Preparing for the Inevitable | George Chanos

N/A

Episode Topics:

• Hear how George Chanos won a landmark Supreme Court case.
• Understand why AI could change everything—and not necessarily for the better.
• Learn why adaptability isn’t optional—it’s critical.
• Get a no-nonsense look at our legal system’s future.
• Find out why George’s book, “Millennial Samurai,” should be on your must-read list.

 

Rick Jordan  

Hey, what’s shakin, hey, I’m Rick Jordan today, we’re going all in. I’m so pumped today because I met this amazing, amazing dude at a dinner that I was on a panel and actually hosting with one of the greats, David Meltzer, who’s a friend of mine. And we were having such a great conversation at the table during the dinner, that we just decided we needed to connect. And we need to bring a lot of awesome knowledge that my new friend has to the world. So George Chanos is who we have today and get ready. He is the 31st, Attorney General of the great state of Nevada. He’s also successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court, which is freaking awesome. But you know, what’s even better, is that he just came out with his new book called Millennial Samurai, and he shipped me a copy. I love it. It’s laid out just exactly how we consume content these days, which is brilliant, and I’m excited to talk to George channels today. What’s shakin, my man?

 

George Chanos  

Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Rick,

 

Rick Jordan  

it’s so good to have you. I, we, I love just the regular conversations, you know. And as just like we were talking to the dinner table. So today, we’re going to pretend I almost had a glass of scotch right before this, because I’m, I’m going through audit stuff, you know, which is like the third audit now is a newly public company. And it was about three o’clock in the afternoon, here in Chicago. And I’m just thinking Man, I could just use a drink, but instead of espresso to come to talk to you. But my man, you’ve had an extensive career. Yes. And I have. What’s cool is that you’re still smiling about everything, too. That’s one of the things that captured me about you. Yeah. How did you become? Attorney General? Right. And,

 

George Chanos  

yeah,

 

Rick Jordan  

if I remember, right, when we were talking, there was something pretty special about your Supreme Court case. It was a criminal defense if I remember correctly. Yeah,

 

George Chanos  

it was I’m not a criminal defense lawyer. In fact, I had never practiced a day of criminal law in my life, until my argument before the United States Supreme Court, which was a Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. Case, interestingly, I don’t necessarily want to veer off into Trump land, but his his prosecution, one of the critical challenges that will be made to the conviction is the Sixth Amendment challenge. And my case is a Sixth Amendment case. So I had to, and again, I had never practiced criminal law. So I had to study the law, going back more than 200 years, to before the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh to Roman times before that, that all addressed the right to confront witnesses against you, right? This was a case it was a very touching case it was it was a six-year-old girl, who had been selected, and sexually molested by her stepfather. At the time of trial, she froze up and refused to testify against the stepfather. So the question was, could the statements that she had made to her mother, to the police, and to the hospital, come into evidence, ultimately, there was a case called Ohio versus Roberts, which said that if a witness test was technically unavailable, and in this case, the judge declared her unavailable, because she was six and refused to testify, and he wasn’t going to force her. And so after declaring her unavailable, the next issue under Ohio versus Roberts was whether or not there was extrinsic evidence of the reliability of her statements to third parties such that those statements to third parties could come into evidence over a hearsay objection. And so anyway, the the evidence in this case was that there was physical evidence of a sexual molestation that was developed at the hospital. And so, the testimony to the mother and the police in the hospital was led into evidence and the case and so he did not have a chance to cross-examine the witness. And so the case he was convicted in Nevada, and sentenced to life. And 18 years later, there was another case that, that overruled Ohio versus Roberts. And the question was, would the new case be applied retroactively or only prospectively? And it was determined that the We argued that it should be applied only prospectively. Because the the standard in Ohio versus Roberts was a standard that allowed for justice in that case, and it wasn’t appropriate to redo that case and 1000s of other cases that were that were decided under Ohio versus Roberts. And, and the court agreed, and ultimately, I won that case Nine, zero. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s incredibly unanimous too.

