BLOGMay 02, 2017

Feminism Run Amok: So-called 'Rape Culture' Redefines and Trivializes Real Rape

The Factual Feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, former philosophy professor and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, joined Glenn on radio Tuesday to discuss contemporary feminism and how it's damaging to both women and men.

"The feminist establishment is not celebrating the empowerment of women. They act as those things are worse than ever and getting worse every day. I find this baffling, and it's very destructive. It's very harmful to the young women who are told to be victims and taught to be paranoid," Sommers said.

Sommers also addressed her fear for mothers of sons, as well as her theory that the purpose of many college classes is to tear down Western civilization.

GLENN: Hello, America. Welcome to the Glenn Beck Program. We're glad you're here. We have Christina Hoff Sommers with us. She's a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She hosts a series on YouTube -- fantastic -- called The Factual Feminist. Each episode corrects a feminist myth.

And tomorrow, she is going to be giving a lecture at St. Olaf College. She joins us now to talk about the state of feminism and the -- this new push into the -- into the realm of, I think, insanity.

Welcome to the program, Christina, how are you?

CHRISTINA: Hi. Nice to be here.

GLENN: Thank you very much.

So where do we even begin on this new rape culture and what we're teaching and what millennials are now believing about this rape culture?

CHRISTINA: Well, it -- it's all fiction. It's a fantasy. It was created by radical feminist scholars with an agenda eager to indict the average man in a social atrocity. They have exaggerated statistics. And they change definitions beyond, you know, the meaning of words. And most of us do think of rape as a horrible crime. They now have definitions that include seduction. So if you're willing to do that, you will get a rape epidemic. There is a lot of seduction.

GLENN: So doesn't this -- doesn't this -- you know, I've said for 20 years with the Al Sharptons of the world and then in the last eight years, you know, the cry that everything is racist -- to say the word Chicago was called racist. To do that takes all of the cries of actual racism and makes them meaningless.

CHRISTINA: Exactly. It trivializes it. This is what happens with rape. And the students are not asking that the cases be turned over to the police, which would be reasonable. Because they have the ability to investigate. They turn it over to a campus tribunal that then determines guilt and innocence through what look to be kangaroo courts. And we have over 100 young men suing. And if you read through these cases, it's absolutely terrifying if you're the mother of sons because a boy can be accused -- he's perceived to be guilty because he's accused because along with this idea of a rape culture is the idea that women don't lie. You have to believe women.

Well, women lie. Not because they're women. But because they're human. Human beings lie, especially about sex.

GLENN: Christina, may I take you to probably a different place than you expected.

I am really concerned that we are imploding as a species because we are -- hear me out for a second. I know that's a crazy thing to say.

CHRISTINA: No, no. I worry about that too.

GLENN: Right? We're imploding as a species. We're taking technology and we're going to give you the ultimate pleasure by creating your own little sexual world. You can live in it any way you want. You don't have to interact with anyone. And the -- and the more we go down that road, while at the same time making common sense completely driven into the wilderness, you won't want to have a relationship with somebody. Because it -- you'll be accused as rape. You'll be --

CHRISTINA: Oh, I know. You'll be brought before a tribunal and told that every --

GLENN: Right.

CHRISTINA: -- and told that -- you know, without any possibility of defending yourself.

You can't -- you're just presumed guilty, and you are shamed. They've created a shame culture on campus, based on these strange definitions. And it's -- it is very disturbing.

I worry because our colleges are now just so carried away with this so-called social justice agenda, but it's an agenda of -- of authoritarianism. So this is where we are.

STU: Christina Hoff Sommers is with us. And legitimately one of the bravest people you're going to find, talking about this.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STU: Any issue --

GLENN: You must just be a pariah. Why do you hate women so much?

CHRISTINA: You know, I have been a feminist in the reasonable sense of the word for more years than I care to mention. I was a philosophy professor. I encouraged the young women in my class. I watched as women surpassed men in education. And only to turn around and find that the feminist establishment is not celebrating, that -- you know, the empowerment of women. They act as though things are worse than ever and getting worse every day. And I find this baffling. And it's very destructive. It's very harmful to the young woman who are told that they are victims and taught to be paranoid.

And I will also mention -- I don't want to say most. Many college classes. No one has done a good study of this. They should. The purpose of the class is to tear down western civilization. It's not something to be proud of. Don't be proud of American history. It's a rape culture. It's -- and it's defined by its worst injustices. Don't be proud.

So they're replacing pride with shame. I don't know that this is a way to progress. I don't think people react well to being shamed. They recoil or they -- you know, in this case, at the campus, they're acting out these -- lots of mob justice. So it's very unhealthy.

STU: Christina, let's take on one of the big ones here. People hear this all the time. That depending on who you hear it from, one in four or one in five women in college will be raped when they're there. Can you walk us through that statistic and what it actually is talking about?

CHRISTINA: Yes. That sort of statistic comes from -- not from the Bureau of Justice statistics. Not from the FBI. Legitimate data-gathering organizations. You know, they use careful methodology. And they will come up with a figure like one in 50. That's still too many. But it's far different from one in four. One in four is worse than war-torn Congo. They're telling us that, you know, your daughter enters Wesleyan or Bard or Stanford, and she's basically entering a -- you know, a society more dangerous than anyplace on earth for a woman.

