FCC Chairman: We Don't Need to Preemptively Micromanage Every Business

Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), joined Glenn on radio to discuss the future of the internet and net neutrality. If a government regulator exists that Glenn likes, it's Ajit Pai, who stood alone in a hostile world at the FCC during the Obama administration. Pai favors light regulation to ensure consumers have a competitive choice and companies have a greater incentive to invest in the internet.

Enjoy the complimentary clip or read the transcript for details.

GLENN: The head of the FCC. The FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, now joins us.

Ajit, I don't know if you are aware of this at all, but we've been watching you for a while. I have -- I have no idea how you got by Obama. But we're glad you did.

AJIT: Thanks so much, Glenn. I really appreciate the kind words. And grateful to you for making time for me today.

GLENN: Oh, you bet. We have a lot of questions for you. And I want to talk to you about net neutrality. I want to talk to you about the cable industry and this cry of fake news and where you think we're going.

Let's start with probably net neutrality.

Net neutrality is -- is in some ways, a -- a nightmare and will limit people. In other ways, people will look at this and say, "Wait. I don't want my cable operator being able to pick and choose winners and slow down, you know, the speeds of YouTube, if they're trying to promote their own YouTube." Can you make the argument?

AJIT: Absolutely. I think the key point here is nothing about the internet was broken. From the dawn of the internet age in the 1990s until 2015, the internet economy in the United States was the envy of the world precisely because President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed that instead of regulating the heck out of this new technology, we would let it develop and take targeted action as necessary.

And that's, I think, part of the reason why we saw the tremendous explosion and activity online. But in 2015, on the party-line vote, the FCC imposed these heavy-handed rules that were developed for Mondale, the telephone monopoly back in the 1930s.

And as a result, we've seen less investment in networks. We're seeing less competition than ever. And I think that's one of the things we want to address going further, is, you know, light-touch regulation I think is the best calibrated to make sure the consumers have more competitive choice, and the companies have a greater incentive to invest. And that's where we're heading.

GLENN: So how would you address -- I said this to Ray Kurzweil who is part of the Singularity University. Works for Google. And I said, "So, Ray, why wouldn't Google develop an algorithm that would find people who are using the search engine to create a bigger and better Google? Why wouldn't they just -- I mean, that's human nature to protect yourself. If somebody is coming -- you can piece together in advance, "Wait a minute. These people are looking to build a better Google." Why wouldn't you just shut them down? He said, "Oh, that would never happen because we're all good people." I don't necessarily subscribe to that theory.

But, you know, we are now in the internet age, playing devil's advocate, of these gigantic corporations that you're just not going to -- the little guy is not going to compete against Google. They're not going to compete against Apple. They're not -- you can't compete around Comcast.

AJIT: And the point I consistently made is we don't put our faith in people or in companies. What's that saying? If men were angels, no laws would be necessary.

GLENN: Right.

AJIT: Well, we have a system of laws, and interest in competition laws on one hand and consumer protection laws on the other. And those are administered by a -- say the Federal Trade Commission or Justice Department here in Washington, by state agencies across the country. So there's a whole framework of laws to protect against that kind of conduct.

What we don't need is the FCC preemptively micromanaging every single business in the United States, not just the big ones that you mentioned, but even the smaller companies that have told us we're holding back on investment now because of these heavy-handed investments.

GLENN: So we're talking to Ajit Pai, he's the chairman of the FCC. You know, as I look at the most hated services in America -- or service providers, it's your electric company, it's your insurance companies, it's your cable companies. Those are all the ones that are the most heavily regulated.

However, as somebody who has tried, without $200 million behind me, to break in and have a -- a groundswell -- a verified groundswell of -- of support behind me, these -- to break into cable is absolutely impossible if you are a voice that the companies want to block. You just can't do it. How do we balance that and make sure that, you know, the app system -- because that's why we -- that's why we're online. Okay. Well, good. We'll do it online. But how do we make sure that the app system isn't blocked now by a Comcast or an Apple, where you're just not going to get in and break through?

AJIT: That's a terrific question. And two different answers: Number one, the way you do it is by promoting more competition. You make sure that the barriers to entry, so to speak, are low. That people like you can express yourselves over a variety of different platforms. And number two, to the extent that that's a concern, remember that the people who are promoting this Title II regulation through the US government are not the friends of free speech and free expression. These groups are consistently saying that they want government control of the internet, not just for its own sake, but in order to regulate how speech and expression happens online.

GLENN: Right.

AJIT: And they've been very open about this throughout the years.

GLENN: But you can't -- as a person, I can't start my own cable company. It's all regulated. I can't start one.

AJIT: And that's why we've had a very aggressive agenda in the three months that I've been in the chairman's office to make sure that we enable more companies to make that decision, to enter the marketplace, removing some of the barriers that they found, in terms of the rules, and making it easier for them to raise capital and to enter these marketplaces. And we want the smaller companies that are getting squeezed by these regulations to finally enter the market and provide a competitive option.

GLENN: Good for you.

So help me out on this. Ted Koppel, who I have a lot of respect for, has done a lot of great journalism over his lifetime -- I was talking to him, and he was concerned about all this fake news. And I said, at the end of the day, go back to the revolutionary war, there was tons of fake news back then. We're just in a new situation. And we haven't found our way to balance it yet. But you got to trust the people.

And he immediately said, "I think that we need to start, you know, having a license for people to be on the internet and to present news. We have to verify those people who are online."

That's insane.

AJIT: I couldn't agree more. And I have a lot of respect for Ted Koppel's career. But, frankly, his comments are repugnant to the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment. In fact, that's the very reason why John Milton in 1644 wrote his great treaties on free expression, Areopagitica, where he said that, you know, look, the king has no business licensing people to allow them to speak. We -- the entire premise of western civilization is that you don't have a gatekeeper allowing you to speak only at the whim of the king. And that's the same here in the United States. The last thing I think we want is government -- sort of regulators like me deciding who speaks and who doesn't. That's the fantastic thing about the internet age, I think.

STU: Don't you think though, Glenn -- and Ajit Pai -- we're talking to the FCC chairman. You have this situation where it's not about what happened in 1644 or anything. It's about what's coming up on May 30th, which is season five of House of Cards.

JEFFY: Thank you. Thank you.

STU: People want their Netflix. They want it streamed. They don't want their evil cable company slowing it down. Is that something that needs to be regulated, or does the market actually work that stuff out?

AJIT: To me, the market works it out. The best evidence of that is the digital economy that we had, prior to 2015 when we imposed these rules.

Companies were not engaging in the blocking of lawful content. And to the extent that we have concerns about competition, the best way to get there is not by imposing these heavy-handed regulations that slow down infrastructure investment, especially by some of the smaller companies that would give you a competitive option. It's by making sure we have clear-cut rules of the road, that are market-friendly, that incentivize more companies to enter this space.

And so, you know, look, I'm all in favor of the government looking at any competitive problems as they pop up. Preemptively regulating, from the Fortune 500 companies, down to the tiny companies in Little Rock, Arkansas, is not the way to get there.

GLENN: I will tell you, Ajit, I look at this time period -- and I'd love to hear your point of view of this. I look at this time period of American history as a combination of the industrial revolution and heavy emphasis on Tesla and Edison, all in about a 20-year period. I mean, what's coming in -- in technology and communication has already been profound. But it's going to become even more profound.