 

George Chanos  

Yeah,

 

Rick Jordan  

it’s interesting when you talk about this, and I mean, I may be the only nerd who likes this stuff besides you. Right. Everybody listening, I know, loves deep conversations. And I start to think about this, because when you’re talking about cases, there’s so much right in our country, that’s decided, I mean, even a couple of years ago, right, when you were looking at Roe versus Wade, you know, and how that was overturned. Imagine if something like that was applied retrospectively. Yeah, you know, I mean, the impact for that. So I mean, it’s it’s intriguing, because you can argue one way or the other take it case by case, obviously, but I believe that the laws of the land, they they can change over time, dependent upon where culture and society fits in their own values, or the values collectively as a country or even globally, you know, if you get into like the United Nations, to where it seems like most of it, and I’d love to hear your opinion, as most of it should be applied, prospectively, meaning just going forward rather than retrospectively because people had different feelings and values 50 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years? We certainly do today. Sure, so

 

George Chanos  

So Justice Harlan was the justice that really was the architect of the Supreme Court’s retroactivity jurisprudence. And that’s a body of case law that goes back about 80 years. And what he said on that subject was that no one, not the litigants, not the plaintiff, plaintiff or the defendant, not society as a whole, not the court system, that no one was well served by having a constant revolving door of litigation that would change and would not provide any level of predictability and certainty in the system. And so, cases that are applied retroactively should be very, very wet, rare. And one of the few cases for example, that was applied retroactively, was Gideon versus Wainwright. And what happened in that case was that the criminal defendant facing a death penalty conviction was denied the right to counsel. And so the court said that that fundamentally denied him justice, it was a he could not have a fair trial without an attorney. And therefore, his case and the case of anyone who was convicted of capital murder, without an attorney should get a new trial. And so you can see the level of hardship that is required by that body of case law for a case to be applied retroactively. It has to impact a fundamental denial of due process. Yeah. My argument in my case, was that, that the the safeguards that were in place with Ohio versus Roberts fundamentally guaranteed a fair trial, even if they were overturned as being not entirely consistent with what the court now felt the law ought to be. That they still guaranteed a fair trial, the extended extrinsic evidence of reliability requirements, and the unavailability of the witness requirements. These were all safeguards, that guaranteed a fair trial and the court agreed to nine zero.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s incredible. Well, when you look at something like this because it’s There are fundamentals that we have in the law of the land. And yeah, I think about what you’re talking about. But then I also compare it to something that’s been very, very topical over the last couple of years that comes to mind cannabis. And how different states, of course, Nevada being one of them, of course, are legalized. Many have been legalized now recreationally. And a lot of them legalized cannabis recreationally, you know after being medically approved for a little while. There were some states, you know, Illinois being one of them, you know, where I’m from in Chicago, where they said, you know, what, everybody who is currently imprisoned for some kind of cannabis law that they broke, you know, that was tried convicted? Of course. Now, those can be overturned. Yeah. You know, which was interesting to me, because obviously, that’s very much retrospective, going back, and I scratch my head for that, man. 

 

