9-12-26 The Weekend Hour 2: Somebody Paid For Your Feeling About Data Center

0:00Why you deal with listening to Armstrong and getting on demand? We're not boring. Lot of news is boring. And tedious. And depressing. And makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world. About something about a comedic tone. What? We have a winner? Yes. Listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I believe that whoever was in that room and did that was a murderer. A new podcast series, Fault Line Haditha, tells the story of a shocking crime and a cover-up at the highest levels of the United States Marine Corps. If you've got five players and you offer immunity to four, you better be right about the fifth. Because if you're not, then you've just given immunity to your color. Listen to Fault Line Haditha on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00This episode sponsored by Homebase. Homebase is built for small businesses trying to do it all. The neighborhood coffee shop, the local gym, the family run restaurant. With Homebase, you can schedule your team, track time, run payroll, and manage hiring from one easy app. So you can spend less time chasing time sheets and more time running the business your customers love. More than 150,000 small businesses already use Homebase to keep their teams on track. Start free at joinhomebase.com. Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. This episode sponsored by Homebase. Homebase is built for small businesses trying to do it all. The neighborhood coffee shop, the local gym, the family run restaurant. With Homebase, you can schedule your team, track time, run payroll, and manage hiring from one easy app. So you can spend less time chasing time sheets and more time running the business your customers love. More than 150,000 small businesses already use Homebase

2:00to keep their teams on track. Start free at joinhomebase.com. Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. This episode sponsored by Homebase. Homebase is built for small businesses trying to do it all. The neighborhood coffee shop, the local gym, the family run restaurant. With Homebase, you can schedule your team, track time, run payroll, and manage hiring from one easy app. So you can spend less time chasing time sheets and more time running the business your customers love. More than 150,000 small businesses already use Homebase to keep their teams on track. Start free at joinhomebase.com. Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. The Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. Good night, Michael Brown joins me here. The former FEMA director, talk show host, Michael Brown. Brownie, now. Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The weekend with Michael Brown. Broadcasting live from Denver, Colorado, was the weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to have you joining the program today. Text line, of course, is always open 3-3-10-3. He word, micro-micro-3-3-10-3.

3:03On social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, X, it's all generally at Michael D. Brown. Go give me a follow and appreciate it. So I'm going to use just a hypothetical guy in a rural county in Colorado, a well-county Colorado. Let's call the guy Dave, because half the guys in well county are probably named Dave, and the other half wish they were, or the wish they were named Bubba. He comes in from work on a Friday. He drops his keys in the bowl by the drawer, and he picks up the mail. He's like, he builds on top. He almost doesn't open it, because he already knows, and he opens it anyway. And there it is, higher. Not again, but higher. It's not a fortune. It's just higher. Let's say 40 bucks higher. But it's the again, and again, and again, and again. So Dave kind of does what all of us do. He sits down at the kitchen table,

4:05or his big chair, and he picks up his phone, and the phone, which probably knows him better than his doctor does, hands him a story. It's from a local outlet, or so he thinks. Friendly little name sounds like something your grandma might have read. And the story is about a data center. And the data center apparently is going up 40 miles from his kitchen. And the story has everything you can imagine in it. It's got a real mom worried about the air. Her kids are going to breathe. It's got a server farm, the size of a shopping mall. And it's drinking water like water is going out of style. And of course, there has to be a villain. And there is a villain. If some tech billionaire wearing a hoodie, who's going to get rich, while Dave's paying the extra money for the power lines. So Dave reads it, and something clicks into place. Oh, that's why. That's why the electric bill went up.

5:07He didn't decide that. He didn't reason his way there. It felt like it rose up out of him. His own conclusion, his own anger, homegrown right there's a kitchen table, looking at the bills. Except it wasn't. That anger was installed. And I'm going to show you who installed it. And then I'm going to show you something that will bother the other half of you even more, who installed the opposite feeling in the guy that was sitting across the street. Two guys. Can I think a misadience? There are both of them. Now that friendly little local outlet that he thought was just local news. There's a decent chance it belongs to something called the career newsroom. And career is not a newspaper. Courier is a political operation that wears a newspaper the way that a hunter wears hunter orange.

