All right, good afternoon everyone, my name is Benjamin and I'm going to talk about side channel analysis of the Xilinx Sync UltraScale Plus encryption engine, which was a joint work with my colleagues Sebastian Leger, Daniel Fennes, Stefan Guerra and Tim Guinezu. Okay, this talk is about FPGA security. So FPGAs are powerful and flexible configurable devices, which are mostly based on SRAM technology. That means that a configuration file or bitstream has to be loaded each time during startup. And since this bitstream potentially covers a lot of valuable IP, it has to be protected against duplication, manipulation and also reverse engineering. And because of that, since a couple of years bitstream encryption and also authentication is supported by many FPGA devices. And this basically works as follows. So in the EDA software, the bitstream gets encrypted with a symmetric key. Then the bitstream is loaded onto the device in some non-volatile memory. Also the key is stored on the device, often in fuses or battery-backed block RAM. And then during power-up, the bitstream gets decrypted, often by a dedicated decryption engine, and then is loaded into the configuration memory. However, there have been shown a number of successful key extraction attacks from FPGAs by using such an analysis against the bitstream decryption engine. So for example, Moradi at all showed successful attacks against vertex 4 and vertex 5 series devices and later also against Spartan-6, Kintex-7 and the Arctic-7 series. There have also been successful attacks against Altera devices like the Stratix-2 and Stratix-3 series. So the general problem here was that these devices had actually no dedicated side-channel countermeasures. Okay, so this motivated us to take a closer look on a chip from the current generation of Xilinx devices, which is the Sync Alcascale Plus based on 16nm production technology. The device features an on-chip encryption engine based on AES-256, implemented in GCM mode, completely in hardware. It can be used for bitstream encryption and authentication. And in contrast to the devices mentioned before, here the encryption engine is protected by a protocol-based countermeasures named key rolling. So with key rolling, the initial bitstream is divided in several blocks and then each block is encrypted with an individual key. On the device, the initial key is stored in eFuses or battery-backed block RAM while the keys for each successive block is encrypted by the previous block. And so this limits the data collection for the adversary since each AES key is only used for a certain number of encryptions. Well, however Xilinx gives actually no recommendation about a suitable block size. So how many AES blocks should be encrypted under the same key? Well, because of that our goal was to find an appropriate value for this key rolling parameter. Our security analysis relies on the following assumptions. First, we assume that hardware root of trust authentication based on RSA is enabled. This means that only authenticated items can be decrypted by the AES engines. So JOS and Cypher attacks are not possible. However, the attacker can record one specific bitstream decryption multiple times and then perform an averaging of the traces in order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. As there is no dedicated masking countermeasure in the AES core itself, we focused our analysis on first order leakage. And finally, we assumed that the adversary has access to an open copy of the device such that profiling attacks like templates and machine learning based are possible. Okay, now some words about our setup. So we have used a SYNC Ultra-Scale Plus evaluation board of type ZCU-102 as mentioned before with 16nm processing technology. The device itself is packaged in Flipchip technology. So we had to remove the metal cap with a small driller in order to have access to the silicon. However, as leakage vector, we have used EM signals that are induced by the on-chip decoupling capacitor that are placed around the chip. So we placed our EM probe directly next to the decoupling capacitor that is related to the AES power rail. We also tried measuring the EM signal directly on the die surface. However, this led to a worse signal-to-noise ratio compared to measurements on the decoupling capacitors. Our target broad clock frequency has been set to 48 MHz. For acquiring EM traces, we used a longer EMV probe in combination with a 4-axis positioning system. And we also used a picoscope from the 6000 series with an assembling rate of 625 MHz per second and 500 MHz bandwidth. We used an averaging factor of 250, that means 250 traces with the same inputs are recorded, but only the average of the trace has been kept for the analysis. Okay, once our setup was ready, we performed a black box reverse engineering of the AES-256 architecture. For that, we've used a standard Pearson correlation with known key. What were the steps? Basically from the timing behavior of the core, we assumed a round-based implementation of the AES. Then we tried different leakage models, which are typical for round-based hardware implementations with a varying number of pipeline stages and registers. And finally, we found that the AES is implemented as shown here on the slide with four rounds implemented in parallel and a state register between each round. Okay, in order to attack a cryptographic design, the attacker needs a suitable power leakage model. And in cryptographic hardware implementations, usually the most power is consumed by the registers. So for each of the registers that we have seen before on the slide, the power leakage can be roughly summarized as given here in the formula on the slide. And it basically says that the power leakage is equal to the hamming distance between the output of encryption i in round n and the output of the next encryption in the same round. So we have here a power leakage that depends on two encryptions and not two different rounds, which is kind of exotic. Okay, how can this leakage model actually be used to mount an attack against the AES? Well, we have seen that our hamming distance leakage model involves two consecutive block encryptions. However, in GCM or counter mode, the only difference between two encryptions is the counter value. More specifically, in most cases, only the last significant byte of the counter value changes between two encryptions. And for that, we have visualized here the changes in red. We can see that only one byte out of 16 is changing at each encryption and is leaking information. And that means that the hamming distance leakage in round one can only be related to one key byte, key byte 15 in this case. So in order to extract the complete 256-bit AES key, we need to consider more rounds. Indeed, we need to take into account the first five AES rounds to be able to extract the complete AES key. So in round one, only one key byte can be extracted with an 8-bit hypothesis space attack. Then the goal of round two is to extract four constants, alpha 0 to alpha 3, which are related to the subkey bytes. And this can also be extracted with an 8-bit hypothesis space attack. However, there is a restriction. These constants are only stable for 256 encryptions. So we have here an upper bound in the number of encryptions. Then in round three, the goal is to extract 16 constants with four attacks each with a 32-bit hypothesis space. And this enables us to calculate the input vector for round four, but only for the next 256 encryptions. Then in round four, finally 16 subkey bytes can be extracted again with four attacks each with a 32-bit hypothesis space. The same is true for round five, and then this finally enables us to calculate the complete 256-bit key. So in summary, our attack procedure goes over five rounds, requires a 32-bit hypothesis space attacks beginning from round three, and we have only 256 encryptions available. So we are in a very challenging setting here. Okay, coming now to our practical experiments. So our dataset was composed of 200,000 traces after averaging. 75% of these traces have been used for profiling, 24% for validation, and 1% has been used as attack traces. Each trace has an individual key and also initialization vector, and was composed of not only one encryption, but includes 256 successive AES encryptions, so from counter zero to 255. This mainly corresponds to our attack procedure that I showed before that requires at most 256 encryptions to extract the key. So we can validate our setup with just one attack trace. So in summary, then one trace contains almost 16,000 samples as shown here on the slide. Okay, as an attack baseline, we have used a CPA with LDA pre-processing. So LDA is a technique that projects the traces into a smaller dimension where the infraclass variance is maximized. We have calculated LDA coefficient for each Hamming distance leakage that appears per round attack using 50 sample points per leakage. And the location of these sample points has been determined by a correlation with known key. And for the attack, then we compress those 50 sample points into a single point using the LDA pre-processing. However, there is an additional challenge. So in theory, we have 255 leakage that can be used per attack traces. However, the first exploitable leakage appears only for a counter of 3. And then due to the pipeline architecture of the AES, every 4 o'clock cycle generates a leakage of around i plus 3. So leakage that we cannot use for the attack in the current round. So in summary, we only have 190 encryptions that generate an exploitable leakage. We have used two power models for our baseline attacks, the regular Hamming distance power model and linear regression base power model, also known as the Stochastic approach by Schindler et al. Here are the results. So in the first round, the Hamming distance power model attack requires 170 traces and the linear regression base model 130 traces to extract the key byte. However, the attacks in later rounds were not successful. So it was not possible to extract the key with the available 190 encryptions. Okay, since conventional state-of-the-art methods are not enough for our target, we decided to change our strategy and move to sophisticated deep learning attack methods. The scheme we have applied is called correlation optimization, CO that was proposed by Robbins et al. at chess 2019. The idea of CO is to drain a deep neural network to produce an encoding of the input data that maximizes the Pearson correlation with a hypothetical power leakage. So it can be considered as an extension of the classical CPA with an additional profiling phase. And part of the CO method is a specialized loss function that is used during the trading process. Why CO? Well, as said before, we only have 190 encryptions available, so it makes sense to apply a profile attack. Then CO automatically encodes the traces into a single value. This is good if you want to speed up the correlation process and especially when dealing with 32-bit hypothesis. This is very important because we have here a lot of hypothesis. And finally, the heading weight in the power leakage model produces a very imbalanced dataset. Again, this is especially true for 32-bit hypothesis. And this can create a big problem for Gaussian templates but also standard deep learning based attack methods that make use of the cross entropy loss function. We have also developed two extensions for the standard correlation optimization approach. The first one is a bit-wise correlation loss. Here, the bit flips in the registers are directly used as leakage labels, so we don't apply the heading weight function. And then the sum of the correlation for each bit gives the total loss that is used during the trading. The second approach we propose is called weighted-bit correlation. It's basically an adoption of the stochastic approach to neural networks. Here, an additional weight coefficient C is introduced for each bit and is approximated or