And, you know, as a student of history -- and you obviously are one as well. When you look back at those days of Tesla and Edison, in many ways, Tesla was right. Edison was just good at playing the game with the government.

And he was a -- excuse my language, but a son of a bitch. And that's not French. That's English.

STU: Can we say that on the air, Mr. FCC Chairman?

GLENN: Oh, yes, I shouldn't have said that with the FCC chairman.

AJIT: I'll give you a pass, don't worry.

GLENN: Okay. Thank you.

PAT: You didn't think that one through. Did you?

GLENN: Yeah, I didn't think that one through. I forgot who we were talking to. Anyway, we never say things like that, by the way. Golly, gee, darn it. I'm sorry.

But we were pushed back because of the collusion with very powerful people like Edison and very powerful politicians. Do you see us -- how do you see what's coming our way?

AJIT: Boy, that's a great question.

I think the first thing is the empowerment of the citizen that the internet allows. It used to be that to do virtually anything, you had to work through some sort of gatekeeper. If you were buying a car, you had to go through a dealer. If you were wanting to stay in a place, you have to go book a room with a hotel.

And now, because of technology, you can do anything, basically by yourself. And that's an incredible amount of empowerment. But, on the other hand, we always have to guard against this instinct of essentially crony capitalism, the phenomenon that you talked about. And to that extent, I think what people need to understand is that heavy-handed regulation is actually the friend of bigger businesses and for those who believe in big government. Because -- the big companies are always going to have the armies of lawyers and accountants to comply with these regulations, to persuade government to do favors on this or that issue. It's the smaller companies that are disproportionately affected. And the second thing is that it's very seductive for a lot of people to think, "Well, the market just leaves consumers at the mercy of these wild and unpredictable forces." When in reality, the market has delivered more value for consumers than preemptive government regulation ever could.

I mean, the fact that we have billions of people who are emerging from poverty now is the result of free market policies. It's not because the governments of these various countries have suddenly decided to bestow largesse upon them. And so it's a case that we consistently have to make that crony capitalism and big government regulation, those are not the friends of the average consumer.

GLENN: So we have -- we have a situation now of fake news. And it's been around forever. But it's at epidemic proportions because the average person has access to everybody. And the average person, you know, unfortunately doesn't think things through and really read everything. They see a headline, they click on it, and they share it.

We have some really nefarious people, some of them in Russia, that are using our own technology against us, using our own freedoms against us. We have the press -- I told you about Ted Koppel. But we also have the president coming out and saying, you know, you're fake news. And maybe we should be able to sue you more.

Does the FCC have a role in the First Amendment in saying to all sides, "Knock it off. The freedom of the press is the freedom of the press, no matter if it's a printing press or the internet. Knock it off?"

AJIT: Well, I've consistently said -- and this goes back to my time as a commissioner up to five years ago, that one of the distinctive features of America is the fact that we have a First Amendment. It's unique in human history for the government to establish in its very founding papers the notion that anybody in this country has the ability to speak, anybody has the ability to write, anybody has the ability to worship as he or she sees fit.

And that's something that requires not just the cold parchment of the Constitution, but it requires a culture that admires that -- those freedoms. And so I've consistently spoken about -- about the need to preserve that culture of freedom for speech and free press. Because it's a slippery slope. Once you lose it, it's very hard to reclaim it.

GLENN: You have a 50 -- what is it? A 50 or 60 percent of so-called conservatives saying that there's a limit to freedom of the press. Is there?

AJIT: Well, the Constitution speaks for itself. And so long as I have the privilege of occupying this office, I'll keep defending that core constitutional freedom. It's one of the things that I think makes America a very unique place across time and across the world.

GLENN: So I think with that answer, I just have to end where I started: How the hell did you get past Barack Obama?

AJIT: That's a good question. I'm not sure how I slipped through the cracks.

GLENN: I don't know either.

AJIT: But maybe it's the -- sort of like the Forrest Gump of the Washington scene. Just kept gamboling on, and here I am.

(laughter)

GLENN: Yeah. Okay. Ajit Pai, thank you so much for talking to us.

PAT: Great.

GLENN: And keep up the good work.

AJIT: Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me on.

GLENN: You bet. Buh-bye.

PAT: And thanks for the shout-out to Areopagitica. That's -- I think that's a first.

JEFFY: Right.

GLENN: Oh, how many times have we talked about -- off the air --

PAT: All the time. All the time.

STU: Talked about all the time.

GLENN: Okay. You know what I love --

PAT: Talked about all the time. Milton's Areopagitica.

JEFFY: Right!

RADIO

How Hunter Biden, gas stoves & a health clinic ALL CONNECT

America is facing dark times, and some recent news stories show we’re even facing EVIL. In this clip, Glenn describes 4 recent news stories that you should be aware of: The weaponization of the DOJ, FBI, and CIA (and how it relates to Joe Biden’s documents scandal), a recent confession by Hunter Biden, an outright lie from Democrats about the alleged gas stove ban, and a SHOCKING, upcoming health clinic. So, how do these stories all relate? Glenn explains it all…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: let me show you a couple of things, that should very well concern you.

The first story comes from the Blaze. Carefully worded statement reveals FBI seized more documents from Biden property. This time, his vacation home.

Okay? This happened yesterday. They searched for about three and a half hours. FBI agents say, they discovered no classified documents. But they did seize material from Biden's tenure as vice president.

So they did this, they took stuff from his house. Why? This is a sitting president. Why?

We know the DOJ is in Biden's pocket.

We know that the administration has weaponized the FBI for the left.

But is that the president, or is that Deep State that has done this?

This is extraordinarily disturbing. That they're going into a sitting president's house, and doing this.

And we don't really know, what's going on. We haven't even had a discussion. We just accept it.

What will that mean, for the next president.

And the president after that.

Hunter Biden also, yesterday, admitted the laptop is his.

And that he left it, and that's his laptop.

This is some sort of twisted strategy, to now go after all those who reported on the laptop. Because they didn't have a right to that information.

But now. After how many years, of all of us knowing, including those in -- in the press. Everyone knowing that that laptop is real.

Now he finally comes out and says it's real. Will anyone in the press, care? Or will they follow the next bouncing ball and go after all those who talked about it?

Remember, the FBI and the CIA, and NSA, they have loaded themselves in, to all of the big tech companies. They are everywhere in big tech.

Why? Why is that happening?

What is -- what is the government and big tech doing?

Are they protecting you, or are they protecting people like -- oh, I don't know. Hunter Biden. Or Kathy Hochul.

Kind of a theme that you need to have, always with you now, is I know who has lied to me, over and over again.

I know who has lied to me. Do you know who has told you the truth, or tried to tell you the truth, to the best of their ability?

Who is making corrections in the errors of their way. That is crucial. Bill Maher is doing this.

Bill Maher is making corrections in the errors of his way.

He's like, you know what, I didn't see this. I didn't believe this. This has got to stop. Who is doing that? And who is just doubling down on their lost credibility.

The media told us, two weeks ago, that nobody is coming after your gas stove.

You remember that clearly?

We told you, that this is something that had to do with the E and the ESG. We showed you that it was an environmentalist paper and a research paper from that environmentalist group. That the department of -- what was it? It's not Labor that Trumka is in charge of.