6:08It was founded by a Democrat strategist. It was bankrolled over the years by the biggest donors on the left. And in the last stretch of the 2024 election, it was the third largest political advertiser on all of Facebook and Instagram behind two presidential campaigns and ahead of everybody else. Now this isn't some fever swamp conspiracy I'm handing you. The people who have called career out for dressing up as a local news outlet include places like Columbia Journalism Review, Axios, CNN, even Jake Tapper. This is the rare thing that everybody from Breitbart to Brian Steltler actually agree on. And here's the tale. In the spring of 2026, Courier's outlets across 16 states suddenly discovered data centers. So they started pumping out story after story after story more than 200 stories on the subject

7:11they had barely mentioned the summer before. And they weren't discovering it. They ran the same story in state after state after state in little town after little town after little town. They ran the same story a worried mom increased in electric bill water guzzling vampires, billionaire tech bros behind closed doors. And when you go and you actually pull those stories, the mom in Virginia, the mom in Wisconsin, the mom in Pennsylvania, three different women, three different states, three different bylines, you'll find out that all three of them belong to the same organization. Oh, it's a group called mom's clean air force. Oh, mom's clean air force is a project of the environmental defense fund, a $300 million a year environmental wago machine. So three so-called local moms, one national parent.

8:12That's not three kitchen tables. That's one script printed three different times in three different places. And that's probably right now where a lot of you are nodding and saying, damn it, that's right. I've been played. That's what you have been played. But now here's where I'm going to lose the applause. Because if you walk away this afternoon thinking only one side runs this play, then you're still the mark. You just got flattered. You didn't get scared. So turn the card over. There's a machine on the other side of this and it's every bit is big and every bit is bought and it's a super pack. They gave it the name out of a motivational poster leading the future. And it's funded by exactly who you think it was funded by. The largest venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, the president of open AI, a co-founder of Palantir, they put together a war chest north of $125 million. Nope, I said that right. $125 million. It's not billion with the B envy.

9:16It's a quarter of a thousand times what a normal person might earn their life. And it's all a point of that one thing. What do they do with that money? It goes after state legislators, Republican and Democrat who dare to ask a data center a hard question. It exists to make sure that the reassuring voice, the one that tells Dave with the electric bill across the street, that data centers are pure progress. Jobs and glory and American greatness. Nothing to see here is just as loud, just as funded and just as manufactured as ooh the scary one. So now we have two days. Once been sold fear, once been sold comfort and both of them think they have figured it out themselves when in fact neither one of them have figured it out. That is the industrial complex, not left, not right. Is the machinery the decides which feeling gets delivered to which kitchen

10:18and cash is a check? Either way, they don't care. And now just when you've got two machines stored at left and right, fear and comfort, let me tell you, pull up a chair, I got a third one because a couple of weeks ago the people at X went public with something. An open AI had said the very same thing back in June. Some of the accounts pushing the scary data center story, they weren't in Ohio, they weren't even in this country, they traced back or likely traced back if I want to be very careful here. In the careful language that these kind of reports always use, where of course to China and I can feel half of you leaning toward the microphone right now and saying I knew it, I knew it was Chinese all along. Just hold on, relax. Because if you grab that and run, you just became the exact mark that this whole segment is about. Except this time you got played by

11:18the people who build the data centers instead of the people who fight the data centers. We're all stuck in the middle. So let's do the thing that nobody else will do. Let's go read the fight, the really fine print, that bot form that X bragged about busting 200,000 fake accounts. Now how many of those were working the data center angle 200, 200 out of 200,000, one in a thousand and the open AI crew, the people who caught the operation, they graded their own catch, filed it in the lowest, sleepiest box they've got instead it flat out. It got almost no real engagement on social media. So the gang who busted it or the one's telling you, it didn't work. And the outfit beating the drum that allowed us about Ford meddling, it's owned by a man building data centers by the acre. So just think about that for a moment. But here's the part that ought to stop every one of us cold, whether you're a nodder or a skeptic.