learned by an additional small neural network, basically it's just a neuron. And this neuron creates then an optimized encoding also for the leakage that is used then in the correlation. Apart from specialized loss functions, also the architecture and the type of neural network play an important role in DNN-based side-general attacks. And here we have tried different methods. So first, since we have 190 leakages, we can train an individual network per leakage. Advantage is that we can use shorter traces as input for these networks, but in total the training time can be very long since we have to train a very large number of networks. Then the other way around, we can use a single network that has 190 outputs, one per leakage, and uses the complete traces as input. Here the training time is faster. However, the model is far more complex in terms of parameters that have to be drained. And last but not least, a so-called triple output model that outputs three leakages per trace segment. So this is possible since the leakages of these three outputs appear directly next to each other in the trace. So it's just one clock cycle to the next one. So that means we have here a trade-off between training time and model complexity. We have implemented all three schemes. So for the model per leakage approach, we have used the standard correlation optimization leakage function, then the bit-wise correlation optimization and the weighted bit correlation as shown before. And for the output per counter leakage, the triple output model, we just used the plane correlation optimization approach. We have used two neural network types. First, a multi-layer perceptron or MLP, a rather small network with two hidden layers with 10 and 15 neurons. And the second network we have used is CNN. That is composed of three blocks of batch norm convolution and max pooling. And all of the attacks have been implemented in Python with the Keras and TensorFlow frameworks. Okay, and here are the results for the first round. As a reminder, the target in the first round was to extract one byte of the key. And when looking at the plots, we can see that the multi-output model here denoted as all counter and three counter are in general outperformed by the model per counter approaches. However, the difference on the CNN is not that large than on the MLP. Comparing the different loss functions, it becomes clear that the bit-wise correlation loss and weighted bit correlation obtain the best results and successfully extract the key with less than 50 encryptions on the CNN model. Please note also that these results are much better than the baseline attack where at least 130 encryptions were needed to extract the key byte. Then the results for round two, here the target was to extract four 8-bit constants, alpha 0 to alpha 3, which are needed to calculate the leakage of round three. The attack complexity is the same as in the first round. So we have 8-bit hypothesis attacks per constant. However, the algorithmic noise is higher and therefore the results are worse. Nevertheless, several techniques are able to extract the alphas using the 190 available encryptions and again the CNN models performed better than the MLP models. Then round three, here the target was to extract 16 constants, gamma 0 to gamma 15 with four attacks each with a 32-bit hypothesis. This then enables to calculate the input vector of round four for the next 256 encryptions. We implemented the attack phase on GPU using the NVIDIA QDA framework. The main reason was that we had to evaluate 2 to the power of 32 key guesses, which are more than 4 billion and letting it run on the GPU reduced the recovery phase from several weeks to approximately six hours. However, none of our attacks were able to extract the constants within 190 encryptions. So we achieved a key rank between 10,000 and 10 million. The reason for the failure was that the complexity is too high and the signal to noise ratio is too low for a 32-bit attack. For our setup we roughly estimated that at least 1,000 encryptions are needed to extract the gamma constants. Okay, same picture for the fourth and the fifth round attacks. Here the target was to extract 16 sub-key bytes again with 32-bit hypothesis attacks. Of course key recovery was not successful since the round three constants are not available and we roughly estimated that around 3,000 encryptions would be needed to extract the 16 sub-key bytes here. So coming now back to our initial question, how to set the key rolling parameter? Well, the actual value of the key rolling parameter, so how many bit-stream blocks are encrypted under the same key has a major impact on the size of the configuration image and therefore the boot time of the SYNC UltraScale Plus. So on the plot here we can see that for example a key rolling parameter smaller than 5 increases the boot time by more than 400% while a value larger than 40 increases the boot time only by 10% or less. In the experimental attacks we have seen that the complete extraction of the key has not been successful within the 256 encryptions. So why not just setting the key rolling parameter to a value of around 200? Well, we have also seen that parts of the key could be extracted with less than 50 encryption. And although we have done here a worst-case scenario, so a profile attack on a single device, there is an old NSA saying that states that attacks always become better, never get worse. And additionally, a lifetime of products that use the SYNC UltraScale Plus can be 20 years or longer, for example in automotive. And to account that, we recommend a key rolling parameter between 20 and 30 to have considerable security margin against future attacks and also a reasonable boot time overhead of 15 to 25%. Thank you very much.


Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines. We are broadcasting live from the beautiful ThinkTek Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. Today's special guest is comedy king Frank Dilema. He has been and still continues to be one of the most successful, most funny comedians in the state of Hawaii for many decades, and today we are going Beyond the Jokes. Frank, great having you here today on Beyond the Lines. Thank you. Aloha, everybody. I know that I have two big things in common with you. One is I'm part Portuguese. Oh, yeah. I'm going to handle all the jokes. Right on. And the second is I went to Damien. Viriliterade. Viriliterade. Right on. That's both right on. Now, I want to ask you, Frank, about your background. What schools did you go to before you went to Damien? Kindergarten, I went to Paoa Elementary. Then I went to Cathedral School for eight years, and then off to Damien. And then I went on to St. Stephen's Seminary, and we commuted to Shamanad, graduated from Shamanad. And then I went up to St. Patrick's Theologian in Menlo Park, California, and was there for three years. Got back home and was one year at Holy Trinity Church as a deacon, but the entertainer was getting stronger as I was going along all the way through school. I was in charge of all the social events and the fundraisers, the musician, the emcee, pep squad, pep rallies. So I was on the mic, and so that was starting to get popular in me, stronger in me. And so at that point, at Holy Trinity, I decided I'd better take a break and go out and find out where I really should be. So I did realize after I got one hit after another, from Abdul-Fatai to Lucille and beyond, just one hit after another. And so I said, maybe this is my career, but there's still something missing. And I want to continue to do something for the community and as a church person. And so I used to work at the summer fund summer camp programs for eight years while in the school. And so I picked up about what makes them laugh and what keeps their attention. And that all came to be. My first school was in Maui. I had sold out my shows on the weekend. I said, OK, this is probably the time. I feel like I'm supposed to do something. I'm not doing anything during the day, during the week. So I asked my cousin, Charlie, is there a school close by? And so he said, yep, Kahulu Elementary. The principal was open and minded. And he said, yeah, come on. And so he set up 800 kids, K to 8. And I went on stage. I said, God help me because I have no idea what I'm going to do. But I was enough information in my head. I did a half hour. Kids laugh, but they also listened. And I gave my message. And that has continued for 40 years from one school to 300 schools on my schedule. That is amazing. It takes two years to visit all 300. And so I've seen every school, K to 8, or almost every school, depending if they say yes or no, but K to 8. And I've seen them, each of the kids, five times. Because I've been back to the schools, and I would give messages as they're getting older. And it's been very successful. I still got a whole bunch of schools that I'm doing up to about 270. Geez. And like I said, it takes two years. So that's my program. And I thank my sponsors because when Waikiki's closed down, then I needed sponsors to pay the bills. Because I volunteer, but I still cannot pay the bills. So Texaco takes help from me, and Prince Guanacua, and Sony Open, and the Federico. And I'm even asking the state if they can help now that I need that help. And so we'll see what they say. But that is important. Otherwise, the program cannot continue. So if people want to donate, it's frankdilema.com. Go on and do a donation. Thank you. Thanks for giving me that opportunity. Of course. And Frank, I remember when I was at Damien. Damien was the most strict school in the state. How was it when you were at Damien? Oh, man, it was strict. But I was a nervous kid. So I never did get out of line.  And it was because of vocabulary. See, I have a problem with memorizing. And so the brothers really helped me there because they realized it. So I had a problem there. So it kind of helped me back from becoming really a good student, but I was pretty good. That's ironic that you had problems with memorizations. Yeah, I've always did because of my imagination. It would keep wandering, especially if the thing doesn't interest me. Then I started going off into tangents and daydreaming. And of course, that wastes time. And you still got to go back and memorize it. But I remember it completely after. Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth from this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. And I took forever. But there's a lot of songs and skits that are plenty words. And most of them I did myself. So it was easier because it's in the brain, even though you change this and that over and over again. You still got to memorize it. But then there's little stuff, you know, scripts of plays and stuff that my helper, Patrick Downs, would make right that I needed to go in and memorize the whole thing. I have a story about one of them is that I had a meeting with a stage play, Christmas play, at Hawaii Theater. And we told the group that they wanted me to be part of it. Don't give Frank any stuff, my manager said, that he has to learn because it takes him forever to learn it. They didn't listen. All they told us there was, oh, it's Christmas songs. Now you tell me, how many people in the public know Frosty the Snowman? She sings, Frosty the Snowman. Da da da da da da, you know. But I'm sure there's a son that know it. But you got to notice, I had to know the song. I was busy. I was top of my career and so much shows and stuff like that. But they gave me songs like, what are you doing? New Year's. I never heard that song in my whole life. And I had to memorize that thing and sing to a puppet. Oh, I tell you, I just had a hard time because they didn't believe. And I guess a lot of people don't realize that I have that memorizing problem. So yeah, through the years. But when I get to show and I'm on stage, I don't have that problem. It was easy, but it takes work. Frank, let's talk about Portuguese being super. Now, did you learn how to make Portuguese being soup because of your mom? Mom used to make them. And so I knew the recipe by the time I started taking over. And I thought that would be a good thing to make for my building, so at Christmas I make a pot for them. I make a pot for all the radio stations and TV stations thanking them for a year of their help and so that continues for many years. I'm going to make one on Monday. I didn't tell them yet, but I'm going to send out the email that I'll be bringing soup on Monday. And it takes about four to five hours to make, from buying the stuff, to chopping it, and to boiling it. That's the longest part.  