I can't remember. But one of the departments he's the head of. He came out and he said, we're looking into the gas stove things. It can be really, really very dangerous. And then they said, no. That's not true. That's not happening.

Well, in governor Hochul's new budget, she has proposed several things that are nuts. But this is one of them.

Hochul's budget plan would ban the sale of gas stoves, and other fuel-powered heating equipment, by 2030.

And require that all new buildings be zero emission starting in 2028. Smaller buildings would be required to go green in 2025.

So now who is lying to you? Who is lying to you?

Is Katie Hochul just making this up?

Or has this been discussed for a long time, and she's just willing to do it, because she knows, I just got reelected. It's not going to be a problem here?

What you're dealing with, is absolute evil. Evil.

Now, let me give you direct evidence.

Stu, how would you feel, if you wanted to go to a doctor. And you knew the doctor was an atheist, but a really food doctor.

What would you do?

STU: I probably would just go to the doctor, and not care really what religion he was. That's kind of his situation.

GLENN: Kind of his situation, right. Right. Right.

As long as he's a really good doctor. Right.

STU: Right.

GLENN: Now, how would you feel if you found out, your doctor was a practicing Satanist? But he was the best doctor in that field.

STU: It's a -- it's a good question. Like, I don't necessarily -- you know, a huge swath of our audience will be offended by this.

I don't necessarily consider Satanism to actually be a religion.

So I would probably be pretty skeptical of their general judgment in that case.

GLENN: Would you go to them?

STU: I don't think so. No.

GLENN: Yeah. Okay. I wouldn't. There's no thought with me. Oh, you're a Satanist?

Really? They're not coming to you. Okay. No thanks. How would you feel if the hospital was a Satanist hospital?

STU: Yeah. I would pick a different hospital in that case.

GLENN: Pick a different hospital. There is a new health clinic in New Mexico, being opened by The Satanic Temple.

It is -- they're actually going to name the facility this.

The Samuel Alito's mother's Satanic Abortion Clinic. So they are now opening up an abortion clinic.

And they are providing free of charge, as part of The Satanic Temple's abortion ritual. You'll to pay for your medication and pharmacy. Typical cost is about 90 bucks. So you can get your abortion free, as part of a satanic ritual.

Now, they put those in quotation marks. Because they want you to know, well, we're just fooling around here. We're not really The Satanic Temple.

We're just trying to make a point. We're not really doing rituals with it. Really? Really?

Huh.

STU: I think their goal seems to be to make a point there. And I guess own the conservatives. But man, if it doesn't track with exactly what I believe is true in this case.

You know, it's like, you seem to be making our point. The fact that the Satanists are adopting this process, as central to their being, is pretty telling. And honestly, I think it tracks perfectly.

GLENN: Right. And they are going to be receiving government benefits and privileges. Because it's a -- a religious organization.

But without a deity, they don't really believe in the Satan.

And what they're trying to do is open this up.

Now, they say, this is going to be -- doctors are going to be fine working there. And there will be good, qualified doctors.

I would question any doctor, that worked at the satanic abortion clinic.

You know. You know, everybody is like, oh, this doctor is a Catholic. And he won't perform abortions, at Our Lady of Weeping and open sores.

I can't see -- really? But you'll go to a Satanist.

And a Satanist. A doctor will go, I'm fine with the Satan thing, whatever.

I'm doing a good thing, and a good service. Boy, if this does not make you question absolutely everything, that you think you know, I don't know what does.

RADIO

Why NOT destroying China’s spy balloon may be a BIG MISTAKE

A Chinese balloon was spotted over the northern United States earlier this week, with sightings most recently in Billings, Montana. China has since confirmed the suspected spy balloon is their’s, though stopped short of admitting it’s being used for surveillance (like many in the U.S. suspect). According to CNN, military officials advised President Joe Biden NOT to destroy the balloon, ‘due to fear the debris could pose a safety threat to people on the ground.’ But in this clip, Glenn explains why NOT destroying this 'spy balloon' could be a very BIG mistake…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Let me talk to you about the spy balloon. Stu, what do you know about the spy balloon?

STU: Well, apparently, the spy balloon, flying from a product of China. Flying from our western United States.

GLENN: Yeah. It's over Wyoming.

STU: Alaska. Wyoming now.

GLENN: Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

STU: I did have a question of, when we have satellites and TikTok, why would we need a balloon? I don't know.

GLENN: It does seem to be a little old-timey, you know.

And at first when I heard that, I thought, they're down to hot air balloons. That's good. You know, that's good. But it's not good.

And here's why: And I'm not hearing anybody talk about this. First of all, the -- the balloon's current path, it carries -- it carries this balloon over a number of sensitive military sites. And they also say -- the United States says, they don't want to shoot it out of the sky because of falling debris. Really?

We don't have anything that would just obliterate that thing in the sky. Really? So, anyway, it was over Canada. And then it flies into the United States. And it's flying over sensitive military nuclear sites.

And the Chinese foreign ministry said, you know, relax, America.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm -- China should be happy that we don't have a female for president. Because females don't really like it when males say, okay. Sweetheart, relax.

And I think that's kind of what China just said to us, in a very condescending tone. Oh, please, relax. It's just a spy balloon. What are we going to get?

Well, here's the one thing that -- one thing that I -- that I wanted to check, when I saw this.

The -- the balloon, they think, is in an altitude between 80, and 120,000 feet. Now, I'm not saying, that this is what it is.

But I am saying, if we don't shoot it down, and make sure that our own airspace remains sacred, we're out of our minds. Can you imagine Russia. If we had a spy balloon, ask we told Russia or China, ah, relax.

The balloon is at an altitude, they believe between 80 and 120,000 feet. The minimum altitude for an airborne EMP is 94 or 95,000 feet. So that's right in that range. I just want to throw that out there.

I don't think it's an EMP. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not an EMP. However, if they can fly things over our country. And we do nothing about it.

And they're flying them over our nuclear sites. I think that's a problem.

I don't know about anybody else.

But I'm not really relaxed about it. How about you? Hmm?

STU: Sounds like a big problem. And, you know, certainly, I think, they will learn, that they can do this, if they want to do it. Right?

GLENN: Yeah. Absolutely.

STU: Take a lesson from this.

GLENN: That's the intelligence that they're gathering.

I really believe, they are gathering the intelligence of, will America even respond?

I don't think they will. No. Of course, they will. No. I don't think they will.

Let's fly it over. Fly it into US airspace. And fly it spew their really sensitive military sites. And see if they say a word. No!

That's the intelligence they're gathering.

STU: That's all we do, though. Is we say the word. They're talking about how they're going to make a very uncomfortable meeting, I guess when I guess Blinken meets with them.

GLENN: Oh, very uncomfortable.

We might send them a sternly worded letter. Why not blow it out of the sky? Sincerely. Why not blow it out of the sky.

Just saying.

If it's a balloon, I'm not so worried about shrapnel coming down. Are you?

STU: Well, looking it though, the pictures that are seemingly of this balloon. It doesn't look like a balloon. Like you would think of a balloon.

It looks like there's a decent amount of equipment on it. How would you describe this picture? It looks almost like a satellite.

