, is only we. And we usually don't know what the f. We're doing. And you know, again, that is. That is right. That is right. I mean, there is this kind of self appointed State Department expert class and they're wrong about nearly everything. But it is not as though there is some sort of conspiracy in which people get together in a, in a room together and figure out that they who control the foreign policy. Lindsey Graham was right. And here's the thing. If the they ain't American, the they is going to be Chinese or Russian or Iranian. That is the way it works. Well, the President also made a large scale announcement yesterday that America is going to complete our withdrawal from Iraq completely by September 30th. That was also announced by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zahedi. That is the end of a military presence that began with the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. US troop levels in Iraq peaked. In 2007. We had 170,000 troops in theater. Right now there are about 2,500 US troops remaining in the country. Now, that doesn't mean American involvement in Iraq is over. There are American oil companies that are going to be very active in Iraq. One of the reasons the President feels more comfortable doing this is because the last Iraqi regime was very pro Iranian. The new Iraqi regime is significantly more pro Sunni. They're much friendlier with Saudi, which is good. Much friendlier with Turkey, which is not so great. The bottom line is that Iraq is not going to be a thoroughfare for Iran any longer. And so what you are watching is that the Iran war has reoriented the region away from Iranian power. Again, Iraq used to be Iran's playground. That is not the case anymore. Iranian power is on the wane for sure. Here's President Trump explaining.

Donald Trump

Iran was a big burden on Iraq because they were the bully of the military Middle east, as you know, and we were just talking about that. But they're not going to have that problem anymore because Iran has been very much destabilized and really their military power is just a tiny fraction of what it was just four months ago.

Ben Shapiro

So again, that is true. We can only hope that that maintains well today the President also reversed immigration policy that was announced briefly yesterday in which ICE was going to suspend traffic stops. So traffic stops was one way for ICE to find people who they were attempting to deport. Tom Homan, the border czar, came out yesterday on Fox. He said that we are still arresting a lot of people. There's going to be a short term review of vehicle stop training to make sure that we don't have more of these incidents where people attempt to flee or direct their car in the direction of Border Patrol or ICE agents and, and then get shot.

Tom Homan

There's an extensive vehicle stop training, much like the Border Patrol has. So again, we'll let this play out where it is. But I think ISA is going to continue doing record arrests, record removals, and this is, I wouldn't call it bump in the road. I mean, this is going to be a short term review. So ICE feels comfortable that their agents are safe, they're doing the right thing and get back to, you know, doing what they do best, which is, you know, making vehicles to us.

Ben Shapiro

So the President did put out a statement about three hours prior to the show saying the men and women of ICE are doing a great job. One that has to be done. Crime is way down in America in many cases with numbers that haven't been seen in decades. The open border policy of sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25 million people to pour into our country unchecked and unvetted. Many were criminals. We have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough and smart. We, we cannot give up one of ice's most important and effective crime fighting tools, the traffic stop. Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal's hands. The radical left Democrats would like to see this done, but it won't happen on my watch. Ice, be judicious, fair and smart and go back and do your very important job. Keep those crime stat records coming. So the President not going to back off of that one. Speaking of Joe Biden, by the way, Joe Biden, I know he's still traipsing around, sort of stumbling around. Well, he has announced the launch of a book. Okay. Did not know that the autopen could write books now, but apparently yes. It is called Promise Me America, which the, the comma comes after me. So it's Promise Me America, which is actually the publisher's fix. Originally his book was titled Promise Me America. In any case, Joe Biden put out a little statement that involves many jump cuts talking about his book.

Joe Biden

I've written a book about my time as president. It's called Promise me America. It's coming out in November and it's available for pre order now.

Ben Shapiro

All right.

Joe Biden

It's about the challenge we face as a nation. About the decisions I made

Ben Shapiro

and why I made them. Barely speak English at this point. Every less than 30. It's less than 30.

Joe Biden

And restoring our democracy after the attack on January 6th, ending our nation's longest war in Afghanistan, strengthening it up and supporting Ukraine. It's about why I chose to run for re election and why I chose to step aside. Most of all, it's about my faith in the Promise America. The promise we made to those who've gone before us is to honor their sacrifice.

Tom Homan

Okay.

Ben Shapiro

They would have made this man president again. They would have, they would have. They tried to lie about it again. You want to talk about why America's faith in our institutions completely fell off a cliff. This is a big reason. The entire media covering up the fact that it was perfectly obvious to human eyes that this, that Joe Biden was ailing. He cannot get through a simple minute long ad for his book without 1 million jump cuts and a bunch of stock footage. And even when he's talking, it sounds as though he's eating with his mouth filled with oatmeal. It's crazy. It's crazy. Now I will admit I am not sure which I dread more, Joe Biden's new book or a new documentary about life with mtg. I heard for Life on the Road with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Good times at the Gym with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Oh, boy, here we go. We're going to the Big Apple.

Donald Trump

Things get heated on the View.

DSA Member

Americans are sick and tired of funding

Ben Shapiro

Israel's genocidal wars that are killing children. A trip to Lady Liberation.

Daniela Amodi

What an honor it is to see

Ben Shapiro

the statue of Labrie. And MTG visits famous chef Salvo. Coming up on this next episode of Life with mtg.

Dr. Peter Kreft

Let's go.

Ben Shapiro

Oh, my God. That's so exciting. She's going to a restaurant. She's going to see a site that literally tens of millions of Americans have seen. She's going to talk about the Jews.

Mike Johnson

Oh, man.

Ben Shapiro

Life with mtg. I don't know. It doesn't seem like the most interesting life. I got to be honest with you, in terms of people who deserve a documentary crew following them around documenting the magic of their daily life, I feel like MTG is not at the top of that list. That is some pretty low rent stuff right there. Now, speaking of people who. Who are not the brightest bulbs in the basket, there is a singer named Dua Lipa and she has now created what she calls her manifesto library. This is over in Portugal. Apparently it is a library of pseudo banned books. When I say banned books, I mean none of these books are banned. You can get them tomorrow on Amazon, like prime delivery. All these are some of the most widely read books in civilization. But she's explaining her manifesto library. Now, I would assume that Dua Lipa's actual. Her actual literary acumen is low. I do not think, based on her lyrical command that Dua Lipa is sitting around reading the collected volumes of Shakespeare or that she spends a lot of her time reading past. I think that if you had a picture of Dua Lipa reading these books, it would look like that montage of LeBron James reading books in the locker room where it's just he's reading the first page of every book. Well, Dua Lipa explained her manifesto library.

Dua Lipa

Hi, I'm Dua Lipa and this is the Manifesto Library, a partnership between the Service 95 book club in Livaria Lello Porto Liveriolello has been a source of inspiration for over a century. Dreamers, radicals and artists have passed through these doors. Works of activism, reimagining and dissent have found a home on these shelves. There is no more fitting place for the Manifesto Library to live. In this library you will find 100 books that ask questions or have been questioned. The collection is organized in four chapters, Power, Control, Voice and Memory. You're probably not surprised to hear that George Orwell's Animal Farm was considered anti communist propaganda and banned in the USSR by Stalin. But maybe you are more surprised to learn that 1984 was considered pro communist and banned by a parents group in 1981 in Jackson, Florida. A book removed from a shelf.

Ben Shapiro

That's the same thing. USSR and a vocal parents group, the

Dua Lipa

same whose stories are carried forward and which lives are believed to be worth understanding. So take your time, look closely and decide for yourself what belongs on these shelves.

Ben Shapiro

Well, I mean, I can't decide. She decided. She decided. And what did she decide? She decided on something that is just a series of books that are completely in conflict with one another. Which is, which is pretty wonderful. So she's got the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Right? The.

Mike Johnson

The.

Ben Shapiro

Not. Not Rushdie's best book by the way, but his, probably his most famous book because it resulted in an Iranian fatwa against him that eventually would involve him being stabbed in the eye. She's got that. But she also has we are Not Numbers, the Voices of Gaza's Youth, which is basically an apologia for radical Islam, as long as it is quote unquote anti imperialism. She has the Handmaid's Tale, of course, because obviously Christians terrible and bad and fundamentalist and all of that. But she also has George Orwell's 1984, which is about the evils of, of communism. So it's a mess. None of this is. Is particularly informative. Listen, I, I do think that famous people giving out their book list is kind of interesting because it gives you a window into what they think. But the thing about Dua Lipa and celebrities like her is that the chances she's read of these hundred books, ten are extraordinarily low. She's got somebody who's picking these, and the people who are picking these are people who have the dumb lawn sign in front of their house and then they just pick a bunch of Maya Angelou books and then other books they may once have heard of. In a lecture about books that were once banned by a parents group in Jacksonville, Florida or something. Just silly talk. This is what President Obama does with his listening list every year. He puts out a bunch of songs that clearly he has not listened to. It's the same shtick all the time. So I guess congrats to Dua Lipa on her bookstore. I'm sure that her clientele will be number they will be rushing through the doors to buy books. And one of the great sadnesses of my life is the fact that people no longer read books. This is a very, very sad thing already. Coming up, we'll get to your questions in the mailbag. There's more show. You always think that the show is over and it isn't. There's more show get to come. But you have to be a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. Sam.