Then you add everything else, and it's steep. A lot of my TV news anchor friends, they tell me every year that you deliver the Portuguese being soup to the studios. Now, I want to ask you, Frank, I remember going to see your shows, I mean, multiple times at the noodle shop in Waikiki. And you did Lucille, Glenn Miyashiro, I mean, Imelda. I mean, how was it with all of those different characters that you would invent at those times? How was it? Yeah, how was it like? Because you're so creative at having so many different characters. And didn't Imelda come to one of your shows? She came to the show. Your neighbor brought her. And she was interested because she hung out with show business people. She knows show business, and she knows that different comedians dress up as different big stars. And she was kind of flattered.  So when I walked on stage dressed like her, first I panicked. I said, as Portuguese, we strong people.  And two of us with the duck glasses looking at each other. She busted out laughing. And when I started singing, I left my shoes in my manila. And then she held up the shoes and said, here, have some. It was hilarious. It was absolutely hilarious, yeah. Because before that, a lot of the people that loved Imelda weren't happy at all with me dressed up as that. But when she came in, then they understood, yeah. That it's just doing, and simple stuff. I mean, it's not like going into the terrible things that they say she did. I just stay with the shoes, and the bra, and the panties, and whatever it is, and the hair. And I said, and I'll leave it at home. At least that's fun. And she loved it, she thought. She said, oh, you take good care. You didn't do anything mean. And I said, well, we're both Catholic. I ran into her at church.  I was sick, blessed, modest-eyed. Didn't know we were both together. And after mass, I heard, pssh, pssh. And I looked around. I said, who's calling me? Was her? With her son, Bong Bong. And oh, my goodness. Anyway. Oh, wow. OK, Frank. And then you came up with Ethnicology 101. What was that all about? I wanted to put something together that I get my message out about Hawaii, a culture and a culture. Therefore, it can be offensive to people that didn't grow up here. There's a few that even grew up here that really didn't get into it. But it came from the plantation days. And so I tell stories about that in that CD about how our humor developed.  And they mingled with each other. The kids all played together, football and all that. That happened with me. We had the park and stayed at each other's house. But me, I was more the type that would hang around the grandma and the grandpa and the mom and dad and listen to them and ask questions and stuff like that. So I picked up a lot of stuff. But so I wanted to let them know where this culture is. And most people got that sense of humor. They grew up with it at the garage party, at the Luau, aunties with the flowers in the air singing like that and said, hey, pake, put that plastic bag away. You cannot take this food home. I remember that so well. I was young and I tell you, the whole audience busted out laughing. But that's the local stuff. And Frank, I have to ask you, what's your favorite food to eat? Bisou and rice. Bisou and rice. Bisou and rice spaghetti, pake, pake, deluxe. Bisou and rice spaghetti, pake, pake, deluxe.   I mean, one deluxe, one ton, min. I absolutely love it. Well, because of that song, I started to love Bisou and rice even more. Well, it's something that all the local restaurants make. And it's like, oh, no. It's oh, no. The gravies, that's what the whole thing is. Oh, totally. How the gravy is. The gravy junk, then the Bisou and rice. Frank, we're going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, we're going to continue going beyond the jokes. All right. You are watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest, Frank Dilema. We'll be back in a quick minute. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doing energy stuff. But I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place.  Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Hello, I'm Yukari Kunisue. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on Think Tech Hawaii, called Konnichiwa Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 PM. Please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 PM. Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My special guest today is Frank Dilema, who is one of the funniest comedians in the state of Hawaii for many, many decades. And today we are going beyond the jokes. Frank, I'm cracking up laughing with you. And we're in December right now, almost Christmas time. And we all love the Filipino Christmas. And on and on and on. Yeah, that song, you know, I went to visit a school at Waipahu Elementary. And the fifth grader, student body president, straight-A student, wonderful kid came up to me. And he said, Uncle Frank, I love your Filipino Christmas song. I can sing it. I said, from beginning to end, he said, yeah. And you know, a lot of people, they say it's all bull-eye. Some of the words are bull-eye, but a lot of them are real. Where did you learn your words from? I said, my neighbor and the ladies down at Bless the Sacrament Church, you know, the Filipino Catholic Club. So I used to pick up all these words because I used to ask them questions. What is this? What is that? What kind of plant do you have, tata? And tata teach me words like buddh-buddh, petr-petr-baddhoya, kos-karon, bibing-kas-suman, ding-ding-ding, darang-darang, soloyot, kalamunga, balut, and otot, all those words. And so through the years, it stayed with me. And that's how my comedy was based. And I wanted to do a Christmas song, a funny song, because Lucio was such a huge hero. And I said, I've got to follow with something for Christmas. And that song came to mind. And today, right? Because it was peppy.  And the Filipino words came to be perfect. And so I, this guy, Tremaine Tamayose, one day he was, we were doing a commercial. And he started singing, makadang-dang, soloyot, and soloyot. And I said, oh, I changed that to soloyot. But through the years, I added and added and added to it. And it became the Filipino Christmas song. And the kid sang the whole thing. And then at the end, he said, Uncle Frank, I didn't hear the word for squid. I said, I never heard that word. You know, I never learned that. He said, I'll spell it for you. It's puset, P-U-S-I-T, puset. I said, well, thank you for telling me that. And then he said, Uncle Frank, what is this? I said, well, it looks like a puset swimming. He said, yes. And what is this? I said, well, I don't know. He said, a puset. I busted out laughing. That kid had a joke building up and waiting for me to fall for it. And I did. Oh, Frank, OK. So two weeks ago, I had Augie T on my TV show. And he said that you are one of his all-time idols. And you guys are all doing some comedy tour, some performances together.  Mel Kabang, Augie, Andy Bumatai, how is it with you guys? Oh, we work wonderful together, because each guy got his own category. And so we don't step on each other's toes as far as material. And we know exactly what each other does. So we won't go there. Sometimes we overlap in our own shows. But when it comes to that, we know exactly what each guy does. So we work really well together offstage. We have good fun in the dressing room. Mel Kabang is, oh, my goodness. That guy with his rubber face. Mel is the oldest of all of us. I come second. And then comes Andy. And here is with Andy, I think, same age. And then the baby, which is Augie. And so Augie did a show for his Mayday or whatever it was when he was in fourth grade or something. And he dressed up as Abdulif Alad. And so he got great laughs. And so that was a big hit back then. That's how old I am, my god. So he always talks to me about that and other stuff. And that's nice, too. It's amazing, yeah. It's amazing that you guys are all doing that together. And then there's another big show coming up this March 2. That's correct. All right, now, Frank, obviously you've achieved great success and you've sustained success. And I talk a lot about that in my book Beyond the Lines. And you created a student enrichment program. And tell me about the impact that when you're there. You mentioned earlier about that Maui school and performing in front of them. But through countless students through these decades, I mean, what is the impact that you're seeing through all these years with the kids? Well, the only thing that I can see if they remember what I did was my brother put when the computer came out and he put a program on it. And so we give the kids a choice to go on and take a test. And through the years, the tests have been very good. I just do multiple choice. And the teachers say, come back or not. A lot of them, sometimes 100%, whoever goes on. It's only sampling because not everybody got the time or want to, got other things to do. But I get about 85% positive. The kids know the songs and the message. And that helps me that I'm doing the right thing. But it also makes me remember that the next time I go, I've got to develop the message and keep developing it. Because they've seen me, all these young from kindergarten. And the songs have to be updated. Except for kindergarten to third grade, I still do peanut butter and jelly and going on a butahat. In fact, I have a story about it. Somebody that I was taking my blood for a blood test at Strop. And so this 26-year-old, I found out after what he told me, he said, Uncle Frank, nice to meet you. What is your name? And I said, you just said Uncle Frank. He said, formally. And I said, I'm Frank Wilcox, Nene, my junior. He said, thank you very much. So he says, OK, do we get a good vein? And so he sticks the needle in. And as the blood is going out into the vial, he starts singing peanut, peanut butter, jelly. And I cracked that. I said, what is this? I never expected this. He said, Kona, why not? Elementary school. And I was in first grade. I said, you remember that? He said, yeah, and you visited after that, too. And he said, thank you. And I said, well, thank you for letting me know. So that was out of nowhere. Another time, I stopped at the stop sign and had these construction workers doing something in the road. And they spotted me. So they all looked, and one of them said, going on a butahat. And then the other three chimed in. So you have these three blalas with the construction hat on, singing, going on a butahat. I mean, you have to be there. So through the years, it's gotten even more and more. There are more waiters and stewardesses. I was on an island there. And the stewardess in the front, I was sitting in front, and she was facing me. And she was looking at me and kept looking at me. And when the plane started ticking off, she started going, going on a butahat. Man, blows my mind. But it's nice. If they only remember that, well, at least they remember that. Well, I remember when I was at Damien, and you came to perform for all of us at school, and you're so inspirational and made us all feel so happy. And I want to ask you, Frank, about your definition of success. What do you think success means? Three things. The first is that you never pass up the opportunity to learn more. And whatever ability you have, you make the best use of it. And I conclude that because of my hard time memorizing. But you just do the best you can and get it done. Secondly is to take care of your health. And it's so easy for you to not think about the future. Just what you're doing now, you feel great. I got diabetes from overweight. I was fine, 20 and 30 years old. I was great. After work, we'd eat, oh, whatever, beef stew and rice. And three scoops of ice cream with half a pie.  