GLENN: Almost like Sputnik.
(laughter)
Yeah. So it looks kind of like a satellite. I wonder what equipment might be on it. And honestly, there is nothing that a balloon can gather, that I'm aware of. And I talked to some expert about this. There's nothing I'm aware of, that they can't gather very satellite. They can watch us via satellite, they have that technology. So why launch a balloon?

The only answer I and others can come up, that I've talked to. Is they're just testing, whether or not they can invade our airspace. And we do anything. Now, why would they want to know that? This is not good. It's not good.

GLENN: Just saying. Leave it at that.

STU: Your summary of it, do we get a headline out of it? Is that a clickbait-y headline that we can get?

GLENN: Yeah. China flying mysterious balloons with equipment on it, over sensitive US air -- US sites. Suboptimal.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Suboptimal. I'm just saying.

STU: Suboptimal.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

STU: Emphasis on the sub.

GLENN: Yeah. Which they can launch a lot of things.

Anyway, there is a new poll out, and it's a record-setting poll. And I think this is exciting. Only about a third. 36 percent of Americans, say they are satisfied now, with a set of policy issues spanning all aspects of government.

Among the lowest rated issues was the state of the economy. Which our president said, is fixed right? I mean, it's booming.

STU: It's strong as hell, Glenn.

GLENN: Strong as hell. No joke, people. I'm not joking. I'm telling you the truth. I'm shooting straight.

It's strong as hell. A quarter of Americans say, yeah. I'm satisfied with it.

It had the largest year over year decline, dropping eight percentage points.

Satisfaction with gun laws, also dropped sharply this year, to a record low of 34 percent.

Now, this one, I would like you to look into, Stu. I would like you to know. Is that like, yeah. Our gun laws aren't strong enough.

You know, we have to be more like California. Which, well, don't think about the stats on that one, too much.

Because we already have the toughest gun laws in California. But that's because of other states, that we're having all these problems.

Uh-huh. So the satisfaction of gun laws dropped sharply to a record low. Policies on abortion. Efforts to control crime.

Quality of public education. And efforts to combat poverty and homelessness, also remain at near all-time low points.

So we're not in a good mood. Now, they say, there are things we can build on.

Sure, there's a rise of polarization. And a decline in national harmony.

You know, we've always had a baseline, where, you know, people were generally content with America.

And now, people are not. I wonder what could have changed that.

So the perception of overall quality of life in the US has dropped to a record low this year.

As did perceptions of wealth inequality. Less than a quarter of adults now say that they are satisfied the way income and wealth is distributed in the US.

Less than a quarter of adults. So does that mean only a quarter of us believe in the free market?

STU: Is it that high?

GLENN: Is it that high?

STU: I mean, think about that, you are constantly beaten over the head, with how much this country sucks. How terrible it's been. How everything it does is wrong. How every police officer is out to kill minorities. I mean, it's on and on and on.

How every rich person is trying to kill poor people for profit. Every company is out to get you.

You think about how that has to wash over a population over multiple decades, and what other ending can you come to?

Only if people are hard-core their principles.

GLENN: Yeah, they know that. They hard-core know that. And just when you think that things are horrible, the groundhog dies, on Groundhog Day.

It's suboptimal. I'm going to leave it at that.

RADIO

Amazon’s DEEP government partnerships could RUIN YOUR LIFE

Amy Sterner Nelson has experienced firsthand just how dangerous Amazon truly can be. She joined Glenn during his ‘Targets of Tyranny’ special last year to detail how the tech giant used civil asset forfeiture in an attempt to pressure Amy’s husband, Carl, to admit to felony accusations that he did not commit. But, since sharing her story with Glenn’s audience, Amazon’s dark practices seemingly have only gotten worse. She joins Glenn in-studio to detail the latest developments, explaining just how deep Amazon’s partnerships with our federal government run. But it’s not just Amazon, Amy explains. It’s ALL of Big Tech, and their partnerships, their corruption, and their scare tactics are something we should ALL be terrified of.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: The founder of the Riveter. She is -- she is really -- I feel stupid sitting in the same room with her. She's a graduate of Emery University.

NYU, School of Law, practice corporate litigation with a focus on high profile First Amendment matters for over a decade in New York and then in Seattle.

Mother of four. Contributor for Ink. The host of iHeart Radio's What's Her Story, with Sam and Amy.

She's raised $30 million in venture capital to grow the Riveter.

She's also been published in the Washington Post, Newsweek, Seattle Times, and she's been all over the world speaking. Fortune's most powerful women. I mean, jeez.

Overachieve much, Amy?

AMY: No.

GLENN: So, Amy, you were on with us -- by the way, welcome. Glad you're here.

AMY: Thank you. Thank you.

GLENN: And you're sitting up, taking nourishment. That's always good. You came in here for the targets of tyranny special. And we had been in correspondence for a while. Because of what happened to you and your husband in Seattle with Amazon. And the feds.

Can you quickly just recap that for anybody who doesn't remember?

AMY: Yeah. So my husband worked for Amazon web services for nearly eight years. If you don't know, AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon.

Where the internet lives, cloud computing lives, and these big data warehouses across the world.

My husband worked in real estate, helped scouting locations that would be good to build data centers and projects along those lines.

He left Amazon in 2019. On April 2nd, 2020, the FBI knocked on our door.

We learned then that my husband was being accused. At the time, we didn't know by who.

Of a crime called private sector honest services fraud, which is depriving your private employer of your honest services. At the time, the FBI did not ask my husband what happened. It was clearly an accusation. And two months later, the government used forfeiture, to seize all of our family's bank accounts.

GLENN: Your bank accounts. Your husband's, your joint. Everything.

AMY: I mean, to the point, Glenn. The DOJ went into our law firm's client trust account. And seized all the money that we had paid our lawyers.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

AMY: And my husband at that point was never charged with a crime. In fact, he was never charged with a crime. Civil forfeiture is something the government did use. It's a tool. And they can seize your money, your home, your safe deposit box.

GLENN: They can squeeze you in every way they possibly can.

And many times, you don't get the money back.

AMY: We really don't. And we were kind of told. Don't expect to get the money back, no matter what.

GLENN: That's craziness.

That's King George. Declaration of Independence-style stuff.

AMY: And the thing is, it's a tool. It's a pressure tool. So my husband had been accused of April 2nd, 2020.

And the prosecutors wanted to plead guilty to a crime. It was all very specific and unclear. The crazy thing is, that largely what my husband was being accused of, depriving Amazon of his honest services, related to actions my husband took after he didn't work at Amazon. But, anyway, we did fight.

And, you know, we -- we had four little girls.

We sold our home. We sold our car. We liquidated our retirement. We borrowed money from family and friends to pay lawyers and to survive.

GLENN: And didn't they go into your family's accounts too? Your dad or something?

AMY: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so my father was critically ill. He almost died. He also got a life-saving kidney transplant in April of 2020.

And two weeks later, the FBI emptied out his bank accounts. My husband and I had paid for his medical care.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

AMY: So he would have died, if my mother wouldn't have helped him pay his medical bills.

GLENN: So many times, people see this and go, yeah. But there had to be something.

You -- you told the story of what that something is. And it revolved around a very expensive lawsuit from Amazon.

AMY: Yeah. So to preface this, we had no idea what was going on. And the day the FBI showed up at my house, my husband hired criminal defense attorneys and said, please call Amazon, and tell them, I will come in and talk to them. I don't understand what is going on. But I have nothing to hide.