How do they get that? Well, the first thing to know, they don't ask on these surveys, were you raped? If you ask that, you get a fairly low number. They describe events, and then they say, did this ever happen?

And some of them do sound like a -- every woman agree that someone said, "Yes, I was violated. Assaulted and penetrated." You would agree that's rape. But they would include things like, did you have sex that you regretted because you were drunk? And if you say yes to that, that counts as rape.

So they change the definition from, you know, an assault to a bad -- a bad hookup, essentially. So that's one thing they do. They enlarge the definition. They ask a nonrepresentative sample. A lot of these studies are computer generated. And they will go send it out and see who responds. They'll send it out to 200,000 people and maybe 1,000 respond. But that's a self-selected group of respondents. It may be people that feel more strongly about it. So you have to be very careful. So they do that. They ask a nonrepresentative sample. And then they project it on to all college students.

So bad definition. And a bad sample. And you can have an epidemic of anything that way.

GLENN: How do we --

CHRISTINA: Claim to have it.

GLENN: How do we look at things like what's happening with Fox News? Where I believe -- we don't know the facts yet. But I believe that there were bad things that happened at Fox. I worked there. I never saw anything. But I believe that some of these things happened. Some of these things most likely also did not happen. And that's for the courts to work out.

But they just fired Bill Shine yesterday, who was the vice president and really one of the stabilizing factors of Fox News. There's no charges that I -- that I'm aware of, that he was assaulting anybody or coming on to anybody.

When you have this witch hunt, nobody wants to stand up and say, "Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute." Because it's just -- it just becomes, I want to protect women. And we should believe the women. And men are bad. And all of a sudden, anyone can be swept up into this.

How do we stop that?

CHRISTINA: Well, it's a moral panic. And those -- you know, it creates a lot of hysteria. And going back to what you said. There was a problem with some people at Fox News.

CHRISTINA:

GLENN: Yes.

CHRISTINA: And here's what -- and here's what distresses me the most as an equity feminist, an equality feminist. Is if we want to help women, we should tell the truth. But it shouldn't be done in an atmosphere of panic and hysteria. Women who are victims need sober analysis. They need truth. Not hype. Not spin. Not panic. We have too much of the latter. So if you want to help people who are at risk for sexual harassment, for sexual assault, these are real criminals -- if we want to help them, then we should tell the truth and not cry wolf and not get hysterical. That helps no one.

GLENN: But how do you do that when -- I mean, I found as a father of three women, I am -- I was -- I found it beyond offensive what President Trump said about women when he was on the bus with Billy Bush. Just like shocking. I thought that was the end for sure.

The left, of course, came out against that. The right suddenly was quiet. But when this happened in the 1990s, they were musical chairs. They were on the opposite side, when it was Bill Clinton.

CHRISTINA: Oh, when it was Mr. Clinton.

GLENN: Yeah. How do we -- how does the average effect something when these big powerful groups don't really care? They're just using it.

CHRISTINA: Exactly. They're using it. And in this case, it's a little harder to fight because it's -- the source are these scholars in the gender studies department. People have to realize, their work is not carefully reviewed. They don't even -- many of them don't even believe in the basic protocols of scientific research. They have their own methods they've invented of just listening to stories and believing people.

And so -- but journalists and even legislators, they take them seriously. They take these scholars seriously. And I'm just saying -- I've been watching this for 20 years -- at the heart of the women's movement today is a body of recklessly false information, and it's not helping women.

GLENN: Is there a movement -- a legitimate movement that is out there?

CHRISTINA: You know, right now, there are small groups. There are groups like the Independent Women's Forum. There's a group called the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education. It's a civil libertarian group, not exclusively about women. But it addresses these issues.

Both of those groups are very good, FIRE and IWF. But they're small. It's nothing compared to this juggernaut of women's organizations. And they're all marching in solidarity. And they reinforce one another's messages. It's in the colleges. I've never seen anything like this. It's -- you know, usually, people can only go so far with -- that are alternative facts. And their concocted studies and pseudoscience. This has gone very far because I think a lot of men hesitated to correct the bad scholarship. They would be called sexist. A lot of women didn't want to belittle a cause they believed in at heart. They just thought they would be quiet. And so, well, now we're copying with it. Now we've got this rape panic. And it's very -- it's very destructive on campus. It's leading to fanaticism.

GLENN: Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She hosts a series on YouTube called The Factual Feminist, where she corrects in each episode a feminist myth. And it's fantastic. It's really good. Tomorrow night, she's going to be giving a lecture at St. Olaf College. It is great to have you on Christina. Thank you so much.

CHRISTINA: Thank you.

RADIO

Urgent call to action: Help Jamaica recover from Hurricane Melissa

Hurricane Melissa has devastated Jamaica and Mercury One is on the ground to help with recovery efforts. Glenn speaks with Jack Brewer, who just returned from Jamaica. Jack describes the tragedy, which he calls “one of the worst I have seen,” and explains how people like you can help get aid to people in regions where “NO ONE” has come to help, even 6 days after the storm.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: I don't know if you've been paying attention at all to what happened with Hurricane Melissa. But, you know, it's been, what? Five days since Melissa pummeled Jamaica. I mean, pummeled it.