12:25What's that? It's next. Don't go away. A shocking crime and a cover up at the highest levels of the United States Marine Corps. Someone opened the door and was the primary shooter. Is it possible you could do that and then suppress the number? A new podcast series, Vaultline Haditha, tells the story the United States government wants to keep buried. How can you not know? There were women and children in there. Can you tell us here that you don't know what happened that day? Based on thousands of pages of previously classified documents and over a hundred hours of secretly filmed video, the truth about one of the most infamous crimes in Marine Corps history can finally be told. If you've got five players and one of them is guilty of murder at least and you offer immunity to the other four, you better be right about the fifth because if you're not, then you've just given immunity to your color. Listen to Vaultline Haditha on the Lie Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

13:34This episode sponsored by Homebase. Homebase is built for small businesses trying to do it all. The neighborhood coffee shop, the local gym, the family run restaurant. With Homebase, you can schedule your team, track time, run payroll, and manage hiring from one easy app. So you can spend less time chasing time sheets and more time running the business your customers love. More than 150,000 small businesses already use Homebase to keep their teams on track. Start free at joinhomebase.com. Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. I think you'd enjoy the reading. Go get that done right now. When you actually pull up what those Chinese accounts were posting, guess what? It was a cartoon. It was a picture of a fat cat with a cigar and bags of money.

14:34And then a family at the kitchen table staring at a power bill, they can't really afford. But I need you to remember something from just the last segment. That is the same cartoon. The mom's group was drawing. Same villain, same bags of money, the environmental defense fund, and the Chinese Communist Party. So different tables, different continents drawing the identical picture. Three machines now left, right, and form. All of them fighting over one solitary thing. And that's how day feels when he opens his electric bill. And not one of them, not the activists, not the billionaires, not Beijing. None of them give you a damn whether Dave is right or not. They don't care. They don't care about Dave. Now I can kind of hear the objection beginning to form. So let me jump in there first. All right, Brown, you're telling me the whole thing is fake. My electric bill isn't fake. My water bill isn't fake. Now I'm not telling you that. Watch and listen to me be very, very careful here.

15:38Because this is where the cheap version of this argument will fall apart. And only where the honest argument holds. The concerns are real. Seven out of 10 Americans don't want any of these things next to their house. So you can't astroturf 70%. That's not a rented crowd. And it sure isn't 200 Chinese bots. That's the country. The electricity numbers are real. The string on the power grid that we've been ignoring since World War 2. It's real too. But here's the proof it's not just some left-wing puppet show. Or it's not just some form one. Go to South Carolina. It's Republicans leading the charge against the data centers. In South Dakota, in Michigan, and the researchers who tracked this for a living, not the activists, three researchers will tell you the opposition is organic. And then in some towns, people started organizing against the data center before a single permit was even filed on nothing but a rumor.

16:42So the truth is actually worse than a conspiracy. A conspiracy, yeah, we could expose that and it'd be done with it. This is real anxiety. Your neighbor's real honest worry about his water bill, his electric bill being harvested, farmed by paid operations on every flank, the left, the right, and foreign who don't give a rat's but to whether Dave is right or wrong. They care about whether Dave is useful. So go back to that kitchen table. They're still there. Phone in his hand. It's Bill's next to the keys. And here's the thing that nobody's selling him. Because there's nobody, there's no money in this. He's alone in that room. There's no well-funded organization whose entire budget is devoted to making sure that Dave gets the plain truth and then makes it his own mind. That side doesn't pay. So that side doesn't exist. Which means the job

17:47falls to Dave, to you. And it's a simple discipline, even if it's not an easy one. When a feeling arrives, whether it's fear or comfort, outrage or relief, and that feeling gets delivered to you very neat, complete, ready to wear all in one nice package, ask one question before you put it on. Who paid to make me feel this? And then go check the underlying number yourself. Because go back to that guy and date named Dave that we've been banging on up in Weld County, Colorado. It's not hypothetical. A Denver suburb by the name, named Aurora, already voted on a moratorium. Douglas County and South Denver is already wrestling with the water issue. These are real decisions coming in very real rooms with your name and the consequences and it's happening all over the country. And in 2026, that $125 million machine is going to be