But then you get older, and not all humans, but a lot of them start putting on the weight and the body slows down, doesn't burn the food fast enough. So Dr. Tommy, you better watch out. You're going to get diabetes.  I said, hey, we have diabetes in the family. He said, no. Because I thought diabetes is inherited. I didn't know that you could actually get it from being overweight and older. And so about 350, when I was like 50, is when I got it. And the doctor said, I told you, and you never listened. I said, oh, I didn't know about type 2, and you know that. And he said, that's why. Type 1, you inherit. Type 2, you don't listen. And so I had to go lose 100 pounds. I did. Now I'm off the medication about two years ago. And I thank my doctor for his encouragement and so forth. And so that's why I say to everybody, please be cautious when you're young. And just take care of your health and food and vegetables and whatever it takes. And smoking and all that stuff is not good. And so health is second. Because in order to progress in life, you need to have your health. You need that. And diseases that are out there, you need a strong heart and lungs so that they can fight it. So you can live to be 80 years old and still go to the senior center and boogie. And boogie. Yeah. And then the third thing is to have aloha. To always think about other people. Like when the light, the arrow going to turn, and you're in a line, and you're the first person, and the arrow only lasts for a short time. You know that. And get plenty of people, got things to do. And you start off real slow and make the turn. And only two cars go through. I always think about the people behind me when I drive as well. And people that are just around, talk nice, and get to know them. I tell the kids that at school, I said, always treat people good, all your classmates, schoolmates. Because you're learning how to realize that people think differently. And when you have disagreements, you debate. But you don't get to the point where you don't talk to them for five years. That kind of thing, which is typical human. But I try to this for myself, always try to just get along with everyone. I get challenges. I get people that are angry with me and stuff. But I don't let them turn me angry. I love those insights from you, Frank. Thank you. You know, again, you're such an inspiration to countless people in Hawaii and including me. And I really want to thank you for your time and being on Beyond the Lines today. Sure. And hope to do a sequel episode with you in the future. OK. Very good. Thank you, Frank. Thank you for having me. Aloha. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit my website, rusticamori.com. And my book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all Costco stores in Hawaii. I hope that this show inspires you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Aloha.


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Tuesday, February 20th. I hope everybody's having a great beginning of your week. I guess today is the beginning of the week, because yesterday was a holiday, technically, because then today didn't feel like that. I was working, but there were a lot of people going to the beach, and traffic was more weekend-y traffic than normal traffic. All right, tomorrow and Thursday, there will be no shows. I thought I could squeeze in a show tomorrow, but it's not going to work out. I'm doing a podcast for The Washington Times, and then I've got a flight. I'm going to Miami, and then I'll be traveling Thursday. Friday, I'll be back. I'm hoping to do a show Friday night, but we will see. That is my hope. So next show will be Friday night. Of course, no, that's not true. Scrap that. Next show is tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. Tonight, 7 p.m. East Coast time. Topic to be determined, but no news roundups. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, no news roundups, more news roundups this week. All right, I guess maybe Friday afternoon. We'll see, but none regular time. All right, let's jump in here and start. Yeah, so a lot of pushback on my comment yesterday about the Trump civil fraud case brought by the state of New York against Trump for defrauding his banks and insurance companies. The argument being that there has to be a victim. There have to be losses. And the other argument is that this is a law that's never been used like this. Now, I am not a legal expert, but there's some legal experts I trust. I went to them and found a couple of articles that I think are pretty useful. First thing is, there are a lot of laws that are legitimate laws where there is no actual loss. There is no, we'll get to whether there's a victim or not in a minute where there's no actual loss. Certainly if somebody is driving drunk, the police should be able to stop them and find them. And yet they didn't hurt anybody, but they do pose a risk. Lying to your bank about your net worth, lying to your insurance company about whether you face any litigation or not, those are potential losses. They can generate real losses to the bank because they would change their analysis if they had access to the truth. Now, in some of the cases, it's true that the bank can do its own appraisal and things like that, but it sounds like in many of these cases, the banks trust a Trump. One of them is where Trump claimed, I guess, the penthouse was 30,000 square feet, and it's only 10,000 square feet. It seems like the bank would have sent an appraiser in, but they didn't. Or at least, yeah, it seems like they didn't, and they accepted his statement. His statement's about his net worth. I mean, some of his loans required him to maintain the net worth of over $2 billion, $2.4 billion. I don't think it's, I mean, there's some reason to believe that his net worth has never been $2.4 billion. So is the lie there no big deal, or could there be circumstances in which the lie would actually cause the bank or the insurance company to take a loss? I think it's clear that it could take a loss. Here's some of the examples. I mean, a testimony from Zurich Insurance that basically he said, because the Trump Organization is a private company, not a publicly traded company, there's very little that underwriters, this is insurance underwriters, can do to learn about the financial condition of the company, other than to rely on the financial statements that the client provides to them. And if those financial statements are false, the underwriting is not going to be right. The representative of Zurich Insurance, according to the judge, at least, credibly testified because of that, it's important to know that our customers are being truthful to us if they're not giving us true information or accurate information that greatly impacts our underwriting decisions. Another example with the Goddard directors and officers insurance, that the Trump Organization represented that there was no pending litigation or notices or communications that could lead to litigation and implicate the directors and officers' liability insurance policy, which he viewed as in positive light and they forpriced it. But it turns out there was a pending investigation that the Trump Organization knew it. And as soon as that was revealed, as soon as the insurer could, they raised the price fivefold, fivefold. So it's just not true, just not true, that this is victimless in the sense that this behavior poses a real risk and it's fraud. It's fraudulent. It involves providing false information, false information. Or you can take the fact that banks and insurance companies and here people are saying there's no loss. Well, of course, there's a loss. There's a loss of what the interest rate would have been, what the down payment that would have been required would have been. There's the potential massive loss involved in the fact that this was mispriced. It was mispriced because the information provided was false. If you provide false information, if I provide you with false information about a diamond ring and you pay me a million dollars and you walk away and I walk away and it turns out it's not the diamond ring that I presented it as. I literally gave you fake information in writing. Then you could argue there's no loss. You have the ring, you're happy with the ring. I've got the money, I'm happy with the money. But fraud occurred here. You could have paid half. So you could say buy and be aware. But no, buy and not be aware. If fraud is committed, the job of the government is to protect us from fraud.  But it's fraud. Now, there's no question this whole litigation was brought under ridiculous and suspicious context. But the facts are the facts. Experts estimated that the interest and down payments or really the lower interest rates that Trump got on these loans because he lied to them, to the banks, generated a saving for Trump of $168 million. So that's part of the basis for this. So even though he was able to repay the loans, the banks didn't get the right risk-adjusted return.  Pretty straightforward. Now, the law in New York is pretty clear that this is legit. Now, whether the size of the penalties makes sense or not, I don't know. They seem pretty high. You know, we'll see an appeal. We'll see an appeal how this is done. But I will note that this law in New York has been used in a number of other cases where similar types of penalties, similar ways of approaching penalties have been used. So it's not just they're going after Trump. It's just a law that's being used only for Trump. But they're using it on other businesses. It'll be interesting what happens on appeal and whether a court of appeal finds either the verdict is wrong, which I think would be difficult given that it's finding a fact. And then whether the size and the methodology for determining if it is wrong. And as we said, this could go to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the Supreme Court has taken cases where the claim is that the penalty was too harsh. So that is a possibility. All right. People will still disagree. But I have a feeling that agreement and disagreement in these cases is based far more on politics than it is in your political position, far more than it is on facts, reality, objectivity, what's actually going on in the law. And it could be that the law that the New York law is flawed, again, not a legal expert. It could be that the New York law should be different, should be applied different, should be, you know, I'll leave that to objective legal experts, not just commentators who have no legal expertise, but claim that they do because it's Trump and the Democrats. And therefore, it must be one way, not the other. Insider trading, God. Insider trading is one of the most corrupt, non-objective, distorted, perverse laws on the books. It's up there with antitrust. And in many respects, insider trading is worse in its non-objectivity. And that's saying a lot, given that antitrust is like a record holder in terms of non-objectivity.  