And not a lot of people are showing up. It's -- it's -- it's really not good.

At least 28 people have died, since the hurricane hit. Monster category five. 185-mile-an-hour winds. They say, trees are just piled up everywhere. 400 people in Jamaica. 400,000 people in Jamaica have zero power. They don't have cell phone service. They don't have Wi-Fi.

They don't have water.

And they don't -- and, again, like I said, nobody is coming. Mercury One was there, over the weekend, and Jack Brewer was there. Jack is -- Jack is an amazing guy. He's a three-time NFL team captain. He was -- he is a minister. Humanitarian civil rights commissioner on the US Commission for the social status of black men and boys. Vice chair of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Advisory Board.

Leads a national advocacy for fatherhood. Criminal justice reform. A really, really good guy.

In fact, he just won Mercury One's angel Bonhoeffer award. Which is really for very, very special people. He was down with us in Jamaica, just this weekend. He just got home. I wanted to get an update on what he saw. Jack, welcome to the program.

JACK: How are you doing, Glenn? Thanks for having me.

GLENN: You bet. What did you see down in Jamaica?

JACK: It was horrific. You know, I've been doing this organization, going on our 20th year. So I've seen disasters from across Africa and throughout the Caribbean, and obviously in the US. This is one of the worst that I've seen, just in regards to the devastation. Homes completely leveled. I mean, down to the foundation.

And, you know, the entire West side of Jamaica is without water. Without electricity. And, you know, it's hard -- it's tough terrain. Because a lot of these people kind of live up in the hills and the mountainous areas. And so as these trees have fallen down, you know, the infrastructure, electricity wattage is pretty old.

And so the electric wires are just twisted all in the trees. And it's -- you know, as you're driving around, you know, you're being whipped by electric wires and just a tough terrain. And unfortunately, everywhere that we were able to get to, we were the first there.

And this is -- now we're going on six days after the storm. And these people don't have water. They don't have electricity. You see, just piles and piles of -- of humans sitting next to each other. Trying to get water. They're washing their clothes with the saltwater. And, you know, they're -- they're -- the gas pumps have run out. You know, there are fights at the gas pumps. Because people are trying to desperately get enough fuel, you know, if they do have a generator to get fuel for it. Or cars to get places.

And the most heartbreaking thing is that folks haven't found their family members.

You know, there's no communication. You know, we brought several thousand Starlinks with us, we brought battery backs and start to give them to the people. But, you know, they haven't communicated with their people. They have -- there's still so many folks. When I was there, they had just found six more bodies in the area.

And they were asking us for cadaver dogs, and asking us if we could, you know, assist with them.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

JACK: It's terrible, it really is, Glenn.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Did you see any American forces?

I mean, did you see any -- who did you see there?

I keep hearing that nobody was there. But there has to be somebody.

JACK: Nobody. Well, I saw a couple helicopters in the air. You know, I saw a couple military helicopters in the air. But again, when you get up into these mountainous regions, the higher up you go, the worse the devastation. If you were just to go there, and you look down. Like a normal hurricane. You know, trees down. And, you know, it's a difficult place. But when you start to go up these mountains, just I'm talking about a quarter mile, everything is wiped out. Literally, Glenn, no one has come.

I went to village after village, town after town, no aid organization has come. I think they just started to try to get the West more -- because you have to take a helicopter to get in there. But if you start at Montego Bay and start to work your way down South. A small little town like Tucker, Westmoreland.

If you go down the Black River, in those areas, those areas are decimated. And so, you know, they're sleeping outside. And another thing, Glenn. That has been an issue. It hasn't stopped raining. It's been raining every day. So everything is mucky.

When we got there on Saturday, I mean, literally we had to divert from a flood. You know, the floodwaters started rising on our car. Got up to almost the window. We had to get out of there. I think, three days after the storm. And so they're still dealing with the water. And now they don't have any shelter. So we've been trying to deliver, as many tarps and tents and those type of things that we can, just for the short-term. Because obviously, they're going to start dealing with water-born diseases and mosquitoes. And so we've been trying to bring as much insect repellent for these people.

So it's a lot different. And it's a lot different in Haiti. I tell people, the people of Jamaica aren't used to this.

You know, they've lived their lives with electricity. And, you know, they're not -- they're not used to living in these type of conditions. So it's been really rough. You know, particularly on the children of those communities, and we saw households. You know, that they were -- they didn't have a place to go shelter in. You know, I talked to probably 25 different families that were inside of their homes, as they blew completely down!

I mean, all walls down, roofs, torn off their homes. And now all of their belongs are scattered around the neighborhood. It's depressing.

GLENN: I know we're trying to fill a plane. We -- we're sending a cargo plane on Wednesday, and we so desperately need your help.

One hundred percent of your donation to M1 right now, will go help the people of Jamaica. Can you compare this to what we saw in North Carolina?

JACK: No question. The difference between here and North Carolina, we have something called insurance. And we have helicopters. And, you know, we have actually -- you know, you know, our fellow Americans can get there. You know, in Jamaica, they don't have that option. And it's -- it's really depressing. Because you can tell the people were already, you know, living in poverty.