18:54spending to pick the people who make those decisions. Don't let the fear be installed. Don't let the comfort be installed either. And don't let anybody, not on the left, not on the right, not Beijing. Don't let anybody tell you your own kitchen table isn't real. Instead, go check the funder, check the number, and then you decide that's what you have to do. That feeling's being paid for, and I find it fascinating that it's on both sides, both sides. The thread that started this whole rabbit hole I went down was an investigation by something called the Capital Research Center. It's capitalresearch.org. CRC is a conservative investigative shop and it calls itself America's investigative think tank. And it's stock and trade is documenting left-wing money networks.

19:57So it's not a neutral referee and I'm not going to pretend that it is neutral. Pretending your source is Switzerland neutral when it isn't exactly the same is exactly what I'm talking about. But this is the discipline that I applied going down this rabbit hole. I took the Capital Research Center's claims, checked them against outlets that have no conservative acts to grind. CGR, Axios, Fortune, NBC, Reuters, Brookings, the primary filings and the sites, the organizations themselves. When the CRC held up, I'd tell you so. And when CRC stretched, I'd say that too. There's at least one stretch below that I think they're right over cells. Follow the physics and the law where they lead. That's the deal. There are three machines. There's the anti-build machine, the courier newsroom. That's the for-profit network of outlets styled as friendly local

21:00papers, things like the Gander and Michigan or up north news in Wisconsin, copper carrier down in Arizona, a bunch more. They're operating in at least 20 states. It was founded by Democrat operative Tara McGallan, incubated in the nonprofit acronym. It's now owned by good information ink. It's backed over time by donors, including George Soros and Reed Hoffman. And in the closing months of the 2024 election cycle, it was the third largest political ad buyer on Meta platform behind only the Harrison Trump campaigns. Its partisan operation in the local news costume character is actually documented by Axios, vice the New Yorker news guard and CNN. Not just by conservatives, the motive is on the record in their own words. And that is this is a persuasion operation describing itself as a persuasion operation because they want to ask donors for money to

22:04increase awareness and opposition. You are being fed that feeling. I'll be right back. A shocking crime and a cover up at the highest levels of the United States Marine Corps. A new podcast series, fault line Haditha, tells the story the United States government wants to keep buried. How can you not know? There were women and children in there. You can tell us here that you don't know what happened that day. Based on thousands of pages of previously classified documents and over a hundred hours of secretly filmed video. The truth about one of the most infamous crimes in Marine Corps history can finally be told. If you've got five players and one of them is guilty of murder at least and you offer immunity to the other four, you better be right about the fifth because if you're not, then you've just given immunity to your color.

23:07Listen to fault line Haditha on the Lie Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode sponsored by Homebase. Homebase is built for small businesses trying to do it all. The neighborhood coffee shop, the local gym, the family run restaurant. With Homebase, you can schedule your team, track time, run payroll and manage hiring from one easy app so you can spend less time chasing time sheets and more time running the business your customers love. More than 150,000 small businesses already use Homebase to keep their teams on track. Start free at joinhomebase.com. Homebase, built for small businesses that do it all. Tonight Michael Brown joins me here. The former FEMA director, talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie! Now. Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The weekend with Michael Brown. Welcome back to week in with Michael Brown. Glad to have you with me. Appreciate you tuning in. Text lines always open 3 3 1 0 3 keyword, Michael. If you like what we do on the weekend, you probably