And Amazon's lawyers said, we will only speak to him if he's pleading guilty to a felony. And at the time, we were going, what was going on?

Amazon's lawyers squarely put the DOJ between the company and my husband.

Very few companies have that kind of access to DOJ, and for an institution that's meant to be apolitical, that's wrong. It's just wrong. But what we learned over the course of years, and spending a lot of lawyer money is that, in February of 2020, Amazon broke a contract with a real estate developer. And by the explicit terms of that contract, unless they could improve the developer committed a felony crime, they were going to owe him over $100 million in damages.

The next day after they broke the contract, they had the first meeting with the Department of Justice. They meant with the Department of Justice over 100 times trying to lobby for criminal charges.

The government spent countless FBI hours and prosecutor's hours. Essentially doing Amazon's bidding. And what we do know, is despite all the things that Amazon told the government. They never told the government, that they broke a contract and needed a felony. Or they would be liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

GLENN: So you decided to fight this.

AMY: Yes.

GLENN: You guys are fighters. You decided to fight. It has cost you a great deal. Your husband, nor you, nor anybody else has ever been charged. You thought this was kind of wrapping up.

And then you came on the special. And I think I may have said, are you sure you want to come on?

And I know I said, I hope nothing happens because of this.

The day after. Coincidence?

AMY: I don't really believe in coincidences anymore. But the day after, the Department of Justice subpoenaed Amazon for all the documents that Amazon had, that had been produced in the civil litigation. Because after Amazon failed to get criminal charges, they sued my husband.

And I'll note something about that, that I think Amazon didn't anticipate. But usually, when you're accused of a crime, you never get to see the communications, between your accuser and the Department of Justice.

And in this civil case, because Amazon sued my husband, my husband was able to see all those communications. And they're very shocking.

And I mean, to me, as a lawyer, I was floored. By the things that had been made public, that I had been able to see.

GLENN: Why?

What was seen?

ADAM: Amazon hired a former federal prosecutor from the Eastern District of Virginia. They paid him millions of dollars to lobby his former colleagues, for criminal charges.

The former -- the current prosecutors of Virginia, immediately ushered in Amazon for a meeting.

They set up a meeting with the prosecutor's press office.

Because this was clearly going to be such a sexy and scandalous case.

They never checked anything Amazon said.

They never asked to see my husband's terms of employment or his non-compete. Like, they just didn't ask to see it.

Amazon said they had paid this real estate developer, $16 million.

Amazon had paid the real estate developer $0.

So nobody ever checked anything. They just went for it.

GLENN: Because it was really, literally, an old boy's network.

I know you, you know me. This is a problem.

AMY: I mean, we have an email that's now in the public docket in Virginia, where Patrick Stokes, Amazon's lawyer, asked his former colleague, Jessica Aber, who is now the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, who just sued Amazon's main rival, Google. And Pat (inaudible) said to Jess Aber, we want to talk to you about civil asset forfeiture.

Prosecutors in the eastern district of Virginia have not used civil asset forfeiture, outside of a drug case, in 30 years, that I can find.

GLENN: So this is now building looked at again for the second time?

AMY: You know, I really think that Amazon keeps pushing DOJ to try to do something. And DOJ isn't doing anything, except kind of -- the investigation just kind of hangs out there. Because it was a threat, right?

Unless Amazon can get a felony conviction as a real estate developer, they are going to be liable for damages.

GLENN: All right. So the reason -- and we talked about this. You mentioned this. But I have been seeing more and more stories. About people from the DOJ, going to work, right directly to the Pentagon.

And people from the intelligence agencies.

This is terrifying, because there is a public had she private partnership, that you should be very aware of.

Our DOJ, our national security agencies, all of them are using Amazon. Amazon, as their cloud bank.

When you have that, you have control of the government, or the government has control of you.

At best -- at best, if one doesn't have something over the head of the other, they're partners in everything.

That is extraordinarily dangerous.

AMY: It's incredibly dangerous. I mean, and the thing that kind of blows my mind is that no one is really even paying attention to it.

I mean, on Amazon's board, they have the former head of the NSA, Keith Alexander. That's not a person with business experience, that should be on the board of a business company.

I mean, why else would he be there, other than to get contracts with the NSA?

And sure enough, in 2021, the NSA quietly awarded Amazon web services, a 10 billion-dollar contract.

Like, it's something that we should all be very frightened of. It's happening across big tech.

It's happening -- you've read the Twitter files.

You see it everywhere. And Amazon is hiring hundreds, hundreds of CIA, FBI, former federal prosecutors.

GLENN: And what -- just having those guys in a high-tech company that has the information on each of us with be that Amazon does, that's not good. There's no wall between that company and the government.

TAYLOR: Absolutely not. There's no wall at all. And you look at things. Amazon is now getting into Pharma. Right?

Amazon just launched a five dollar subscription to get your pills. Now you're going to give all your health data to Amazon. It's terrifying.

And Jeff Bezos is an oligarch. Right?

If you looked at the indictment of the FBI agent, Charles McGonigal, it described an oligarch, Dara Paska (phonetic), as a man of vast wealth with close ties to the government. That is exactly what Jeff Bezos is.

GLENN: So what's next in this?

Have you written off ever getting your money back?

AMY: So we actually got our money back. So we pulled off what people thought would be impossible.

GLENN: Wow. You should do a podcast just on how to do that. I know lots of people who just driving through town, they had cash, the sheriff pulls them over. The cop pulls them over.

That's ours. I mean, you never get it back. How did that happen?

AMY: So the government -- it's such a strange process. It goes back to the time of pirates.

But when the government seizes your money, and they don't charge you with a crime. They then have to sue your asset. So they sue your bank account. It's like US versus $4,000 at Wells Fargo.

And they do that, because your assets don't have due process. So they can just avoid all due process.

So the government here, sued our bank accounts, went to the court, paused the case for six months.

Went to the court again. Asked to pause it for six months.

Judge said you only get four months this time. They wanted a deposit again, and it wasn't going to happen. So it was time to litigate, and it was time for the government to prove their case against the bank accounts.

And instead of opting to prove their case, the government gave us the money back.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

STU: How long was that from beginning to end, when you lost the money to when you finally received it again?

AMY: It was 22 months.

GLENN: You had nothing.

AMY: We had nothing.

We had to figure out how to feed our four daughters.

My mother, who was amazing. My mother who was a public school teacher, worked her whole life. And my mother kept asking, don't they care about your daughters? You have a baby.

And I said, mom. They don't care. She said, this is our government. And I said, they don't care. They care about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. They do not care that we have children to feed.

They did say, when they seized our money, that if my husband pled guilty to a crime, they would give some of it back.

It's such a transparent tool of corruption. It should be gone. It should be abolished.

GLENN: It's unbelievable.

STU: You mean that threat, where they can say, hey, just say you're guilty, and then we can make it all better.

Therefore, getting the guilty plea out of you. And it's really kind of your only option at that point.

GLENN: Yeah, and they held everything.

Including, if this goes on, and you arrest your husband, we will do it in front of your children.

AMY: My husband asked his lawyers -- his lawyers asked the prosecutors over and over again, who were saying in 2020, we're charging him. We're coming.