And now, you know, they're dealing with the reality.

And, I mean, but I will say one thing though, Glenn.

The love of God and the thankfulness and the -- the smiling and the worshiping, that was happening, in these towns I was in -- it motivated me. It lifted me up. It humbled me.

To see people that literally lost it all. But they were so thankful. And they said, you know what, we're living to see another take.

God has given us another chance to recover. We have our life. We have our children.

You know, many of them have lost loved ones and family members. And so they were just grateful to be alive.

And so it was a humbling experience. But, you know, to answer your question, yeah. From a destructive perspective, it's very similar to what we saw in the Carolinas.

It's just -- the -- the recovery. And the need now, where there's water and food, you know, it's -- desperate, at this time.

GLENN: Yeah. We have really good people drive from all over the country, to get there.

They just felt prompted to go do it.

And, you know, you're not driving to Jamaica.

That's really difficult.

JACK: That's right.

GLENN: Anyway, we have a cargo plane going out on Wednesday. We really need your help. You can go to MercuryOne.org and donate. We're still in North Carolina. We are rebuilding. We're still in the Texas Hill Country.

We're in Alaska, after the horrific -- the horrific typhoon that hit just a few weeks back. We're all over. And we're getting ready to go to Africa with the Nazarene Fund to rescue Christians.

We really need your help. And, again, I give you my word, 100 percent of it goes right directly to the cause. There's no funding that -- nothing comes off the top.

It will go right to the cause. So go to MercuryOne.org. And help us help people.

MercuryOne.org.

Jack, have you been over, and have you seen what's happening over in Africa?

JACK: So I've done extensive work in Africa. I have not directly in the northern portions of Nigeria. I do plan to go there very soon.

I have been -- I actually have a number of our partners there. You know, we run about 50 orphanages in Africa, so I'm used to that terrain.

But I can tell you, I've been telling a lot of folks on the ground, it's a really sad situation. You know, the people that are being persecuted, the Christians that are being persecuted are the poorest of the poor.

These people are living in conditions where, you know, they don't have running water.

Many of them. And they live in villages. You know, of little means. So these Islamic groups have really come in and taken advantage of them. And, you know, taken over their villages.

So I ask, how are you able to just take over a village?

How can you take over that many people?

How come they haven't fought back? Are these the most vulnerable people in the world. The people who Christ told us to protect as Christians. So I'm just, I'm so happy that President Trump stepped in.

GLENN: Me too.

JACK: The statement, backed up by our amazing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

But we have to do something about this.

The precedent that is set in, is one that is dangerous for the world.

You know, it's also happening in Sudan, running rampant now.

GLENN: I've -- I've heard Sudan is actually in some ways worse, and nobody is paying attention to Sudan.

I mean, barely anybody is paying attention to Nigeria.

But what I'm hearing coming out of Sudan is awful.

JACK: Yeah, it's awful. It really is awful.

And Sudan is a little bit different because you have more of a Muslim country. You know, Nigeria has had a really thriving Christian community --

GLENN: Right.

JACK: -- in the past.

And, you know, for some reason, I think this government that they have now has this Islamic influence over it that is really trying to -- and they're telling their people that it's propaganda. So if you ask a Nigerian, maybe they will tell you it's all propaganda. It's propaganda.

But, you know, the world is starting to see it. And so I think they'll have to really address these issues. And not be able to just use their media to distort the narrative for their -- for their people.

It's important for the Nigeria to (phone cuts out), I feel. And I just pray that, you know, President Trump and our administration continues to use our influence on the world, to protect our Christian brothers and sisters.

GLENN: Jack, it was good to see you the other night. Thank you so much. Appreciate all that you do.

JACK: Yeah. Thank you, Glenn. Just so you know and all your listeners, man, without Mercury One, we wouldn't be able to do any of this work. You know, the Bible tells us that we all -- we all need elders. And we need people who God has appointed to us.

I know our organization knows that God has appointed you to us. We have been able to affect the lives of so many people, man. I mean, the poorest of the poor and the forgotten because of the support of Mercury One. And I'm just humbled to be your partner and your friend and brother. And just, I pray, we will continue to lock our arms, to help those that are hurting around our world.

GLENN: You are one of the many Moses figures that we play into and hold our arms up. You're doing all the hard work, Jack. Thank you so much.

If you can help us, please, go to MercuryOne.org. That's MercuryOne.org.

You can donate. There's many things going on, our general fund will allow you -- will allow the money to go to many different things as it's needed.

But right now, we really need the help for Jamaica. We're filling a cargo plane on Wednesday to get it there. This is for the poorest of the poor. The people that are just completely left alone, as -- as Jack said. And I talked to Mercury One earlier today.

They're like, Glenn, nobody is there. Like, nobody is there.

Our governments, you know, their government. Our government failed us here.

Their government, I mean, it's just -- it's -- we have to help each other.

We have to help each other.

MercuryOne.org. That's MercuryOne.org.

RADIO

The next war won’t have soldiers—Just code and cold machines

The next war will look VERY different, now that we have AI. Glenn speaks with Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of Shield AI, a company making AI-powered drones and autonomous planes for the US Military. Brandon discusses his drone planes like the X-BAT, and also gives his take on new foreign weapons, like Putin’s new nuclear-powered cruise missile: "It sounds dumb."