24:12like the weekday program. It's very easy to listen to the weekday program on the Lie Heart app. Search for station in Denver. Call letters are K-O-A. K-O-A. It's at 850 am, 94 1 FM. Hit that as a preset in the Monday through Friday. You put your AirPods in, you hit that preset, and from 9 to noon mountain time you can listen to me live on K-O-A. Now, let me put you on a boat. September 2010. Cold water in the east China Sea. Off a little cluster of empty rocks. It's a clump of rocks that Japan calls the Sikakis. China calls something else. The Chinese fishing trawlers out there where it's not supposed to be. And it rams to Japanese Coast Guard boats. So the Japanese do what they would normally do. They arrest the captain. And then something not ordinary happens. Within days, the rare earth minerals

25:17stop flowing to Japan. Now, I bet you've never bought a rare earth in your life. I haven't. I don't think either one of us could pick one out of a lineup. But Toyota can, Sony can, half of the Japanese industry runs on rare earth minerals, and almost all of it at that time came from one place. China. And China was furious about the fishing boat, Captain, who was still sitting in a Japanese jail. They just quietly turned off the tap. Japan folded. They let the captain go. Because when the country that makes the one material that your entire economy depends on decides to squeeze that economy, you find out very fast how much sovereignty you actually have. One arrest and a superpower reached over and put its hand around Japan's throat. No shots were fired just a paperwork slowed down at a Chinese port. Now, that's not a trade dispute. That's a weapon. And I want to talk to you about the fact that that

26:19same weapon is pointed at the United States and about the man who is finally aggressively doing something about it. And I want to be honest with you because it's going to cost me something to say this. Let me start with what this stuff even is. Reach over and touch your card. There's a little electric motor in there that rose your window up and down inside that motor is a magnet. And that magnet is made from rare earths. Same magnet bigger spins in the wind turbines out on the plains. Same family material sits in your hard drive. Your earbuds, the guidance system on a missile and the F-35, our top fighter jet, carries hundreds of pounds of rare earth material in every single airframe. Now, you've never handed or anybody a dollar anytime for a rare earth. But you cannot get through one day of your life without a rare earth. And here's the part that I think everybody gets wrong. And I mean everybody, including the story they got me thinking about it in the first place. The problem was never the mining. We've got rare earths in the ground

27:24right here in Wyoming. Just north of me. Australia's got rare earths. They're all over the freaking world. The dirt is not the choke point. The choke point is the processing. Taking the ore and refining it into something that you can actually use and then turning that into a magnet. That's the hard part. That's the really dirty part. That's the part that nobody wanted in their backyard. And over the past 30 years, we let the Chinese take almost all of that. Today, China controls somewhere around 90% of the world's rare earth processing, 90% keep that in your mind. That's the whole ballgame right there. Because China didn't get to 90% by accident. And they don't hold it by accident either. Here's how this trap works. Because this is the thing that changed my mind. Say you're an American company. You decide that you're going to break China's grip. So you raise the money.

28:26You take on some debt. You build a processing plant that takes years. And right about the time you're ready to sell your first batch and start paying back the loans you took out. China opens the spigot and floods the market and craters the price. On purpose, they'll even lose money doing it. Chinese don't care. They're communist. They can afford to bleed longer than you and I can. And they know that you can't cover your debt. The bank comes calling and you're done bankrupt. And the next American company that thinks about trying. Oh rare earth processing. They remember what happened to you. That is not a free market. That is a rigged market. And it's rigged by one foreign government on purpose to make sure that you never get up off the mat. They'll use it as a weapon whenever they feel like. They did that to Japan in 2010 just like I told you. And they've done it to us twice just in the last year and a half in April of last year in the middle of the

29:31terrified China slept export licenses on rare earth and magnets made from them. Aimed straight at American manufacturers and the American defense contractors. Then last fall in October, they would even bigger a brand new round of export controls on those rare earths the magnets the battery materials are every bit of it. They call the same lever they pulled on Japan only this time our name was on it. And then last November they let up. Trump president G sat down cut a truce China suspended the controls suspended not repealed they didn't surrender they switched it off on purpose but their hand was still resting on the switch now that suspension runs out in November just what six weeks from now we don't get a vote on what happens after the Chinese do. So here's the uncomfortable question if we knew all this why did nothing happen for so long