George Chanos  

You know, that was, that was that was a legislative determination. Yeah, right. That was a legislative determination, as opposed to a court going back and saying that they get new trials. Right. So that was not an application of retroactivity jurisprudence, that was an application of the court. I mean, of the legislature’s saying times have changed. And what we once thought was illegal. You know, today, we’re saying is legal. And so if today, we’re saying it’s legal, you know, what, what social purpose is served by having these people still stay in jail? So that’s one issue. The other thing that you talked about is how states have different laws relating to cannabis, which kind of ties into, the Roe vs. Wade discussion, which is that the court in a row did not say that abortion should be or should not be legal. What they were basically saying is that it’s up to the states to decide this issue. Yeah, there’s nothing in the Constitution, that guarantees a right to an abortion. And so let’s leave it to the States. That’s where it belongs. And let the states decide. There’s there’s a theory that goes back to our founding, that the states are the great incubators, the great test markets, if you will, for public policy, and for the law. So let’s try different things, let the states try different things. And people will decide with their feet where they want to live. And that will tell us that will give us you know, a better indication of what the laws ought to be. If California allows legalization and everybody moves to California, well, then maybe, you know, other states that currently don’t allow it might legalize it to attract people back to their state. So it it is, I think, a good thing, to allow the states to be these incubators, and to try these different approaches to the law. And then let’s find out what the public what works and what doesn’t work. You know, I mean, if the State legalized marijuana and everybody started getting in car accidents, and and it was a hot mess, then that would tell the rest of the states and the federal government not to go in that direction. But on in, on the other hand, if they legalized it, and, you know, it created a booming new industry and didn’t increase traffic fatalities at all. You know, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, sure. You and I are so much on the same page about that. Because if you’re going back to our founding fathers, and the whole idea behind having state governments, in addition to a federal government, is at least from what I have read and interpreted anyways, is everybody here who founded our great country, came from England, and you know, under the tyranny of the king, so when they were looking at all this, it’s like, of course, George Washington, they were trying to Crown Him King after the Revolutionary War, you know, he’s like, No, that’s not how this is supposed to go. And then, of course, you know, the rest is kind of history with that. But the depth of the state governments coming down to the governors is that they didn’t want one king, you know, so instead, what we actually kind of found out even throughout the pandemic, is that we kind of had 50 Little kings with the governors, you know, yeah. And I remember talking about this and I’m like, That’s really how I saw it because we started to see how much power you know, these incubators that that you’re talking about had and I also believe rightfully so. Because of how you’re discussing, it’s like people in Texas are not going to think the same as those who are in New York. Those who are in California. You’re not going to think the same as those who are in North Dakota, you’re not a person, that there are different values, and plus just different ways of life around different areas of the country for many reasons, you know, geographical, economical, you know, religious, all of these things, you know. So, to your point, it’s like, well, if you don’t like it here, you could go over there to where there’s a greater size collective that shares the same values and morals, yeah, as what you do, you know, the laws are governed accordingly and written accordingly in those states. It’s so dude, it’s so cool. How this country was set up, I’m always in awe of the complexity. That was just in the foresight, even at that time to start to put these things in place and how it stood the test of time, too. Yeah. A little bit of a cool rant. You know,

 

George Chanos  

I agree with you. I think it was visionary. I think that these were brilliant, brilliant men. And I think the idea that today, certain people are trying to meddle with some of their lives. is disturbing. Yeah, I love the idea. I love the idea of, states as incubators, but I’m less than enamored with the little King portion of it. But, you know, the, you know, things like trying to hack the Supreme Court that, you know, this administration has thrown out, the idea of abolishing the Electoral College, you know, people don’t even understand what the electoral college is all about, and why we have it, and yet they’re ready to abolish it. They know nothing about it. But you know, just sounds like it’s not a popular vote. It’s not democracy, and we ought to do away with it. And what they don’t understand is that if we didn’t have the Electoral College, there would be 10 states, not 50 that would rule this country. Yeah, right on the Electoral College allows the smaller states to have a voice. And if you want a 50-state union, you have to give those smaller states a voice, you have to give them, you know, a way to participate. And, if they have no meaningful level of participation, which the Electoral College affords them, then what’s to stop them from seceding from the union, and saying, you know, what, if these 10 states are going to control everything, and I’ve got no say in anything, then I don’t need to be part of the United States of America.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah. Rhode Island’s like, I’m out.

 

George Chanos  

I’m done. Yeah, well, a lot of states, Nevada, you know, would be out. So it’s interesting. You know, Justice Souter, once said that civic ignorance, ignorance of the issues that we’re talking about, is the greatest threat facing America. Because if you don’t know, you know, also the attacks on our Supreme Court, or Supreme Court happens to be one of the last bastions of safety and security that we can rely on, I would more quickly rely on decisions coming out of that body than I would on decisions coming out of Congress, or on decisions coming out of state legislators or decisions coming out of the executive branch, that body that that Supreme Court body is, is the greatest protector of our rights. It’s not the media anymore, if it ever was, and it’s certainly not the executive branch. And it’s not Congress, because they’re vying for power against one another. The Supreme Court is the one that keeps everybody on the guardrails of the US Constitution our guarantees of freedom, and our Bill of Rights. They’re the ones that make sure that we have all of that on an ongoing basis, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right. It’s the Supreme Court that guarantees all of that,

 

Rick Jordan  

for sure. They’re kind of like the gangsters, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, geez, you got it right on it. Like, whatever you can do whatever you want. We’re just gonna be right over here. We got this. That’s hilarious. Oh, man. A little topical. I know, you said you didn’t want to go into Trump land. I do. I would love to hear it because I’ve read a lot about the due process violations within that case, and it’s not even so much that it’s very topical, of course, because right now we’re talking and it’s, you know, just a couple of months before a presidential election, as well. I mean, this whole country is like what do we do? You know, and it’s it seems even polls, which I, you know, I don’t really trust polls that much, of course, just because of the sample sizes and how they’re typically swaying because of the list that they gather. But, you know, there’s some certain things and it’s like, to me, and I’ll make a statement that who knows, maybe it’ll come back to bite me in 10 years when I’m in politics, right? But it’s the fundamentals of our Contrary to me anyways, far outweighs in even the rights of the individuals far outweigh the actual case in the topic at hand, under percent to me. Absolutely, yeah.