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: The cofounder and president of Shield AI, Brandon Tseng is with us. He's a former Navy SEAL. How old are you? You look like you're 14. How old are you?

BRANDON: I'm 39.

GLENN: Thirty-nine. Anyway, you have -- you are making a huge the difference in the AI world, especially with defense. Especially well the expat. A new plane. Do you call them drones, or are they planes?

BRANDON: Expats are a vertical takeoff launch and land AI-piloted fighter jet. Sometimes when people think drones, they just think quad copters. Except, there's a whole world of drones.

GLENN: It's weird. You either think of the quad copters, or you just think of those gigantic gray drones.

BRANDON: Yeah. The Predators and Reapers, yeah.

GLENN: And we're not like that anymore, either. Right? Have we updated those?

BRANDON: No. So Shield AI builds a miniature version of said drone. That's also vertical takeoff launch and land. It's called the Vbat, weighs about 180 pounds. But it's meant to do the mission of these $40 million drones for a fraction of the cost. And so we've been using that with US forces, oh, man. Now, probably since 2019, but most recently, we've been working with the US Coast Guard. We've interdicted billions of drugs in the Caribbean. So you just set a record with the US Coast Guard, interdicting 20 tons --

GLENN: Are you blowing up the boats, or are you just --

BRANDON: Shield AI is not blowing up any boats. But, yeah, the Coast Guard is setting them on fire after the whole thing is said and done.

GLENN: Wow. So -- so let me -- let me go into the -- the future of warfare.

Because it -- it's a little freaky. And I don't even know. There's a story that just came out today. Because we're negotiating with Russia.

And Russia is always beating their chest. And they have something new.

This one, just sounds crazy. CNN, this morning. Putin claimed successful test of long range nuclear-powered cruise missile, amid diplomatic breakdown. And what this cruise missile is, you launch it. It's not just nuclear-tipped. It's nuclear-powered as well.

So the idea is, it would just stay up in space. And it will just stay up there until it's directed to hit something. Which I guess, you not only blow a city up.

But you also have the China syndrome happening at the same time. I don't even get it. What do you think of this weapon?

BRANDON: Yeah. It sounds crazy. It sounds dumb. It sounds overengineered. I mean, it actually reminds me of some of the things the US was doing in the '50s. I don't know if you know this. We had something called the Davey Crockett nuclear rocket. Which was a hand-held nuclear rocket launcher. They said, only a Navy rocket would be crazy enough to shoot this thing. Because you're firing a nuclear bomb over your shoulder. And you hope it goes far enough.

That's --

GLENN: 1950s were kind of scary.

BRANDON: Yeah. You can Wikipedia this stuff. It's in there. Kind of scary. Right with the nuclear-powered cruise missile. Fifteen hours. Like, okay. Now, why do you need it to be up in the air for 15 hours?

You're seeing where this thing is. It becomes an easier target for people to shoot down. And then to the point, now, what do you have if this thing actually blows up, at any point, whether we take it out, or they take it out. Now you have nuclear material over some area?

Like, again, something I could see. Some crazy scientist and engineers working on, something that I believe has near zero utility on the battlefield in any -- like, even -- even by the Russians.

GLENN: What about the hypersonic missiles now?

BRANDON: Yeah, no, the hypersonics are -- look, what I'm a big proponent of is first principles of warfare. So like mass, maneuver, speed is another principle of warfare. And so what the hypersonics are getting after is that first principle of the speed.

It's like, look, if you can hit your targets faster than they can react. There's something to do that. In that range, at that standoff, at that offset, that is something that is pretty interesting. Now, the challenge that the United States has had. Has been around to getting these to a feasible level.

And I know there's some efforts to bring down the cost of hypersonics. But it's also what makes it incredibly difficult, is when you start to go hypersonic. You know, multiple interdicts of Mach 1.0, to Mach 2, 3, 4. That is a hard, hard, hard, hard physics problem.

GLENN: Right.

You know, I've always felt like, whenever we saw something, you know, when you -- when you first saw the stealth bomber, we were probably on the second iteration. You know what I mean?

We were always -- we didn't always just show what we had.

Is that true anymore?

Do we have things that the world doesn't know, that --

BRANDON: I don't think we have too many things that the world doesn't know about.

Certainly, there are classified programs.

And I think the US does have a couple -- not technologies. You know, up its -- its sleeve. Just like, you know, concepts. Operating concepts.

Is what I would say. We still are like pretty good at.

And so what you're seeing today is in the military world.

You see a lot in the -- you know, just the consumer software world. Where industry is really leading, in this day and age.

So you see industry leading the customer, more than what I would say in the past, right?

In the '80s. '90s. Early 2000s. You would seat customer leading industry to what --

GLENN: We want to do this.

BRANDON: Yeah. Exactly.

GLENN: Are we -- are you concerned at all, with -- with AI and technology being so readily available, and cheap?

You know, everywhere.

That everybody can -- can do some really bad damage. You know, you don't have to be a -- you don't have to be the United States of America.