30:36because we did know it's not hindsight back in June of 2021 Biden's own administration put out a big supply chain review and they said it out loud they named the danger they even named China said we were dangerously dependent so then the Biden's having diagnosed it perfectly well they just decided to study it some more they formed a task force they held a meeting they wrote up a follow-up report this rot is not just one sided though this rot is bipartisan and it's decades old Republicans Democrats both watched the factories go they watched the processing move out they watched the leverage go and they told themselves oh it's just a market being the market it's not we knew what China was building so we built committees and they built a chokehold which brings me to right now because something has genuinely changed the Trump administration has stopped studying

31:38this thing we got enough studies can't you just hear Trump saying that and started doing something about it and it's aggressive and it is working and even the people who cannot stand double Trump are standing up and taking notice of this last year the Department of Defense didn't just write a check to a rare earth company called MP materials they took an ownership stake they became the single largest shareholder in the thing and this summer the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital committed up to $725 million in loans to a company called Energy Fuels to do what to build out exactly the processing capacity that we've never had and here's how you know the China's watching June this past June even with that truth supposedly still holding Beijing reached out and put 10 American companies on a special restriction list hmm one of those was MP materials the very company

32:45the Pentagon had just bet on China looked at the horse we backed tried to cut its legs out from under it on purpose during the troops now notice what these deals include price floors a guaranteed bottom the price can't fall below which means when China when China tries the old trick tries to flood the market crash the price bankrupt an American company mid repainment the floor is supposed to hold the trap doesn't spring and for the first time the American company can actually take that punch and remain standing now it hasn't slowed down just a few weeks ago August 7th the White House rolled out another whole round of this more than two billion dollars in new deals 150 million to a Minnesota company building magnets that don't need Chinese rare earth at all 400 million for a scandium supply chain money for graphite boron the materials you and I never think about

33:45until the day we can't get them two billion dollars in a single afternoon and that was just the latest batch now across the Atlantic the European see this may frankly I think they're a little jealous the financial times ran a piece a couple of weeks ago where a lawyer advising European rare earth projects said well you agree your disagree with how the Trump administration is going about this in 18 months they have done more deals than Europe has done in the past decade in the head of Europe's own raw materials group burns shaffer said I really admire the Americans they take an idea and run with it while we Europeans hesitate over administrative talk and lose time talk and lose time where have we heard that before but I do have a confession and I actually do mean this as a confession I'm the guy who yells about this how do I yell about it stay tuned I'll be

34:51right back a shocking crime and a cover-up at the highest levels of the United States Marine Corps a new podcast series fault line Haditha tells the story the United States government wants to keep buried how can you not know there were women and children there you're going to tell us here that you don't know what happened that day based on thousands of pages of previously classified documents and over a hundred hours of secretly filmed video the truth about one of the most infamous crimes in Marine Corps history can finally be told if you've got five players and one of them is guilty of murder at least and you offer immunity to the other four you better be right about the fifth because if you're not then you're just given immunity to your color listen to fault line Haditha on the my heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

35:58hey welcome back to the weekend with Michael Brown glad to have you with me text lines open 3 3 1 0 3 key word micro Michael I said I had a confession to make and I really do mean his confession government taking equity stakes and private companies government handing out cheap loans to pick winners government guarantee a price or a business can't lose if you never listen to me for more than say a week you know that almost any other Tuesday I'd be lighting that up that's industrial policy with a flag stuck in it and I don't like it and now here I am sitting telling you that in this case in this one case it might be exactly right here's how I tried to square it now you can throw it right back at me if you want if you don't buy it the free market answer only works when there is a market Adam Smith's invisible hand assumes nobody's got a government size thumb pressing down on the scale and here somebody does when a foreign government

37:05spends its own people's money for decades specifically to bankrupt our industries specifically to choke our defense supplies telling ourselves to just let the market sort it out I don't think that's principal I think that's surrender utter surrender national security is the one place where even the hardest free market guy like me will tip his hat and admits the government's got a job to do that's my life China rigged the board so that our side put a thumb on it too to unrig it but only for that reason and only that far now let me bring it home because this isn't something this isn't happening in some abstract you know Washington somewhere it's happening in our backyard that company I mentioned energy fuels on the Pentagon just back it's headquarters is right here like with colorado right off Union Boulevard their mill the white