 

George Chanos  

That doesn’t matter what you think about Donald Trump, what you should be focused on is the preservation of our system of justice and the integrity of our system of justice. That’s what we need to all be focused on. It doesn’t matter who’s there doesn’t matter if it’s Hunter Biden or Donald Trump. What matters is that we have a reverence and fidelity to the rule of law and that justice be blind, that it not be partisan, that it not be political, that it’d be fair and impartial. And that did not happen in the Trump prosecution. Right. I’m a nonpartisan, I’m not, I’m not a Republican, and I’m not a Democrat. I’m a non-partisan, I became non-partisan in 2016, before the Trump election, and today, I will support and vote for Donald Trump. Because I believe that Biden is a train wreck. I believe he’s caused more damage to this country than any president in my lifetime. And so I will vote for Donald Trump. I have, you know, obviously, I’m, you know, I have serious reservations about Trump’s personality, in certain instances, some of the things he says, But fundamentally, I believe that he loves America, I believe that the criticism of him for the past seven or eight years has been so over the top two failed impeachments, the Muller investigation, you know, four or five prosecutions by Democrat prosecutors who are using the law in what they’re now calling law fair, you know, warfare. And, you know, what’s wrong with the particular prosecution by the DEA, the Manhattan DA, and, the judge in New York that sat on that case, is, first of all, you’ve got a DA who said, I’m going to find something to prosecute Donald Trump for he said that during the election, so it’s not like he saw a violation of the law, and was unbiased as to the individual. He had a very, very heavy bias against the individual that he campaigned on. And it reminds me of the Stalinist era in which face and you find me the man and I’ll find you the crime. And I remember it’s, you know, you give me the guy’s name, and I’ll find something I can hang on it. Right. And that’s pretty much what happened here. And they took two misdemeanors, they created this novel legal theory that has no precedent in the law. And then they found a judge, Judge, Mira Sham, and it’s supposed to be a random selection of judges, yet. This particular judge keeps getting all the Trump cases, which you know, is anything but random. His daughter is a company that generates millions of dollars in campaign donations for Democratic politicians. And he also contributed to the Biden campaign, the judge, and a minor amount that he contributed, and he contributed to an anti-Trump initiative. And then in his rulings, his rulings towards witnesses were favorable to the prosecution. Were very favorable to the prosecution, his rulings against the defense seemed, you know, potentially unjustified. His jury instructions were very questionable.

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s a very polite way to put it there. Yeah.

 

George Chanos  

And then specifically on the Sixth Amendment, you know, you’re entitled to know what the charges are against you. You know, you’re you’re you you’re specifically entitled, constitutionally entitled under the Sixth Amendment to know exactly what you’re charged with. And legal scholars like Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz today are saying that they still do not know what Trump was convicted of, because there were these two misdemeanors that could be paired with any one of three additional crimes. And you’re also required to convict a criminal defendant unanimously. Right, and so all 12 jurors have to arrive at the same verdict, same decision. Well, if the judge does it the judge is telling you you have multiple choice, you can choose crime crime B or crime C. And if the jury instructions don’t require the jurors to come back and say which of the three crimes they relied on, then we don’t know to this day. What the carrying was that ultimately 12 people agreed on. And arguably 12 People did not agree on any particular pairing. You could have had four jurors drowned. It was a crime, a four that thought it was crime B and for the thought it was crime C, which would not give you a unanimous verdict. So there is there are a number of Sixth Amendment violations that occurred in that trial, and there are a number of conflicts of interest and bias challenges that are relevant to that trial. And then, you know, there’s the whole idea of how this is done during an election year. This happened eight years ago, it was turned down by the Justice Department for prosecution. 