BRANDON: Yeah. Look, I think every new technology is a double-edged sword. It can produce a ton of value for the world. It can do a lot of value for the world. And at the same time, we put that technology into the wrong person's hands, it can do damage to the world. And so I think the same was true of the internet.

The same is true of now providing compute power into massive amount of compute power into someone's hand, just via an IPhone or an android phone. And so I don't look at AI -- like, I don't worry about AI and autonomy.

And I think it's wrong to prohibit the advancement of a technology, simply because, you know, some wrong can be done with it.

GLENN: Right.

BRANDON: There's a ton of things, where a lot of wrong, we've seen this.

A lot of things can be weaponized. Whether it's an airplane. Whether it's a car. Whether it's the internet. You name it.

But these technologies aren't bad for the sake of being a new technology.

GLENN: Yeah.

I've talked to the president about this several times. The one thing that freaks him out, keeps him up at night is nuclear world. He said, I rebuilt the nuclear arsenal. And he said, you don't even want to understand what we can do. He's like, it's -- it's always been bad. He said, it's -- it's colossally bad. And once it starts, it's over.

And he's really -- he does, I think -- what little sleep he does get, I think there are times where he has lost sleep over war on nuclear, with nuclear weapons.

Is there any of this new technology, is there anything about AI or any of this stuff that freaks you out, that you think, this is really scary, if it -- if it goes wrong or whatever?

BRANDON: Yeah. The way I think about it is, look, nuclear deterrence, has deterred nuclear war since we -- since 1945.

GLENN: Yes. Right. Yeah.

BRANDON: And that largely stopped world wars for the past 80-plus years.

GLENN: Right.

BRANDON: And so our conventional deterrence has been dominated by our aircraft carriers and our submarines in terms of how we deter large state-on-state conflicts in this day and age. It's with these -- along with the number of other, you know, levers that we pull. Economic levers. Diplomacy levers. But the military lever has been dominated by our aircraft carriers, our air power, and our submarines.

GLENN: Sure.

BRANDON: So where I see the world going. It's like AI and autonomy is enabling this next generation of deterrence. Because our legacy weapons systems, they're not as well-respected. Our aircraft carriers are not as respected as they once were. Right?

GLENN: I'm a sitting duck.

BRANDON: Yeah, when the enemy has antiship missiles that outrange what these carriers can launch with our jets.

And they have surface-to-air missile systems that can target any fuel tanker, like, that's when you see your conventional deterrence capabilities start to erode.

AI and autonomy is that massive unlock for the military, for our allies.

It enables, you know, the United States to feel millions of drones. You can't feel millions of drone pilots.

We don't have enough people.

Aren't enough people signing up.

What you can do is enable small groups of people to feel these drone swarms that I believe will be the most strategic conventional deterrence for the next 25 years. And again, that's why I started Shield AI. We have the tag line. The greatest victory requires no war.

It is about having such a dominant military that any adversary thinks twice before starting, either a straightforward conflict or an asymmetric one.

GLENN: Are you concerned about -- you know, Elon Musk says. And I don't know how true this is.

But Elon Musk says we are the new Grok.
I think it's five or six that is coming. Is 60 percent close to AGI. Are you concerned about AGI and ASI? And what that might mean?

BRANDON: I'm not concerned about AGI, but I'm an eternal optimist. And so I put that disclaimer out there. It's really hard to say what 60 percent of AGI means.

GLENN: Right.

BRANDON: What I do think is really interesting, really fascinating.

It's now what is possible in this day and age with AI and autonomy. And I'll share something cool that I looked up the other day, and why I'm an optimist around it.

I asked Grok 4, I said, "What was the economic impact of the internet from 2000 to 2025 on global GDP by a cumulative basis?" Its estimate was 134 trillion dollars' worth of economic value, attributed to that core underlying technology, being the internet.

A ton of value created for the world. I then asked it, what is the value of AI and autonomy going to be for the world from 2025 to 2050, estimated that. It's estimate -- maybe it's biased if it's AI estimating itself.

Was -- yeah. Yeah. Four and a half quadrillion dollars, forty times bigger than the internet. And so that world. Again, I'm a techno optimist. I get excited about that.

It's hard to really understand or fathom what that world looks like, but I think it's going to be a net positive for the world in a way that so many underlying core technologies of life have been.

Now, it doesn't mean that there's -- it's all sunshine and -- and rainbows. There's going to be some bad actors out there with it for sure.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. So last question, I hate to ask you this. But I have to ask you this: Being a guy who is in into drones, everything else. What we saw last year over New Jersey, what the hell was that?

BRANDON: I -- I don't understand know what it was in New Jersey.

But I don't like the idea that there was anybody able to fly drones at all.

GLENN: Yeah. Those were large too.

BRANDON: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if it was another state.

I don't know if people were pulling pranks. Like they've done in the past. I don't know what it was.

GLENN: But do you think it could have been us?

BRANDON: No. I think it was someone else. Is what I think it was.

GLENN: That's a little frightening.

BRANDON: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what it was though. So, yeah.

GLENN: Have you ruled out extraterrestrial.

BRANDON: I probably haven't paid enough attention to it. But, yeah. I don't know what it was.

GLENN: That's a little frightening. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

We'll be watching.

You bet.