They never charged him. But they threatened you.

And my husband's lawyers asked the prosecutors. Can he turn himself in, if you're going to indict him? And the prosecutor said, no. We will arrest him in front of your home, in front of your kids.

GLENN: Isn't that crazy?

Knowing that that was a big fear of theirs.

STU: So wrong.

GLENN: This is so corrupt and so bad. Amy, thank you for telling the story.

We'll get some closing thoughts from you in just a second. It's Amy Nelson. And her website is TheRiveter.co or is it .com? Dot-co.

Okay. Let me tell you a little bit about Legacybox.

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We are in restoration on all kinds of things right now.

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STU: No.

GLENN: It's just been released. And given to our museum. To -- to hold on.

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Ten-second station ID.
(music)
Amy Nelson is with us. Final thoughts or advice?
AMY: Well, as you know, Glenn, I've been a progressive my entire life. And one thing that has really surprised me in all this is that progressives see things in black and white.

The right side sees things in black and white. But really, this is about our rights, and we should all be fighting for the same rights, including due process. And so I just hope that the Department of Justice could try to be more fair and transparent.

GLENN: Is it over? It's not.

AMY: It not over. But it will be some day. That's what my husband says. It can't last forever.

GLENN: That's just crazy. Do you still consider yourself a progressive?

AMY: I consider myself politically homeless.

GLENN: I think a lot of people feel that way.

AMY: I think so too.

GLENN: And it's weird because if you're a classic liberal. You know, I call myself more of a Libertarian. But it's also classic liberal.

It's the same thing. I believe in the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

That's -- that's -- that's all that's important. The rest of it is nonsense.

AMY: It is. And there's so much ink spilled distracting us from those things.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. Nobody talks about those things.

Your story and stories like you, that should be everywhere. And that's something that Republicans and Democrats and independents should all be standing up and saying, this has got to stop. Because if they'll do it to you. They'll do it to anybody.

AMY: They truly will.

GLENN: Yeah. Thank you so much. My best to your family. How are your kids?

AMY: They're great. They're amazing. They're kids. They're resilient.

GLENN: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

RADIO

A HUGE cyber attack may be coming. Here’s how to PREPARE.

Global elites within the World Economic Forum recently predicted a ‘catastrophic’ cyber attack is imminent — and could occur within the next 2 years. These are the same ‘experts’ who hosted a panel to discuss pandemic preparedness….a YEAR before COVID-19 ever began. So maybe, just maybe, we should take this new ‘prediction’ seriously. In this clip, Glenn is joined by William Forstchen, author of ‘One Second After.’ His book series, which explores how a giant EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack would send America ‘back into the Dark Ages,’ demonstrates just how vital electricity is to our society’s survival. Without it, he tells Glenn, hundreds of thousands would die within minutes. So, what can YOU do to prepare? In this clip, he gives Glenn the top three things you should have at home in case a catastrophic cyber event truly does occur…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: All right. We bring -- we bring back our -- of our guest from just a couple of days ago. William Fortune, who wrote One Second After.

He's also a Montry HEP College Factory fellow, and we wanted to talk to him about -- well, William, have you read the World Economic Forum's warning?

WILLIAM: No, I have not.

GLENN: Okay. So they're saying that a major cyber attack is coming. And they're focused mainly on the financial sector.

They think that's where it's going to come. Which, any thoughts on that, quickly, before we move on?

WILLIAM: No. A girlfriend and I were playing Jenga. You know the thing that we were stacking blocks? It's a good analogy.

Imagine our infrastructure is like a Jenga tower. And he went back is balanced on one block at the bottom. If that one block goes out, the entire tower collapses.

GLENN: And that one block --

WILLIAM: That one block is electricity. That one block is electronics, and are all internet systems. But actually all the way down to just electricity.

You kill that, you kill the entire tower.

GLENN: So let's say that we were in war with Russia.

WILLIAM: Yes.

GLENN: Would they have any qualms of shutting our electricity off? Would they just go after one sector, or would they have any qualms of going after electricity?

WILLIAM: Oh, it's a multi-fascinated attack. But electricity is the fundamental block upon which everything is predicated upon. Your computers. Your telecommunications. Space programs. Everything comes down to electricity. Now, it would be a multi fascinated attack. Which that would be one component thereof.

GLENN: Why would someone go after the financial sector? As long as you had electricity, couldn't you reset that pretty quickly?

Go ahead.

WILLIAM: I know at some point we're going to be talking about what we can do as individuals. So let's take it as an individual.

GLENN: Yes.

WILLIAM: All right. You move to finances. Suddenly, your credit cards don't work. Your bank account doesn't work. Maybe everything you've saved for years, boom, it's offline, it disappears. What happens to us as individuals? And then extrapolate that out to your community.

All the way up to the nations. You disrupt the financial system.

Basically, put in common parlance. We're screwed.

GLENN: And wouldn't day before wouldn't a central bank digital currency make things worse, because you wouldn't have -- any currency at all.

WILLIAM: There's another part of our problem with AI and everything else. We're actually setting up the system, whereby, we become more and more vulnerable every day.

100 years ago, you know, back when, you know, Roosevelt and everything else. Yeah. Systems collapse. But if you had money under the mattress, you could still get by.

Well, that money in and of itself, is useless. Who will trust it?

Remember Sandy in 2012, of people lined up around the block in New York City, waving 100-dollar bills just to get hamburgers out of McDonald's?

And the guy at McDonald's is saying, hey, folks. I can't even deal with that. I have no banking system left. I don't want your money. It's worthless. That's the scary thing.

Our money becomes worthless.

GLENN: Now, I wanted to talk to you, and we had you on a couple of days ago.

And just for anybody who missed this. Just recap a bit.

How easy it is to take down our -- our power grid.

And the attempts that have already been made, and it's my understanding, if we take out nine or ten substations, you can lose the entire grid in America.

Not for a short period of time. It's not like putting a new telephone up pole up. It's for months.

WILLIAM: Well, remember the great power failures in New York, in the '70s and '80s? And the one case, it all traced back to one relay switch that short-circuited out.

That then caused the next relay switch to shut down. That started causing entire systems to go offline to try and protect themselves.

Or look at Texas.

I mean, yo went through it two years ago.

When the system started to go, it cascaded across the entire state, within a matter of minutes. It's all automatically set up.

It happens faster than any human could ever deal with. It's just boom, boom, boom. Of different electronic components. Some would say, oh, the guy next to me isn't working right. I have to shut down.

GLENN: Right. But isn't that to protect the entire system?

WILLIAM: How do you bring it back up? In Texas, you had a full meltdown, how do you bring it back up?

GLENN: How do you mean that? I'm sorry for asking such simple questions here.

But I know this just happened in Pakistan. They were doing it for some global warming thing.

And they decided to take the entire system down, for a couple of hours every night.

They turn it off. And they couldn't turn it back on. I don't know if they still have power outages.

WILLIAM: Exactly. Again, we, as individuals. I'm sitting in my house right now.

Suddenly, boom, it went off.

How do we turn it back on? Go to my circuit box, which I can barely understand? You know, I'm just an ordinary guy in that respect. The systems become so interlocked. Even so complex, that it exceeds the human capability, to bring it back quickly. So it just automatically shuts down. And then how do you bring it back?