Congress never defined what insider trading actually means. It basically has left it up to regulators and courts across the country to decide what qualifies. And most of the time, these cases go on appeal. And ultimately, it is the appellate courts that determine what is insider trading and what is not insider trading. They rein in the SEC or they unleash the SEC, depending on the judges, depending on the appellate court, depending on the period. Anyway, we have a new attempt to expand the scope of insider trading. Now, we don't have the time to go into all the different articulations of insider trading and all the ways it's applied. But think of it as traditionally being applied to. If you have non-public information, information that's not being disclosed publicly about company X, whether you work at that company or not, the or not is one of these expansions of insider trading. But let's say the simplest case is you work at the company and you know because you're working on it that you're going to about to come up with a new drug or you're about to be bought out by another company and you're about something is going to happen that will increase, dramatically increase or decrease the value of your stock. You go in the market, you buy and sell based on that information. That's as clear cut as it gets as infight information. What if you don't, because it's a and part of the reasoning there is it's a violation of your fiduciary duty to your shareholders. Again, agree or disagree. Violation of your fiduciary duty to shareholders. Assuming shareholders don't want you trading an insider information, I could make the argument that shareholders want you to trade on insider information and actually benefits them over the long run but we'll put that aside. But what if you don't work for the company and don't have fiduciary duty? Well, it turns out it doesn't matter. Even if you don't work for a company this is cases going back to the 1980s. Let's say you're a printer, you're printing financial statements for a company, you observe some news that the rest of the world is only because you're printing it. The rest of the world is only going to discover. Later on, you're printing. Company does not have any contractual obligation, hasn't signed a contract of confidentiality for some reason with this company. You trade on that information the way the courts have interpreted it, you are guilty of insider trading. I mean, that is an absurd ridiculous application of the law but there you go, that's the way it is.  Well, now there's a new application, there's a new way in which this is going to be applied. A biotech executive, Matthew Panawat, Matthew Panawat bought options of another drug company, another biotech company, not his own, not his own biotech company and he made $120,000 off of this. And even though it's not shares or options on his company and even though he had no insider information, no new information about the company's stock that he bought, the options that he bought, in spite of all that, the SEC is accusing him of insider information. Now, why did he buy the options? He bought the options because he came to the conclusion, it turned out that his company was gonna sell to Pfizer and he came to the conclusion that if his company was gonna sell to Pfizer, this other company which is a competitor's valuation would go up, its stock price would go up. You know, you could expect because if Pfizer buys, my company shareholders of this other company might expect somebody else to buy their company and they will drive the stock price up. That is now deemed insider trading. Note, the insider information had nothing to do with the company who shares he bought. He extrapolated that it had something to do with it but it wasn't direct. I mean, what if I as an investor learn that company X is gonna be bought by Pfizer, let's say before anybody else? So I can't trade on that knowledge because that would be insider trading. But I conclude this is good for biotech stocks generally and I buy three or four biotech stocks and indeed it proves that it is good for biotech stocks and they shares go up and I make money. Does that count as insider trading even though I didn't trade the particular stock and I have noticed, I have no fiduciary duty here that I have violated. I don't owe anybody anything. So this is a completely new interpretation. Panawat's lawyers tried to get it dismissed off the hand by a US district judge, pushed aside the objections and cleared the case to go to trial and it's going to go to trial. And if this passes, that is, if this counts as insider trading, first of all it would be huge injustice towards Panawat. But more than that, it would create massive new uncertainty about what you can do and what you can't do. On what information can you trade and what information you can't trade? It is a disastrous for traders, investors, hedge funds, all kinds of traders who trade on information they have extrapolated on new companies, new entities on industries and so on. But this is what happens when Congress writes non-objective laws and then it leaves it up to SEC and SEC, depending on who runs it is going to be more widely, it will interpret a law in a more white sense or a more narrow sense. So now we don't have a rule of laws, which is the very nature of the rule of law that is laws dictate what you can and cannot do. We now have a rule of laws as interpreted by men, i.e. the people at the SEC, whose politics shift, whose ideas shift and therefore the laws are constantly shifting and the rule of law, the rule of law and any kind of objective interpretation of laws is out the window, goes out the window. Equal protection before the law goes out the window. And this is of course primarily on Congress. If you're going to write laws, write them in a way that is clear cut in terms of interpretation or even better, repeal inside of trading laws, they don't make any sense, they're not rational. If people don't like inside of trading, then they can basically demand that their companies have company white policies that exclude inside information. Exchanges can restrict the ability of companies that list on those exchanges to engage in inside information. Markets in other words, can deal with whatever issues, if there are any real issues regarding inside information, can deal with those issues without government coming in with ridiculous rules, the distort trading, distort the allocation of capital and make prices in the marketplace less informative. Less informative and less markets broadly speaking, less efficient. So if you want to go after laws and you want to go after particularly types of laws, this is a great one but I guess nobody's interested, nobody's interested. Either way, because Trump's not evolved. If Trump had been accused of inside of trading and inside of trading would be bad and everybody on the left would say, no, inside of trading is great and everybody would be interested in it, but it's not Trump, it's just some Joe Schmo executive in a biotech company. I mean, if he loses this case, not only does he lose a lot of money, he has to return the 130,000 he made, he probably get fined triple that and then on top of that, he, on top of that he then has to, he's banned from working on Wall Street, his career suffers hugely from it. All right, let's see. Yeah, check in the military. One of the interesting, of course, links between technology and the military is that the military very much, military contracts were very crucial to the early development of tech. The microprocessor was the first real mass, large numbers of microprocessors that really made the production of large numbers of microprocessors and the investment in microprocessors make sense and accelerated development. We use for guided missiles, towards the end of the Vietnam War. There were uses before that, but again, the kind of the large scale purchases were from the Department of Defense. And of course, as the world gets more belligerent, as we see, have seemed to have more enemies, the threatened military force, I mean, just five, six years ago, people thought the world was pretty calm and pretty safe and nobody considered a war with China or very few people did. Very few people considered a war with Russia and even Iran seems somewhat pacified. And but now the world seems like it's on the brink any day now of kind of a World War III. And one of the great worries I think many Americans have is America is the American military up to the task, particularly if it has to face both Russian and Chinese aggression or Iranian and Chinese or Iranian and Russian or any combination of those three countries. Not to mention, you could add into their North Korea which is constantly threatening belligerence. And one of the edges the United States has is tech. It's its ability to do political technology. And what you're seeing, I think it has seen again from the birth of Silicon Valley, but more so I think now than maybe ever is more and more tech companies trying to get a piece of the massive, massive military budget and provide real solutions to challenges that the US military faces. SpaceX has signed numerous contracts with the government for secretive satellite projects and other projects that are secrets. I don't know what they are, but they've received lots of money from the government as a consequence. And recent hoards has recently started doing events, the last few years doing events in Washington DC primarily targeted towards the Pentagon, towards the Department of Defense bringing together a number of its new tech companies that might whose technology could have significant defense application. That is this idea that the defense could again accelerate certain applications. Certainly defense right now is accelerating the ability of SpaceX to launch rockets and to get us ultimately to Mars. It's enhancing significantly spaces ex-availability of capital to invest heavily in its ability to build and to grow. But the same I think is going, you're gonna see happening in a variety of different other sectors. It is interesting that Silicon Valley that is usually associated with the left is usually associated with, oh no, we hate the military. It's very interesting, both large companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, but also smaller companies.  I don't trust those satellites. I don't completely trust a lot of these things in terms of their ability to survey the American people. And I don't get a sense anybody is Washington really is watching us. I think they're pretty much dedicated to the surveillance. But a lot of these companies are outward focused. That is a lot of them are, Plantier of course, Teal's company, Plantier, is a massive technology is used extensively by the US military. And you're gonna see, and I think it's success, Plantier's success and others' success is now spurring a whole new generation of companies trying to get defense department spending. And Andreessen Horowitz, which is a big venture capital fund, which is one of its main partners is Mark Andreessen, who is this pro-growth, pro-build, build, build, which is great, is very much engaged with Washington DC in trying to get particular companies, at least the hearing, so that in front of the defense procurement, decision makers now know defense procurement is unbelievably expensive and unbelievably inefficient, more geared towards dealing with Lockheed Martin and Boeing than it is to dealing with startups. The Pentagon is trying to make changes, is trying to create a different process for startups. And let's hope they succeed, because at the end of the day, if the US military can withstand the challenges on a global scale that present itself to the US, whether it's again from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, it's gonna rely on advanced technologies in order to do that. It's gonna rely on our ability to deploy technologies that the Chinese and the Russians just cannot match. They cannot match. United States to win, our drones need to be better. China can make more drones than us. Ours need to be substantially better. Ability in Anachtama and the sky needs to be substantially better than their ability to do so, and all that requires tech. All that requires advancement in technology. If they're gonna jam GPS, we better have a technological alternative to GPS. If they're gonna jam whatever, we better have a technological alternative to these different things. So I'm glad to see Silicon Valley not being pacifist leftist or pacifist