THE GLENN BECK PODCAST

He Hunted SATANIST Mexican Cartels and SURVIVED | Dave Franke | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 272

Dave Franke stared down the cartel in Mexico’s blood-soaked Zacatecas — and lived. Now he tells Glenn the unfiltered truth: The cartels are “absolutely” operating inside the United States. Through raw, firsthand accounts, he rips the veil off the narco-satanic cult of Santa Muerte — the Saint of Death — and the savage brutality it fuels. Trump calls the cartels “the ISIS of the Western hemisphere,” and his Homeland Security Task Force has already seized thousands of terrorists and cartel operatives, two million fentanyl pills, and 70 tons of narcotics. But Dave warns: We’ve barely “scratched the surface.” Facing entrenched corruption, human trafficking, and a highly profitable drug trade, Glenn and Dave debate a radical fix — legalize drugs — and ask the explosive question: Does our government let the cartels thrive in exchange for intel, just like in "Ozark"? It’s the story that neither Fox nor CNN would let Glenn tell finally coming to the light, but is it already too late?

RADIO

I asked Vance and Rubio about 2028. They told me the SAME THING...

Will Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio team up for a 2028 presidential run? Glenn Beck asked them both, separately, and shockingly, they gave him the SAME answer. Glenn reveals what they said, as well as what they said about President Trump...

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Blaze.com has a news story out: J.D. Vance responds to the possibility of a Vance/Rubio presidential ticket. Responds to a --
I -- I love his response. He was speaking on Pod Force One. It's a podcast from the New York Post. And they asked him about, you know, how do you feel about a Vance/Rubio ticket?

And he said, it -- well, you know, we get along really, really well. The reason why we're successful, is because all of us work together really well.

STU: Which is not necessarily the case of the first term. You cannot say that about the people working in the White House.

GLENN: No. And most. Most.

I mean, I was saying this to a friend of mine, we were talking. And he asked me about a Vance/Rubio ticket. And I said, I talked to J.D. Vance and Rubio in the hallways of the White House. Just recently.

And about that. And I said, and they both said exactly the same thing.

Let's get through the next three and a half years. Things could change quickly in the next three and a half years.

STU: It's true.

There is a feeling I think on the right. That there's a lot of exciting things happening. Many of them positive.

GLENN: Three and a half years say long way.

STU: We are a long ways away. We are a long way away from the midterm elections.

I mean, think about this. We are what know.

We are -- to this point, closer to Trump's inauguration, than we are to the midterms.

GLENN: To the midterms.

STU: That seems impossible!

GLENN: I know. Impossible.

STU: In my head. But that's true to this moment.

GLENN: It's true. So it's crazy how much could change in the next four years, let alone the next one year.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: And things are going really, really well.

STU: That's for us. I know you're moving on to something else. The left hates this more than they've hated anything ever. Every person I've known on the left has been driven completely insane by this.

GLENN: Wait. Wait. By all of this, or by all of the leadership. Of the other side?

I mean, what -- what is really driving them insane

STU: They're totally driven by Trump. I'm not revealing anything new here. I think it's more extreme now, than it was in the first term.

GLENN: It is. But it's not -- they're not driven insane by Donald Trump.

I mean, Donald Trump does -- he does help them along, because he likes toying with them.

STU: Sure. Sure.

GLENN: So that doesn't help.

However, it is -- the response from the media. And the response from the Democrats that have made him into Hitler.

Not Donald Trump.

STU: No. I mean, their analysis of Donald Trump is that he's the worst human being of all time. I think that's helped along by leadership. Helped along by the media.

GLENN: They would elect Pol Pot over Donald Trump.

At this point.

STU: Pol Pot implemented a lot of policies that they liked.

GLENN: That's true. That's true. We should all be against the killing fields. But at this point, I'm not sure they would be against the killing fields.

STU: I don't know if the Hamas wing of the democratic party is against the killing fields.

I'm not sure about that. But I will say, if you look at overall. You look at approval ratings of Donald Trump. They're not at their highest point right now. That's not just Democrats.

That's the entire country.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: So if that were to continue, if a couple things go wrong, if the economy turns down.

We talked a lot about the economy being at risk, especially outside of the AI bubble.

I was reading something yesterday about, you know, the AI situation. It's funny. It's basically giving us all of these gains. It's almost all AI-related. All these -- we talked to experts about this. It's almost all a bunch of money being passed in between like seven companies.

And at the end of the day, let's just say that were to collapse. It would hurt our economy. And who knows where we would be.

GLENN: Even if it doesn't collapse, think of all the jobs that are probably going to be lost in the next three years. We're starting to see jobs lost because of AI now. It's going to become very, very unpopular.

And AI I think is going to become very, very unpopular. And those who, you know, are using AI. This is getting very dicey for me. I'm starting to regret everything that I've done in the last two years.

But it's going to become very, very unpopular, because it will take jobs. If companies decide to use it as people, and not as a tool for people. But, anyway, let's -- let's move on.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: The one thing. The one thing that they said, that is the point I wanted to make on this was, and they say it in TheBlaze article.

A lot of the good work we've done is because we do it as an administration, and we're all able to work together. What both of them said to me, on separate occasions, when I said this was, I said to Rubio and to Vance. You are killing it!