There's the key. How do you bring it back?

GLENN: And that's for a cyber attack. Which you told me a couple of days ago, a cyber attack can go in shooting one of those substations, which we're having happen now around the country.

Someone shooting at them, can bring them offline. But if it's coordinated, or even a cyber attack, it can destroy those substations. And China is the only one that makes all of that equipment.

And it -- to order it in a nonemergency way, it will take you over a year to get it.

WILLIAM: Okay. Our major transformers. I believe you and I talked about it a few years ago. Our major big substation. The largest substations, to replace a major component, can take two years.

Now, you would think, in a nation that realizes this. We would stockpile each component.

Now, certain things go offline. Put another one in.

No. We're just in time delivery type of mentality.

GLENN: Jeez.

WILLIAM: And as a result, we don't have stockpiles of crucial equipment to help bring us back online.

GLENN: Okay.

So this means -- give me the -- you know, the scenario that you wrote in one second after. Open things up. And, you know, I read these kinds of things. And reports and everything else.

You did such a good job at keeping. Bringing the story to -- to life, in a realistic way.

And then also, showing me things that I just -- I had never even thought about.

These things go offline. How long does it take. I think it's 72 hours, before things really go into chaos.

That was from a government study in the '60s, and it proved true with Katrina. Once people think there's no help coming, bad things really begin to happen.

How long before a lot of people dies? That same three -- three hours because of the lack of water? Or not three hours? Three days?

GLENN: Okay. If we want an EMP scenario, how many people are going to die in the next five minutes?

I'll ask another question: How many people you think will die from the first five minutes of an EMP?

GLENN: I would say none.

Because of the EMP?

Very few.

WILLIAM: A couple hundred thousand in the first five minutes.

GLENN: From what?

WILLIAM: Because there's over 2,000 commercial aircraft in the air right now. And a significant number of those, if they got hit by a major EMP, it shuts the computers down on the plane.

An EMP has solely, up front, piloting you into the Hudson River.

That plane is going to fall like a rock.
So a couple hundred thousand within minutes. Within the first three days, in a major situation. What happens to your nursing homes?

GLENN: Right. And your hospitals. Sure.

WILLIAM: Right.

GLENN: Okay. So -- so that would happen if they just -- it doesn't have to be an EMP. If they knocked the power grid out, the planes would be okay.

But we just saw in LA, you know the LAX just went out of power, and it wasn't good.

WILLIAM: You know, just a couple of weeks ago, the entire command control system for the FAA shut down.

Suddenly, all the screens of all the air traffic controllers went blank.

Now, it was only for short-term. But it was chaos.

Thousands of flights had to be canceled. Planes in the air.

You're going to put them back down. Or look at 9/11. Where all planes were ordered immediately. And then didn't fly again for a day.

And that even was not a cyber situation.

So your key components for -- or let me give you another example.

Suppose all the traffic lights in Dallas, suddenly shut down simultaneously.

How many people will be hurt in the first five minutes?

Quite a few.

GLENN: A lot. Yeah.

WILLIAM: So we don't realize we're like that Jenga tower. We're just one little block. Then the blocks above it, start to fall away. Then the entire tower starts to collapse.

That's America at this moment.

GLENN: I have to tell you, you just said you and your girlfriend were just talking about this last night, about Jenga. And I would like to just offer my wife's services for counseling. Because this is the kind of stuff that -- and my wife is like, can we not talk about that tonight?

Anyway, we're -- we're -- we're talking about -- weaver talking about catastrophic failure, something the EF -- the WEF has predicted is coming in the next 24 months.

And what can you do about it?

And we are -- we are talking to William Fortune. He's the author of one second after.

And he's also with themontry college faculty. He's a fellow there. We'll continue our conversation. But move it to, okay.

If you believe these things are happening or possible, what should you do?

We'll do that in 60 seconds.

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(music)
Tomorrow night, we are doing our Wednesday night special. But Glenn, it's Friday. I know, we couldn't do it this week. Because no one can get into the studios this Friday. The Wednesday night special will be (?) at 5:00 p.m.

It is called the COVID blueprint. The next crisis globalists will use to control you.

We have a gentle man who I really respect. Has a new book (?) coming out in August, called Five Years After. He is one of the leading voices on EMP. And cyber security for our grids.

And we welcome him back. Dr. William force chin. (?)

WILLIAM: I'll start (?) the ice storm you had a few days ago.

It pretty well shut all of Dallas down. A simple ice storm.

So imagine a major cyborg attack.

What happens in the city of Dallas insofar practice suddenly, nothing is working correctly. (?)

GLENN: I would say, in short order chaos.

WILLIAM: Yes.

GLENN: Real chaos. Within three days.

By tomorrow, maybe even today, it would have been chaos.

WILLIAM: Exactly. And there's another factor, that we are used to a society -- we are so used to a society, functioning correctly. That it about their background noise in our life.

I switch it on in the morning. I take a shower. I cook my eggs for breakfast. My girlfriend and I go out to dinner at a nice restaurant. These are all things that become simple, background noise. Pull one of the blocks out, things start failing. And we're mystified. In fact, we can -- we very quickly will become frightened by what is happening.

GLENN: So there was a book out. I don't know if you ever read it. Tragedy and hope.

And it was written in the 1960s.

And it was written by one of the advisers for Eisenhower.

And all of the presidents, I think going back to Truman.

And he talked about a global system that was being built, that said the tragedy is these world wars will never have one. Because we're tying each other economically. So no one will be able to have a complete global war anymore. Because it will destroy everything.

He said, in that, the only thing that will disrupt this. And I remember reading this again, after 9/11. Is if there's an unflagged group, that does not care about technology, or the financial system.

Well, that's exactly what happened, with 9/11.

They -- they didn't care if they collapsed the financial sector.

And -- and if you look -- if there was ever a collapse of things, we would probably lose to people that are not slaves to all this technology, and all of the electronics. And all of the goods and services that we just take for granted right now.

WILLIAM: Yeah, no. The things I study and all that, there's times when I feel, I'm just going to go further up in the woods. Cut myself in the grid. And live alone. But no man is an island. No matter how much I try to step away from things. We're still part of a society. Like it or not.

GLENN: Okay. So when we come back, I want to have you get into a checklist. What should we do to be reasonably prepared for something that the WEF says is coming within the next 20 -- 24 months.

By the way, I take them at their word, in seeing that they said, a major pandemic was coming. And three months later, a major pandemic came.

More in just a minute. I'm guessing that the next time you have to catch a flight judge. You're not going to try (?) you would probably also say, yeah. I want it to be Airbus or Boeing. And if the pilot comes on and says, hey, this is my first flight. You know, I do this part had much time, you're getting off the plane. (?) I would say, the bet off the plane, if you hear this from a travel -- I'm sorry. From a real estate agent.

Get out of their office. Don't let them -- I only do this part-time. You need somebody who is the best. Because they are landing and flying the biggest financial asset, that you will probably ever have in your life. Your home.

Don't leave that to anybody, but somebody who has the best practices. And the best history. You want somebody that has the whole ball game.

That's who we tried to find in your area. RealEstateAgentsITrust.com. This is my company. It's a free service to you.