libertarian or however you wanna call it, and willing to go out there and actually invest in companies that are building weapon systems, that are building tech-driven weapon systems, tech means by which to help defend this country. Let's hope they continue to do that, and even Elon Musk is, of course, Peter Thiel has been at the forefront of this, and now Elon Musk is too with SpaceX. Talking about tech, an interesting article. The Chinese are very frustrated by the fact that, what's saying, I've got the wrong article open. Chinese are very frustrated by the fact that they are lagging the United States in tech, that they're just not keeping up in terms of innovation, in terms of tech development with Americans, and in order to remedy this situation, the Chinese Communist Party, Xi's Chinese Communist Party, has decided to take more direct control in steering the development of tech. So the Chinese government's conclusion from the slowdown in tech innovation in China that has resulted from increased government intervention in the Chinese economy over the last five, six, seven, eight years is drumroll. I need to have that button with drumroll. More Chinese government intervention into the economy, more Chinese control, more central planning. The Chinese party now is going to define the goals of tech, it's going to allocate, it's going to allocate capital to tech, it's going to basically choose winners and losers. Note the completely different direction that the two countries are taking. The United States government needs tech, but it allows basically the marketplace, venture capital, funds that are going to make money, driven by the profit motive, entrepreneurs driven by profit, interest, love for what they do. They're going to allow the market to drive economic and technological development. They will buy what they think is workable for their use, for their needs. They're not going to directly fund it, they're not going to come up with the ideas. China, on the other hand, is centralizing all of that and it's predictable exactly what will happen. The more they centralize, the less innovation, the less innovation, the more they'll try to centralize and they'll get less and less and less innovation. This is why long-term, if we can think long-term, then China has less and less and less of a threat to the United States because it's going to innovate less and less and less. The main threat I think ultimately in the long run, China and Russia post the United States is a nuclear threat or just a harassment threat because of our own weak political leadership. But in terms of war, a real confrontation, there's really no match and that no match is going to get the gap between the United States and China and Russia is only going to get larger as the United States stays marginally free and Russia and China become less and less free. Remember, the source of innovation is the mind. The mind to function properly needs freedom. The less freedom you have in China to innovate, the more it's guided from above by central planning, the less innovation there will be, the less breakthrough there will be, the less tech there will be, the less progress there will be, the less wealth creation there will be. China is clearly on the path away from floating with capitalism and back to a centralized communist slash fascist type regime. And this is to a large extent the consequence of the rise and the dominance really of Xi Jinping who is the party and who has already gone after Alibaba and group and created massive disincentives for intent and intent-cent, of course, a massive disincentives for those companies, for entrepreneurs and innovation that happen in China. It's the more control you'll see here, the more you will see Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese engineers, Chinese scientists try to leave China. And again, one of the great tragedies, one of the great tragedies of 21st century United States of America is that we don't grab these opportunities, allow for these people to enter the United States freely, provide them with work visas as quickly and as effectively as we can, and get them, get them working, innovating, producing in the United States. Let's encourage and incentivize a brain drain out of China. Now that would be really cool. That's kind of immigration policy I could give behind. All right, finally, NIMBY, not in my backyard. NIMBY's been applied to a lot of different things. It's applied to housing, none of those multifamily homes next to my home. No skyscrapers blocking my view. And all over the country, primarily San Francisco, but really all over the country, NIMBY has dramatically reduced the amount of available housing construction over the last 15 years hasn't even come even close to matching the demand for housing. That is why house prices have risen so much over this period. And most of that is a consequence of zoning which is manipulated by NIMBY backyard. This is also true of why we don't have a more electrical production or more what do you call it refineries to refine fossil fuels. It's because you can't build them anyway in the United States because of not in my backyard. That is people rallying their communities. I mean, a lot of the lack of building in the United States, a lot of the lack of building of the infrastructure that our economy needs. A lot of that building, lack of building has to do with environmental regulations and building codes and all kinds of stuff like that. And that has to be fought and eliminated but really probably the biggest constraint on ambitious building projects is the not in bad backyard. I won't even call them movement, just attitude. There's so many people in this country here. You can build over there, just not near me. I want to grow this country. I want it to be successful. I want great jobs. I want a fantastic economy but you're not building that here. The latest victim of this are warehouse developers. With e-commerce, the demand for warehouses is grown dramatically and warehouses can all be centralized in one location. What you want is warehouses over the country so that you can minimize delivery times. Consumers are demanding shorter and shorter delivery times. I mean, there's some places where Amazon will deliver the same day. You buy it online, a wife's the same day. And that is only possible if you have local warehouses all over the United States. And that is true of an ever-growing e-commerce world. And yet, not in my backyard, groups everywhere are preventing this from happening. Why? What is it about warehouses? Well, traffic might increase and trucks, you'll have more trucks on the road, that's no good. And a variety of other things that people are concerned about in terms of quality of life, standard of living. And therefore, they take it on upon themselves to lobby the government, to block traffic, to motivate people, to rally democracy, to fight this and to stop development. It's not how the country was built. This is not how we get stuff built. This is exactly the opposite. This is how you stagnate. This is how you go backwards. This is how you land up with zero growth stagnation and where you just can't build anything in this country anymore. One of the big differences with China and the United States looking at the last 40 years is that, you know, not for the right reasons, but China will build whatever needs to build. If a Chinese entrepreneur needs to build stuff, gets built. You know, as long as you don't step on any of the party members, China is a build, build, build mentality which the United States had, certainly until probably the 1960s, until the environmentalist movement really got going. And now it's impossible to build in this country. This is why other countries have amazing, fast, high-speed trains. In the United States, you can't build a high-speed train. It's why other countries build housing to capacity. Real estate prices don't go up there because supply matches demand. In the United States, we can't build houses because you can't build because of environmental pollin' between zoning and the not-in-my-backyard mentality that is so common among Americans. Again, you wanna fight something. Let's fight that, fight inside of training laws, fight not-in-my-backyard. Plenty to do. There's plenty to fight for and against. All right. Oh, Michael, I can't access stuff that you just put in the chat. Let me see if I can find it. My comment in the regular chat below, that's not enough optimism reason and love of life to hold it back. I don't know what you're referring to. All right, I assume it's this. Michael says, there's not enough optimism, reason and love of life to hold it back. To hold what back? There's not enough optimism, reason, and love of life to hold it back. Try again, Michael. I'm not sure why Super Chat wouldn't accept that or is there something else that I'm missing? Maybe I'm missing something. Come on. Yeah, I can't see it. Can't see it. Try again, Michael. Maybe put it in the chat again so I understand it better. All right, related to NIMBY, Adam says, NIMBYs have often become bananas. Built, absolutely, built absolutely nothing anywhere near anything, especially the warehouse industry. So bananas is built absolutely nothing anywhere near anything. Banana, I'm not sure what the S is for, but I guess especially. But yeah, I mean, that's the case and think about it, that you wanna build stuff close to stuff because that's where it has the greatest value. If you build electric generating plants close to where the electricity is gonna be used, you lose less electricity in the transmission. But if you're not allowed to, and you can only build the electric generation plant far away, then you lose a huge amount of the energy in the transmission lines. What does that do? It raises the cost. So the same people who are not in my backyard also land up paying much higher electricity bills. James, thank you for the $50, James, really, really appreciate that. James says, consistently reducing political and cultural discussion to man's independent mind, quickly leads to the recognition of the objectivism as the only philosophy that has correct explanation of current and universal human experiences. Yes, I mean, I think that's right. It's, you know, our challenge is to make people realize that, to make people realize what I think we already know. And that is the power of these ideas to explain what is actually happening in your own life and in the world around you. Objectivism is this amazing, powerful, efficacious tool, explanatory tool for explaining the world in which we live. Clark says, do leftists only want to apply altruism to somebody else, altruism external morality that does not require their own sacrifice? Are the philosopher kings allowed to be egoistic? Well, they would say, and of course this is a rationalization, but they would say, no, no, they're sacrificing for the common good by dedicating their life to be philosopher kings. They don't really want the job. The job is super stressful. It's really, really hard to tell everybody else what to do.  