 

They said we’re not going to take this dog of the case, Alvin Bragg even said, I’m not going to, you know, take a case where I’ve got to put Cohen on as my star witness. He turned down the case. But all of a sudden, in 2024, during an election year, a presidential election year, the main contender for the Republican nomination is targeted not by just Alvin Bragg, but by all these democratic prosecutors. It’s clearly election interference, there’s no question in my mind that it’s election interference. And ultimately, the thing is that the Supreme Court will sort all this out at the end of the day, but the election will be over by them. Yeah. And so what you’ve got is you’ve got a horrible misuse of the justice system, in law, in law, fair warfare. And, that should scare all of us because there but for the grace of God, go you, you know, and if it can be used against a guy like Donald Trump running for president, the law can be twisted and used against anyone. And what’s more important than, you know, I don’t care how much you hate Donald Trump and how much you want to prevent him from getting into office. What’s more important, is, is our respect for the institution of the judicial system and our respect for the rule of law, and that it’d be applied fairly and without, you know, fear or favor and dispassionately. And that didn’t, that is not happening in Donald Trump’s case. 

 

So, again, you know, I’m not on his fan club, you know, I will vote for him, I will vote for him. Because I think he’s vastly superior, but mostly because I think he is more capable of extracting us from a near-global catastrophe that this administration has gotten us into with Russia and Ukraine and China and what’s happening in Gaza. And what’s likely to happen next? I mean, we we gave the green light Biden, the Biden administration gave the green light first of all, there’s Nordstrom to there’s sabotage of Nordstrom to we were arguably behind, or certainly had a hand in, which is against international law, and is enough to, you know, make a country go to war against us, and is an act of war, frankly. But beyond that, you know, beyond sending the Ukrainians F sixteens, and Patriot missiles and cluster bombs, and over $100 billion in aid, beyond confiscating Russia’s 200 plus billion dollars in assets and starting to give those to the Ukrainian government. We recently gave the Ukrainian government the green light to fire missiles into Russia, US missiles into Russia. And if that’s not an act of war, I don’t know is, and the very first thing that the Ukrainians target is a Russian nuclear early warning radar facility. So I mean, what kind of a signal is that sending? If you’re a general, you can commit, right? 

 

Yeah, if you’re a general and Russia, what are you telling Vladimir Putin, right? You’re telling him that we are in World War Three, wake up. We’re in World War Three. They’ve already taken it out. Why are they taking out our early warning? Nuclear radar system? If not to launch a nuclear attack? Someone over in Russia, I would bet is already counseling Putin that he ought to have I launched a preemptive nuclear attack on the United States because if he doesn’t, he may not have time because a nuclear attack is, is inevitable. So the idea that this administration is taking us to the, to the edge of the abyss, on nuclear war, that in and of itself, is reason to vote for Donald Trump, no matter what you think of him, because Trump is a pragmatist, and he’s anti-war. Yeah. And Trump will cut a deal. And Putin and Chairman Xi can negotiate with Trump, they have no trust in the Biden administration. So they couldn’t negotiate very effectively with the Biden administration, but they couldn’t negotiate with Trump. So I’m voting for Donald Trump to a vote to avert World War three, and that, in my opinion, is the biggest reason today to vote for Donald Trump.

 

Rick Jordan  

I completely understand why you’re not a fan. Yeah, right.

 

George Chanos  

This is where I’m, this is where I’m falling on this decision.

 

Rick Jordan  

I know even last week, there were Russian warships that are now around Cuba. Oh, yeah. And they were just sent there. You know, a lot of these things, you know, of course, there are exercises, but we all know what that means.

 

George Chanos  

Yeah. Well, putting said I’m going to send missiles around the world to those who object to US policy. Yeah. And if you continue in this vein, then you will have incoming from all over the world. Yeah. Right. You look at you look at the growth of the BRICS alliance, right? Oh, yeah. That that, you know, they’ve got 40 new members that are lined up, including Mexico and Cuba, you know, so and, and they’re coming out with a new global currency that could undermine the US dollar. So I mean, what it was, and then you’ve got 10 million people that in the midst of all of this, in the midst of, of, of, you know, a 50-year pivot on a relationship with China, passing the chip sack, creating hostility with China, creating hostility with another nuclear power, Russia, in the midst of all of that you let 10 undocumented 10 million undocumented people come into our southern border, and then you say that they’ve been fully vetted. But we just, you know, we just arrested eight. Today, jerk, Stan, or Yeah, yeah, for terrorists in Philadelphia, la in New York. And then another guy, just with a trunk full of weapons just got arrested in the news. Today, we’re going to see more and more of that there are probably 1000s of terrorists that have come across the southern border under the Biden administration. Honestly, I don’t know why the man isn’t been impeached for treason. I really don’t. I don’t, I don’t understand it.

 

Rick Jordan  

I don’t know if he exactly has all of his faculties about him. So I don’t think he does. Yeah, I

 

George Chanos  

don’t think he’s in control, either.

 

Rick Jordan  

I’m with you. Yeah, that’s very true. I start to think, you know, as you’re looking on who to vote for, is, if you look at it, you know, if I were to think back to when I was maybe you know, 18 years old, 19 years old, you know, if I’m there, you know, typically 18-year-olds, 19 year olds don’t have much money, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, you’re driving a beater car to get your back and forth to work and that thing blows up on you. And you’re at the point where you don’t have a lot of budget, right? Yeah. And it’s like, okay, I need to find myself some transportation. It’s because I need to continue on with life, I need to continue making a living. And it’s like, What are my choices? I have maybe $10,000 to spend, you know, or 5000, or whatever, I can’t go over that. And you’re taking a look right here and you’ve got this. It might be another beater. Right? But maybe it’s a vehicle that has, you know, you find one that has low miles, maybe it was just driven by, I don’t know, a 90-year-old woman for three years, you know, that only drove to CVS and back every day, or you’ve got this Mercedes, that’s next to it, you know that that grandmother car was probably maybe five years old, right? That’s it but it’s just, it’s a lower-end car. Maybe it’s a Hyundai, something like that. Right? But you have this 25-year-old Mercedes, that’s right next to it that has 300,000 miles on it. Yeah, that has all these hits on the Carfax report for repairs and all these other things, but you’re like, you know what? I think I want to go with the Mercedes just because it’s a Mercedes. I don’t care that that thing’s broken down 50 times over the last two years, you know, it’s like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna look good, you know, and some of that just because it’s a Mercedes, but then you’re back in the same boat. It’s like and of course, I’m comparing. I’m comparing Biden to the Mercedes, right? That’s been applied to the Mercedes. But you’ve got this thing over here that might scale credit.

 

George Chanos  

To as your credit may be somehow made, made Biden the old beater?

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s funny, but I’ll tell you the Mercedes. If you don’t, if you don’t know much about him, I’ll give him this right. If you don’t know much about him, you just see a photo of him. He’s kind of dapper for like an 80-year-old, right? Yeah. Eventually, he looks okay. Until he speaks or moves. washes up well, until he speaks or moves it’s just yeah. joke with me. But the Hyundai over there, it’s like, it might squeal. Right? You know? And then there’s Trump, right? Because he’s just like the guy so intelligent, what isn’t just shut his frickin mouth sometimes, you know, but that’s it, like to your points. You know, he is he can accomplish things and has shown that he’s accomplished things even in the midst of squealing down the road. Every two minutes, you know, but he just keeps on going. And that’s that’s the difference. It’s like you want to, you’re in the middle of two less-than-ideal choices.

 

George Chanos  

Yeah. Rick, can I can I tell your audience about something? Please go for it. Yeah, I think they need to know about it. Yeah, go for it, man. Okay, so So I’m of the so first of all, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking told us before he died, that the singularity would be the greatest event in human history. And the singularity is that moment in time when machine intelligence eclipses human intelligence, to be the greatest event ever, greater than fire greater than the wheel greater than anything. So now you’ve got the head of AI for Google, a guy named Ray Kurzweil. And he tells us that this moment in time, the curve that Hawking was talking about, could come as early as 2029. Elon Musk says it could come in the next couple of years. Yeah, so the greatest event in human history is around the corner. Whether it’s two years away, or five years away, we are about to experience the greatest event in human history, something beyond the level of the discovery of fire and the wheel. Or anything, right? Right. Now, Kurzweil goes on to say that by the 2040s, AI will not be our equal, which is the singularity. By the 2040s 20 years away, it will be a billion times a billion times more capable than human intelligence. 