We will recommend the people in your area that we think have the most credibility and the best business practices. Et cetera, et cetera. It is RealEstateAgentsITrust.com.
(music)

STU: And head over to BlazeTV.com. If you use the promo code, you can save right now (?) on your subscription to Blaze TV.
(OUT AT 9:28AM)

GLENN: Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program. Let me just give you a couple of news stories that have come out today. They are all part of my show prep, which you can get. My unedited (?) it's free. (?) just look for the morning email, news -- newsletter.

Everything that I look at, every morning, is now available to you, because it's just not enough time to get to everything. But let me give you a couple of headlines here. Russia, and Russian TV, now going to length, to claim how they could wipe Britain off the face of the earth, by setting off a radioactive tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean.

Russian state TV has broadcast a mock video of the UK being obliterated (?) sent from Moscow.

They said, that it would engulf I'll end and the UK. Which I think leaves (?) Scotland out.

They're part of the UK. I think that includes Scotland. China, on the other hand. The political economic professor at P kings university (?) this is about as communist hierarchy as you can get.

On China (?) a nuclear weapon, and China should respond with its own.

Since the US has used its nuclear weapon against China. China should trike back, using our nuclear weapon, which is (?) the market. The US nuclear market is tech. Ours is the market.

And now they are looking at, I guess, cutting us off from the market.

We are in very, very unstable times. And things can spiral out of control, quickly.

Now, we have been talking to you about the World Economic Forum's prediction, that in the next 24 months, a major cyber attack would happen. So we wanted to bring a gentleman on, we had a couple of days ago. But specifically, to talk to him about what we can do, to prepare for something catastrophic like this.

So let's go back to William force general. (?) the author of one second (?) after. A must read book.

Bill, tell me, where do we start?

BILL: Let me point out one thing. There was once a guy, who everybody thought was crazy. Wrote a book Called My Struggle. Nobody paid attention to it, really.

And then for the next 12, 14 years, he kept saying, I'll start a war. I'll start a war.

Well, it became such background noise, the way you just pointed out. Russia is saying this. China is saying that.

We don't pay attention. And then one day, he started a war. World War II.

The same thing now. We're getting so much at that time every day, we don't respond.

And it's time we, as individuals, started taking some action for ourselves. And protect ourselves. And to protect our families.

GLENN: Okay. So what do we do?

WILLIAM: Your average day before okay. Your typical listener right now, they're savvy, all right?

They listen to you.

How many of those folks, you know, I would ask. How many of you have a two to four-week supply of water on hand?

I would say only a small --

GLENN: What's your guess?

BILL: 1 percent. 2 percent.

GLENN: I was thinking about ten.

BILL: Yeah. Okay. You don't want to buy the bottled water. Just save your 2-liter bottles. Clean them out well. And then just fill them up.

Stick them in a closet someplace. That is the key thing to start with. Have a basic water purification system on hand. You can buy one at any hiking store or Walmart. For 20 or 30 bucks. That can take the water. And make it clean. Then we go up that Maslow hierarchy of needs. What's the second most important thing? (?), well, it could be medication. You have any number -- the average person, about a third of the population, have to take some kind of medication, almost every day.

Well, do you have a 30-day supply? Or do you have it two days?

And then you go to the pharmacy. (?) or do you find a way, legally, to put a six-month supply on hand?

That's not on day three, you're out in the street, going, what the hell do I do now?

GLENN: Yeah. I just found -- I just found this service called Jase medical.

I think it's Jase medical.com. (?) and they find the legal ways to, you know, get your medication, so you can have a six-month supply. You can have it on hand.

Because that's -- that's one of the major worries for me. Is, you know, if you don't have medication, my daughter goes into seizures. You know, I have high blood pressure.

I can be dead. You know, all of these things.

There's a lot of people. I learned this from your book. There's a lot of people that should be dead.

And I may be one of them.

But they should have died without modern medication. They would have been dead by now. And as soon as you lose that, but the problem is, you know, everything is so tightly prescribed and regulated. That it's hard to -- to get stuff.

How do you do it?

Do you know, Bill?

WILLIAM: You know, when I first started the book, and doing research. I sat down with my pharmacist one evening. Ask she said, what? (?) what happens to our typical community? At the end of that one-hour. She was crying, she said, my God, Bill, it would be overwhelming (?) pan critique. You're dead.

Cancer control. Any number of things. You're dead.

You've got to remember, the post World War II generation is really the first truly medicated society in the world. One hundred years ago, we died. We died young.

Now we're living into 60s, 70s, and 80s.

And pretty comfortable. Without those basic medications. Or the more exotic ones you use.

What about people who have many a transplant?

They'll die very, very quickly. What about heart conditions. I have an irregular heart condition. I've been taking a medication for 40 years. I'm fine. Take that medication, and within 40 takes, I'll be bed rin (?) after --

GLENN: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

WILLIAM: So these are basic things that we don't think about, until it's too late. The day after.

GLENN: So you put food in the third place. Water is number one. Medication is number two.

WILLIAM: Yes. Yes. Hey, I just listened to one of your (?) I know the company. Patriot.

GLENN: My Patriot Supply. Yeah. By the way, they also have the water purification, that is amazing. And it's even something that you can have on -- or in your car at all times too. Just in case.

We don't think of these things. We just -- that's why -- Stu and I always joke. He says, you're the most prepared man, I know.

And I'm really not.

But I'm more prepared than he is.

But I know in the end, it will be one of those things that I'll be like, oh, crap. I forgot batteries.

You know it will be something stupid. That you just assume that you have.

WILLIAM: I have a (?) double and AAA batteries.

GLENN: So do I. So do I.

WILLIAM: And you want to know something?

That will be a trade item. Somebody said, I'll trade you a meal for batteries.

GLENN: Yes.

BILL: Things like that we don't even think of. And then, of course, (?) that's something I always predicate with. If you decide to get a firearm. Get trained. You don't want to (?) all right? The bet trained, trained well. If you decide that you want a tram. And then have the proper ammunition and supplies on hand.

GLENN: So if you have your house on solar panels. And you have buried natural gas or whatever, for generators. Is that also good to have in the plan? To be some self-reliance on these things?

WILLIAM: Yeah. I have a (?) even me, with with all the books I've written and everything else, there's a heck of a lot of things, that I'm dependent on my society for.

And not everybody is going to go out there, (?) cistern. Et cetera.

GLENN: Sure. Right.

WILLIAM: But everybody listening to you, who lives in an apartment. A single mom with a couple of kids. Get a month's worth of supplies on hand, that you don't have to step outside and contend with the chaos out there.

That you are safe and secure, in your home, for at least ten months.

GLENN: And you think that a -- a massive -- what they're calling catastrophic attack on our -- on our -- on our systems, cyber attack, that could last a month?

WILLIAM: It most likely could last longer than a month. It could last (?) several years back. Said, if we had a radical shutdown, to take up the five years, to take the top 500 generating systems, in the eastern United States. Five years to put 80 percent back online. To which --

GLENN: Why?

WILLIAM: Because component parts. Basic replacement parts. You would call the Israeli raid on the Iranian cyber attack.

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

WILLIAM: Yeah. Sputnik. It's some software that they put in there, caused all the centrifuges, to suddenly stop.

It destroyed them for years.

There are things, you and I don't even know about. That at this moment, somebody is sitting there plotting. Boy, I could really screw up America, if I pulled this block out of the system.

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