They are sacrificing for you. It's also true that people do sacrifice themselves all the time, all the time. They sacrifice themselves for God, for her cause, for, you know, for conforming with the rest of the world. So there is a self-sacrificial element to altruism constantly. It dominates. All right, reminder that we fund the show, you fund the show. A few contributions from people like you, listeners like you, if you're listening not live, you can do an applause in YouTube or if you're on a podcast, which most of you, most of you in the end of the day are, you can support the show on PayPal or on Subscribestar. So, or on uranbookshow.com slash member, membership and, membership and you can then just use PayPal or on Patreon, use your credit card to support the show on a monthly basis. Best way to support the show is that way. But since we're here and we've got a hundred people watching live, please consider supporting the show right now, live. You can do a sticker as Jonathan Honing did to start us off and Stephen Hopper did and James Adams did, thank you guys. As did Mary Alene. Thank you Mary Alene, thank you all of you guys. So one way is to do through a sticker, other way is to do through a question and that also of course helps shape the show. I've got a few more questions left but Adam has just come in with a hundred dollars. Thank you Adam, really, really appreciate it. And he says, Adam says I have seen single warehouses, bridge school budget deficits, improve infrastructure, provide jobs for HVAC, HVAC is a conditioning right and electrical engineers, architects, concretes, steel companies, drivers, HR roofing, landscaping, snow plowing, et cetera and struggling talents still, still the opposite. I know, I mean, great jobs, all kinds of jobs. People just think, oh, it's just people moving boxes. A lot, if it's an Amazon warehouse, a lot of those boxes moved by robots today. A lot of the jobs are engineering jobs. A lot of the jobs are infrastructure jobs. A lot of the jobs are construction jobs that build the warehouses, for example. But then there's a lot of jobs for drivers. Drivers make a lot of money, truck drivers, quite a bit of money. But then there's all business around it which requires managers and HR people and all the rest of it. And then there's all industries that rise up around the warehouse. And then people move into the neighborhood because the jobs around the warehouse that creates work for an income for restaurants and everything else. Economic activity produces economic activity. It's a virtuous cycle. It's win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win. Jason adds hotels, absolute hotels. I mean, it's interesting that there are certain places around the country that are basically logistical hubs, cities that basically serve as warehouse depots. You can see this if you drive on the main highways, primarily east-west, that every few hundred miles you will find Ebaysquare Town, a city devoted to this, warehousing, infrastructure, trucking. You see a lot of this in Arkansas. Arkansas is well placed in the middle of the country. And it also is a place where Walmart is. So it's a great place. It's also where a lot of trucking companies are based because it's right on the main highway, east-west. And it's a hub. It's become a hub. And I've talked about this many times, Northeast Arkansas, where you have all these trucking companies and you also have Walmart, the headquarters of Walmart. And you also have just a logistical hub of warehouses and stuff. Massively dynamic, huge economic growth. Adam also says the warehouse workers go for minimal waste of $20 an hour and benefits in good environment. These are modern facilities. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like Adam knows something about this topic, but absolutely, absolutely. I mean, this is the thing. Again, it's win, win, win, win, win. Economic growth, faster economic growth. And almost everybody wins from it. The people are very narrow and they view the world as zero sum. They view other people's gain as their losses. They view, yeah, there's the inconvenience of trucks on the road, but hey, there are more restaurants in town now. Hey, there are more jobs available for people. The stuff I order from Amazon arrives like that. It's not amazing. So that is, that is the sad state of NIMBY, not in my backyard in America. All right, Phil asked the Puppa Wall of government, oops, Puppa Wall of government is to eradicate the initiation of physical force. Just as lying isn't force and shouldn't be illegal, far, lying should be legal in an objective world. Do you agree? No, I don't agree. Lying isn't illegal, but it is, lying isn't illegal. But in a business context, lying, which is meant to gain a value from somebody else that they wouldn't give you otherwise, is absolutely illegal. That is force. It is getting somebody to give you something, to give you something that you wouldn't have got from them otherwise. And that is force. There's, you know, I'm not a, you'll have to ask the legal philosophers exactly how they define it, but fraud is a form of force. Fraud is definitely a violation of rights.  So, you know, lying, if it is there to attain a value, sure is illegal, absolutely. Fraud in every society is illegal, and absolutely should be. It's, there's a, there's a realm in which you can say, by a beware, particularly if I'm not making any claim about a product, but if I'm making a claim about a product, and I'm lying about it, then absolutely you have recourse against me. And the government needs to step in, and protect people from lying. Lying is a form of force. Lying is a form of, you know, violation of rights. If the lie is aimed at gaining a value. By the way, this is the position I ran had. This is the position Linda Peacock has. This is the position I'm in. This is the position Linda Peacock has. This is the position that every legal objectivist legal scholar I know has had. Fraud is a form of force. I think Tara Smith has an article on this. When is what appears to be speech, when is that force? And lying is, you know, lying in a commercial context is an example of that. Rob, in the UK there's been a lot of housing development that's been opened within the last 5 to 10 years after many years of stagnation. However, prices still keep rising. How long does it take for housing prices to decrease? Can they decrease? Yeah, of course they can. I mean the reason is that as much housing development as there has been in the UK, it's nothing as compared to the increased demand. The reality is that the UK over the last few years has opened up its borders and had more immigrants than ever. Immigrants increased demand for housing. And so not only do you have just the growth of housing that occurs for people having killed children or some housing becoming so dilapidated that you can't live in it and therefore you're moving into something that is habitable. But you also have a very large demand for housing that's coming in from the outside. The UK was already in a hole where there was a lot more demand or a lot more desire to move houses. A lot of old homes, a lot of people wanted to buy homes that couldn't particularly in the London area. And all the housing that's been built so far has done some. So prices are not rising as fast but you need a lot more housing. One of the problems in London is that you can't build up very high. You don't have skyscrapers, housing. And most of the housing that is being built is being built fairly far out of town. But what London needs is a lot more housing development. As much as there's been, there needs to be a lot more. I mean it's basic economics. At some point, if you have enough supply, prices will start coming down. But will that ever happen? I don't know. Because I don't know if that'll increase the supply enough. I don't know if they'll allow enough building to make up the gap. Harper Campbell, it could be that Biden wins again. He will be a bumbling dementia patient and get nothing done but will teach the GOP the Trump style is not the way to go. I hope so. But also, it's not clear that he won't get anything done. That is, he's got a team around him that is competent in getting what they want done. They've got a lot done even with the Republican Congress. So the only way to guarantee that he won't get anything done is to get the Republicans a majority in the House of Senate or ideally in both, if Biden wins. If Biden loses, if Trump wins, you want the Democrats to have at least one of the houses. You don't want one party to have everything. It always turns bad, always. Never turned out well. Ann Milka says, let's accuse Trump of insider trading and then mobilize MAGA tards to get insider trading laws repealed. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the only way it'll happen. Clark says, everyone hates a winner. Yeah, particularly when they repeatedly win, right? That's altruism. Raphael says, what's your opinion about libel laws? Would they exist in an objective society and how to protect freedom of speech under these conditions? Yes, they would, but they would have to be strictly... I mean, the standards for libel would have to be pretty high. They are clearly too low, for example, I think. They're too low in the UK. And I think the United States probably has decent libel laws. They don't apply to public figures because you have to be able to criticize them. But they apply everywhere else and they're reasonably used. You don't hear of these outrageous cases because if I criticize you, you can't sue me to libel. It has to be wanton, reckless. It has to be you have to lose something as a consequence. So they have to be real consequences to what you say. But yes, I think they're completely objective, they're completely legit. Again, you don't have a right to get something to cause other people a material harm as a consequence of your speech. Material harm being economic harm, for example, economic harm. You don't have a right, indeed, to yell, fire in a crowded theater for a variety of reasons, partially because the theater is owned by somebody else and they don't want you to yell, fire. Assuming there's no fire, of course. And you don't have a right to get people to do stuff by lying to them that clearly is against everything they would do if they knew the truth. So exactly where the line is, this is what you need legal philosophy for. This is what you need philosophers of law to help define that line. It can't just be left up to whatever. So it's tricky. There are a lot of definitions around these issues. Speech, property rights are tricky definitions. And that's why you need, dare I say it, experts. You need elites. You need people who know the field and can articulate, you know, and decide and articulate a standard. At 8am, did you see Norman Ficklstein get shouted down and bullied by Rabbi Shmueli and Piers Morgan? So cathartic. No, I did not. I'll have to look that up. It sounds like fun. Frank says, Beethoven wrote Turkish March for Ruins of Athens by August Kutsbu, murdered by a student nationalist for speaking out against anti-Semitism. Beethoven was quite intellectual. He was really a composer of the Enlightenment. He believes in human liberty and human freedom. He was an impressive, really, really incredibly impressive person. He was somewhat malevolent, but his music certainly has aspects of that. But he is without a question a very intellectual person and somebody who had the right ideas about freedom and liberty. If you listen to his opera, his opera is very much about freedom, liberty, you know, wrongful incarceration, you know, justice, the meaning of justice. Proper, right? Do you think nimbyism has something to do with aging demographic? No. I mean, maybe somewhat, but you see it. Families do it.  It might be more prevalent with an aging demographic because as we get older, we care less about the future. Maybe, maybe. I mean, it would be interesting to have that as a hypothesis and go test it out and look at different towns, different cities, different places where they have this and look at the demographics of the different places and see is nimbyism more prevalent in older communities? I just don't know. It's an empirical question. But it makes sense as a hypothesis. All right. All right, guys. Thank you. Really appreciate the support. And I will see you tonight, 7 p.m. and a topic to be determined. Watch out for my channel. I'll announce it a little later. And yeah, I'll see you tonight. Thanks to all the supporters. Again, those who would like to support the show monthly, Patreon or uranbrookshow.com slash membership. And of course, if you're not a subscriber, please consider subscribing to the show. Just click the button below. And also like the show before you leave. Like the show before you leave. It really helps us with the algorithm. Thanks, everybody. See you tonight. Bye.