 

Now, I would argue that the human brain lacks the capacity to even comprehend what an intelligence that is a billion times its own represents for humanity. But we know it’s going to be seismic tectonic, right? So we have a major huge development that’s going to be seismic and tectonic within the next five years. And then within the next 20 years, we’ve got something that’s off the charts, right? So this is the world that we are living in today. Okay. Now, Musk and Hawking have also said, and others have said that AI could also spell the end of the human race and that it is more powerful and potentially more deadly than nuclear weapons. Right. Now, the issue is, when we’re giving these analogies about the cars, right, imagine, imagine giving a Ferrari and putting a baby behind the wheel, right? We’re the baby or the baby an AI is the Ferrari, right? We don’t know how to drive. Right. Another analogy might be you’ve got a roomful of infants. And as toys, you throw in a box of grenades, right? The pin that they can pull, yeah, right. That’s probably an even better analogy. Because, you know, that might be able to drive the Ferrari and kill itself, but it can pull one of those pins, right? So we’ve got this AI technology, so we’re smart enough to create it. 

 

The question is, are we smart enough to control it? Yeah. Right. And so and I would argue, no, we are not smart enough to control it. And so one of the urgent priorities, I believe, is for humanity. To evolve. Normally, evolution takes time, takes millions of years, hundreds of years, centuries, decades, and doesn’t happen in a five year period. And yet, that’s exactly what needs to happen. We need to raise the level of consciousness not only in this country but in the world to be able to get along and coexist with one another right on both a domestic level and an international level. Which means we need to end our division. We need to end our fighting. We need to end wars, we are living in a post-nuclear freeze singularity environment. War is a relic of the past it should have no place in, our future, or today, because the wars that will be fought with the weapons that we already have and that are soon to become available to us are existential threats to our existence. Right? They are existence-ending potential instruments of our extinction. And so I’m currently embarked on trying to raise people’s constant consciousnesses right, to become more self-transcendent. And what self-transcendent means is basically, to not care so much about yourself, but to care more about others, about our future, about humanity, about the human species about the planet, right to be self-transcendent, to get beyond yourself, right? And that’s really what we need to do. Now, I have the benefit of being 65 years old, right? And so I’m a little bit more evolved a little bit more man. Yeah, you know, than your average than your average guy, right? Or your average young person. And so I’m trying to get people to understand, you know, Milton Friedman was a Nobel winning Prize-winning economist, University of Chicago, very famous conservative economist. And he won his Nobel Prize for a very simple observation, which is that people operate out of self-interest. 

 

If you want somebody to do something for you. Tell them how it is in their self-interest to do it, then they are more likely to do it, right? So what I want your viewers to understand, is it it is in their self-interest to become more self-transcendent, it is in their interest, their personal interest to end division, it is in their personal self-interest to open their minds, Frank Zappa said that a mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work, if it isn’t open, to open their minds, to listen to opposing views, opposing perspectives, right? Because our individual views have no privileged legitimacy. We see the world not as it is. But as we are through our own unique prisons based on our own personal experience, our own history, the books, we’ve read, the movies, we’ve seen, the classes we’ve attended, and the parents we had, which are very different than, you know, somebody’s in war-torn Syria, so they naturally have a very different perspective of the world than we have. And what happens is that neither one of those, they’re like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, you’re a little view of the world, imagine it as one piece of the jigsaw puzzle, you don’t have the whole picture, you have a piece of the picture. And what you want is you want to look at these other pieces of the jigsaw puzzle so that you can triangulate towards the truth, so that you can piece together the whole picture and understand the truth. Right? Yeah, start looking at alternative perspectives, not as threats, but as assets. 

 

Right. So this is a, you know, a bit of wisdom that I wanted to impart to your audience from a 65-year-old, complex problem solver, who has been looking at these issues and studying these issues for decades. And this is where I’ve come down. I don’t you know, Aristotle said the man who thinks he knows everything knows nothing at all. The first sign of wisdom, in my view, is when you come to recognize that you don’t know shit, yeah, right. I don’t know shit. And if I don’t know should, you don’t know shit. So once you recognize that, you recognize that, you, you then understand the need to learn, to unlearn, and to relearn, Alvin Toffler said the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, it will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. We all have to engage in lifelong learning. We all have to develop a love of learning. We all have to learn, unlearn the garbage that we have in our heads, and relearn the truth, through triangulating by bringing in alternative perspectives, and listening to what other people think so I hope that this alternative perspective has enriched your audience somewhat. And I would encourage them to seek out more alternative perspectives. 