You're just killing it right now. And they both said, no, no, no. Both of them separately. No, no, no, no. He's killing it. Pointing to the Oval Office, "He's killing it. We're just following what he is directing us to do."

And I'm like, "Yeah. But you're also doing a very effective job at doing that. I've seen presidents give orders. I saw Donald Trump trying to give orders last time. And it didn't work out well."

And he's like, "No. We're a great, great team."

STU: That's good to hear.

GLENN: Yeah, but what I wanted to say was, I can't think of a time in my lifetime, I mean, I was not around the White House of the Reagan years. So I don't know. But I can't think of a time where I have seen honest credit, given by the top leadership in hallway conversations, to the president.

You know what I mean?

It was -- because it was honest. It was real. It wasn't like, you know. Oh, no.

It's not me. It's him. It was real.

No, no, no. You don't understand. His grand strategy amazing.

And we're just following it.

You know, that told me a lot.

A lot.

And told me a lot about the quality of people around him.

STU: And to be honest about it. It's also the right answer.

You didn't get the sense that they -- they are saying the thing they know is going to keep them in the good graces.

GLENN: No, I didn't. I didn't.

STU: That's good. That's really good.

GLENN: Yeah, I don't think either of those guys would have said -- they would have said thank you. It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. It was no, no, no, no. You don't understand. He is running the show.

STU: I think the Venezuela boat situation is an interesting highlight of this.

Again, we've talked about all the questions about it. There's some stuff to discuss.

However, like, that is something that is super important, to Marco Rubio. Like, that is -- I would say, central to his -- that entire situation is very central to his belief system.

And his --

GLENN: Yes. Freeing the people of Venezuela.

STU: Really important to him. And the fact that Trump really takes that seriously. And is doing something about it, is really important to Rubio. I think it's --

GLENN: But I don't think -- see, that's the way I think most administrations would look at it, like I want to help Rubio out. I know you're really passionate about this. Let me do this. And I agree with you. But I really think, it's the other way around. I think Donald Trump is like, here's why this is important.

STU: Oh, I think --

GLENN: And it's a little bit with Rubio, what you're dealing with, what you're thinking. Let me show you the grand strategy of how it has to happen. And I think the big, big vision is coming from Donald Trump.

And it accomplishes everything that everybody else is looking to do. But it's much bigger vision.

The big vision is coming from him, I think.

STU: Yeah. I think, the other thing that is very central to Donald Trump belief system. Besides the idea that he doesn't want people coming across the border illegally. He's very against illegal subs. Not just a crime, that is associated with them.

But he's like, obviously, been really hard against that -- his entire life.

GLENN: No. I think -- I mean, I think -- I mean, you wouldn't do this, because of the Constitution.

But I think if he could, I think you would be like, yeah. Drug dealers. Execute.

STU: Well, he's kind of said that. What was the guy in the Philippines?

GLENN: Yeah, kind of like that. Look, he just kills them.

STU: And that's what some of the criticism is over the boats. Right?

Surprised to hear, there's not a lot of great trial attorneys involved in the process, when -- there's not defense being presented when -- when the drone is overhead. They believe these are threats. They believe they have this -- this -- that's going to go through the courts. It's going to be challenged.

GLENN: I know.

STU: And they will have to deal with that. But he is -- he is -- more importantly than stopping those drugs from coming in. Because you see the boats. You're like, well, what could that even do to our country? Swallowed up like -- that wouldn't even get through a Washington, DC, cocktail party, the amount of drugs they could carry on one of those boats.

GLENN: Well, if Hunter.

STU: If Hunter is there obviously.

GLENN: Or somebody else from the Biden administration.

STU: Right. Who knows who it could have been, with all the cocaine in the White House. But, I mean, the point there is, the message.

The message is quite clear what -- what they're sending to -- to Venezuela. Which is not just don't send boats. It is stop everything you're doing. By the way, did you notice that very large ship off your coast?

Like, we are sending all sorts of messages to them.

Much deeper than a please stop delivering some cocaine here.

GLENN: Do you think the fact that we sent one of our biggest bombers from North Dakota to just buzz the coastline. Just in the international waters.

STU: It's a beautiful coastline. Some sightseeing.

GLENN: Did you see this?

Two of our bombers from the air base in North Dakota ran what I would describe as -- and I think they want him to describe it in Venezuela, the same way. As a trial run!

Two times, now, we have sent two bombers. Big bombers. Right to the line of Venezuela. Right to international waters.

They flew all the way down from North Dakota. Down, made that run.

And then headed on home!

He is sending all -- the guy is brilliant.

He is sending all kinds of signals.

You guys should take care of him.

STU: What you know signal he's saying to me?

That he doesn't care about global warming. He see not care about the emissions from that plane.

GLENN: Hold on just a second.

Doesn't that feel good?

Glenn's Show Prep

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Urgent call to action: Help Jamaica recover from Hurricane Melissa

Transcript

The next war won’t have soldiers—Just code and cold machines

Transcript

He Hunted SATANIST Mexican Cartels and SURVIVED | Dave Franke | The Glenn Beck Podcast | Ep 272

I asked Vance and Rubio about 2028. They told me the SAME THING...

Transcript