Anyone will stop for a free cookie, and that's just how Yacosca's single sailor Liberty Center was getting out the message about their programs and tours at Naval Hospital Yacosca. We're doing this twice a month. We're doing a little outreach for USNH Galley, promoting our monthly events and our future tours, so what's going on to our facility. The Liberty Center offers single sailors and geo-bachelors discounted tours and activities from MWR, outdoor recreation, and the Tickets and Tours Office, saving sailors an average of more than 50%. A lot of sailors, they don't have a place where they can go on their own to just hang out. It's great.  For single sailors looking for an opportunity to get off the base and have some fun, the Liberty Center is the place to go. Petty Officer Jacob Allison, Yacosca Naval Base, Japan.


That was the hardest race I have ever, ever done. This is the first running of the Val d'Aran 100 by UTMB. In true UTMB style, the start finish line is right next to a little quaint village church. It's very small, everything is compacted into a few meters. So registration and bib collection are literally 50 meters that way beyond the start finish line. There is an information point just here and then we have the presentation area just in front of me here. So this is pretty much the hub of all the activity here in Valleja, which is where the 100 mile race begins in less than seven hours. We're in 20 minutes before race starts and I'm just going to hand my bag into this. This is a bag that gets picked up at about 100k I think into the race. Just spare stuff and food and things like that that I might need. It's really, really hot so we've got to keep cool. I'm very nervous, really nervous I have to say. By UTMB, 10,000 meters of a cent, we've got 48 hours in which to do it. I'm really nervous about this one, wish me luck. So this is what you find in UTMB races, we're only four and a half kilometers in. There are so many people that we basically just come to a standstill and this happens at every UTMB race anywhere in the world. First checkpoint, two hours and six minutes. 800 meters climb, nearly 11 kilometers done.  Look at that. 14 kilometers in and this is the top of the first climb. Absolutely amazing. Before the sun goes down. So this is the top of mainland Spain, this mountain up here. Annetto. Annetto, thank you. Right, six hours and 37 minutes in. So this aid station is the third aid station that closes in about 35 minutes. So we're not too far inside the cut-off. We've got a very big long climb now. It's a heart-plastic, not a 20 to 1 in the morning. So I've got some soup and I'm going to get some bread and I won't spend too long in here now. So we've done about 38 kilometers. Just come up a huge climb from the last aid station and then down again. You probably can see the lights behind me and then we're going up again. That's about another nine kilometers to the next aid station. It's five to three in the morning so we've been going eight hours, 55 minutes, 38 kilometers. You can see the morning is just starting to break. We've got 50 kilometers in 11 hours, 55 minutes. So we're well over a quarter of the way there, almost a third of the way there. We don't feel too bad. It's starting to get a bit tired with these climbs now. We've had some really tough climbs. But we're getting there. The next aid station is about 7k away. We're at nearly 57 kilometers in. I've got pasta in my bowl. I've got black coffee. I think my quads got a bit trashed on the downhill into this aid station. This is Bossort. I think it's 55 kilometers officially. I've been here a while now actually. I came in. I've almost been here half an hour maybe. 13 hours, 29 minutes on the climb. So I better get going shortly. So we are here at Canayan, 64 kilometers. Although I've got 66 on my watch and we have 5.8 kilometers to the next aid station which is Toran. Here we have the monster climb of the whole run. 17 hours 55. We are now on the biggest climb of the race. It's a 1500 meter climb up the side of this mountain. Beautiful blue lake down there. We are 75 kilometers in. We are still slogging our way up this 1500 meter climb. We're in the last 300 meters of the climb now. Every time we come across a little stream we're all throwing ourselves under it to keep cool because it's really hot. So we are 20 hours and 24 minutes in to the Val d'Aran 100. We've covered 80 kilometers so we are halfway. That seems amazing that it's only halfway. But there we are. It's more of a long slow hike than a run this event. That's pretty fantastic, isn't it? And that's what's calming all the streams and waterfalls down the valley. So the previous shot you just saw was taken in the past between the mountains and that's where it is right up there. You see that V shape at the top? That's where we've just come down from. 95 kilometers and 25 hours, 11 minutes. My quads, I don't know if I've mentioned this, my quads are absolutely shot. So it's very difficult to run downhill. I can run on the flat and I can make my way slowly uphill but running downhill is really, really painful. And we've still got to 75, 65 kilometers to go. There we are. So the sun's definitely gone in. It'll be getting dark soon. I'm just making my way to the aid station with my drop bag in. I had 103 kilometers officially. I am very, very tired. I'm rapidly losing patience with this race. So hard. There's still a lot of work to do overnight for the second night and it looks like I'm going to be finishing between 44 and 48 hours. So this is where you get your drop bags and basically spend a bit of time getting changed, which I've done already. I've eaten, got changed, got changed overnight section. Although I'm not really ready, I'm absolutely shattered. Apparently over 300 people have withdrawn DNA. It is a beast of a race. That's where you get your food over there. There's hot pasta and things like that if you want it. And all the usual sandwiches and fruits and things. And then there's other areas where people are sitting as well. But so many people have withdrawn. So many people have left and I'm going to be on my own on the hills tonight, I think. Anyway, let's get going. I feel sick. I've had enough of this race still 20 miles to go. You can't deny that it's really beautiful though, but having been up for two nights now, stomach feeling a bit funny, feet hurting, legs completely trashed and the gnarliest course you've ever seen in your life. I am not feeling it at all.  And I thought this aid station was the one with the 1245 cutoff. It's actually the next one, but we do have three hours to get there and do it. So we've got a little climb as you can see on the map there and then 968 meters all the way down. Fingers crossed we can do it. Dye things we can do it and then dye. So good news, we made it to the final aid station which has a cutoff time. And we made it an hour to spare. So all we need to do now is have some food, try and sort out how I'm going to stay cool for the final section. There's one aid station in the middle of the final section. There's a big climb and then a little climb and then downhill into Vaia or the finish. So this has been standard fare for the past few days. Basically trudging up a mountain very slowly through a forest and then eventually you'll come out into open land and then the mountains or the higher mountains you'll see in the distance. We've basically done that about four times over the course of this race but this is the last one. Final climb and then it's down to the finish. Half kilometers to go. There's Vaia down there but my legs are absolute rock solid. I can hardly move. That was the hardest race I have ever, ever done. I'm just so glad to be back home. This is the end. It was the most difficult race of my life. With all the hard work I've done but I'm happy. Siapo!