 

Rick Jordan  

I love a George thank you. That’s incredible. I know that everybody Listening will. They also need to read your book, Millennial Samurai. Because there’s a lot of good wisdom in there too, that I was finding. My goodness. I want to I want to end today talking just very briefly about that. Because when we were sitting at dinner, you know, bringing this full circle now, and you told me there was 188 chapters is that accurate? 180 180 282 chapters, it was like dude, who writes a book with 182 chapters? But then it was, it was, you told me the concept. And it was almost like they were like, your book was put together like YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. Yeah, so consumable man. How did you get the idea for that? I know, you told me but I want you to, I want to hear from your own your own mouth again, for everyone. Yeah, well, I

 

George Chanos  

know, look, we have these phones. Right. And we are now we are now kind of predisposed to want instant gratification, right? And we have shorter attention spans, as a consequence, of constantly strolling through, you know, information after information from multiple sources. And this is how we now consume a lot of our information. So the way I wrote Millennial Samurai, is with 182 chapters that are only one to three pages each. And the idea is, I can tell you that out of all the things that I’ve ever done in my life, this book, this book is the most important thing. And it is the most important thing that I leave my daughter, and my nieces and my nephews, and every parent, if you go on Amazon, and you read the reviews, they’ll tell you that this should be in every home in America, they’ll tell you that it’s a secular Bible for the 21st century, they’ll, the reviews are off the top. And you know, just crazy. But every parent should get this for their children. And if you can’t afford it on Amazon, it’s $29. If you can’t afford it, you can go to millennial samurai.com. You can download the entire book for free. All right, I want everyone to have this, I want a million people or more to download this book, 14,000 people are already ahead of the curve because they have downloaded the book, the book, it’s like if I were to drop you off in the Amazon rainforest, and I were going to give you a duffel bag, you could tell me what ought to go in that duffel bag, right? 

 

This if I’m going to drop my daughter off on the sidewalk in the middle of the 21st century, this is the duffel bag that I’m leading, leaving her and you know more than the house more than the stocks more than the money, there’s nothing I will leave my daughter that is more important than this book. So I really encourage people to go out and get it, it will prepare you for the technological tsunami that’s coming. It will give you greater insights, it will teach you how to be more adaptable and anti-fragile. It will give you inspiration, guidance, and direction, it will speak to you on many different levels. And whether you download it for free or whether you get the hardcopy for every hardcopy you buy a young person who can’t afford it gets one of these for free. So if you can afford the $29 to go buy the book, you’re putting one of these books in the hands of a young person who needs it. And this is how we change the world. Because it’s one thing at a time, we get purpose-driven leaders who start making contributions who, you know, maybe they’re a little bit older, maybe they’re more focused on the legacy. And that’s where I find myself, right. I’m, I’m a little bit older, and I’m more fake-focused on the legacy. You know, and some, some young people say okay, bloomer, you know, like, that’s such a mistake. You know, this phone that you guys are hanging out with, we invented these, you know, you got it, you know, so So you know, yeah, we, we did fuck up on a lot of things. We have a dysfunctional government that we’re leaving you with. We have, you know, wars that we’ve been involved in and become addicted to. But we’ve also done some great things, and so some of us still want to do great things, and some of us want to help you. Because we recognize that younger generations are our future, right as humanity encounters a logical tsunami. Yeah, it’s the millennials, the Gen X and the Gen Z, that will be at the tip of the spear so what do we need to do? We need to empower them, right? We don’t need to diss them or criticize them. We need to empower them. And so that’s what I’m doing, I’m sure empower young people and change the world one person at a time.

 

Rick Jordan  

George, you’re amazing. I am grateful and better off for knowing you and having to have met you. Thank you for coming on. It’s a you’re a futurist, you’re becoming a good friend and man, you’re just full of wisdom. Thank you for how you look at the world, brother.

 

George Chanos  

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me on your show. And thank you for introducing me to your loyal audience. It’s been an honor and a pleasure and I really am grateful