38:09mason mill sits down and blending Utah in the four corners area close enough to submit on the state line these are more or less my neighbors and they're betting their company on the idea that they can outwork and outlast a foreign government that would very much like to see them fail and see them fail why because China knows it weakens our defense posture and I look at national security and national defense and say we need to rebuild that and if we need to spend some of our tax dollars to rebuild that to help these companies succeed against a foreign adversary who will do everything to flood the market and keep them from succeeding then yes I am for a guy by the name of Bapu BHA PPU he runs energy fuels and he explained in an interview a colleague did recently exactly why that government backing matters he said it absolutely makes sense for the

39:17government to step in especially during the time when you're repainting these loans that's the time when if the price falls dramatically and you're not able to pay off those loans you're stuck so providing floor prices is vitally important he's absolutely right the floor price is not a handout to pad his profits that's what keeps China from being able to bankrupt him on command by flipping a switch while he's carrying the debt it's the bullet proof vest it's what lets him get in the ring and fight the battle so yeah I'm for it with my eyes open and with one hand on my wallet and you should have your hand on your wallet too because there is a place where it can go wrong and I'd be hypocrite not to say it the danger with every subsidy ever invented is that it never ends the emergency becomes permanent the company that was supposed to grow strong enough so they

40:24can stand on their own they learn instead to stand on your money forever and ever and the check just keeps going out long after the reason for it's completely gone that is how a national security necessity turns into plain old corporate welfare and it's your money on top of that not Washington's money your money my money so I think there's a test for all of this and it's a test that I'll be watching it's not whether we cut a splashy deal it's actually whether five years from now energy fuels and MP materials can throw a punch at China without the government standing behind them holding that price up if we get there that means this worked if we're still writing checksay in 2035 with nothing to show but a company that can't survive daylight then I was wrong

41:24and we should say so we may not get five years remember that truth the one that runs out this November if China flips the switch back on we find out really fast how much we actually built and then we'll find out just how much was just an announcement that's the difference between say a press release and a real legitimate supply chain when more thing and it matters more than it sounds like it should the article that got me on all of this the one praising these deals the one that's basically right about the picture it got one key fact wrong it told its readers that the energy department made that $725 million loan to energy fuels it wasn't the energy department it was the Pentagon the Department of Defense through its office of strategic capital now you might say well Michael who cares they close enough I don't care

42:28and you should too because it's your money and when it's our money the details are the whole story which agency which authority on whose books under whose oversight when we get those things wrong then we can't hold anybody accountable because we don't even know who's holding the pen who's keeping the books who's watching the money who's holding the accountability I don't think precision is nitpicking when we're the ones paid so the playing version of all of this trying to build a trap they spent 30 years perfecting it while we told ourselves oh the marketplace will handle it the marketplace couldn't handle it wouldn't handle there was no marketplace and the thing I'd normally never defend government stepping in with money and muscle actually turns out to be the only tool big enough for a problem for a foreign government built on purpose I don't love it I think it's necessary and I'll watch it like a hawk

43:31with our money in mind because necessary impermanent two very different things and the difference could cost you or save you depending on whether anybody's paying attention yes industrial policy in this case I might just be for it I'll be right back why you're dealing with listening to Armstrong and getting on demand we're not boring lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry you don't want to live your life like that hey I'm Jack Armstrong he's Joe Getty we're Armstrong and Getty we try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world about something about a comedic tone we have a winner yes listen Armstrong you getty on demand on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts I believe that whoever was in that room and did that was a murder a new podcast series fault line Haditha tells the story of a shocking crime and a cover-up at the

44:36highest levels of the United States Marine Corps if you've got five players and you offer immunity to four you better be right about the fifth because if you're not then you've just given immunity to your color listen to fault line Haditha on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts