The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #2466 - Francis Foster & Konstantin Kisin
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,083 words- 0:00 – 0:12
Intro
- SPSpeaker
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
- SPSpeaker
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- SPSpeaker
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat rock music]
- 0:12 – 1:52
Global instability and the fear of being dragged into a wider Middle East war
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay, so when we scheduled this, like, there was nothing happening.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[chuckles]
- JRJoe Rogan
The world was so peaceful.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Every time we're here-
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... something crazy is going on, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, uh, maybe we manifest it. I don't know.
- FFFrancis Foster
To be honest, it did s- 2026 did start with a bang.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Well, a lot of things, you know... It's just nothing seems stable everywhere. Everywhere in the world seems fucked right now. Like, this is the like, in all of my years, this seems the most unstable globally. Like, I never worried that the UK was gonna be, like, complete chaos-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... arresting 12,000 people for social media posts-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... and, uh, abandoning trial by jury, all that, all that shit. I never thought the Ukraine-Russia war would go on this long.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Never thought.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Never thought they would just continue bombing Gaza, and then what's happening now? They just sort of stop, and now they're talking about putting a resort there.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
What? Are you...
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, you hear that, and you go, "Are you fucking serious?"
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Tim Dillon has a g- I wanna, I wanna, I won't give the bit away. He has a fucking phenomenal bit about staying in that resort. [laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah, and you boys have been busy as well, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, and then, you know, I was gonna get to that.
- 1:52 – 3:35
Drone strikes, missing information, and the false-flag debate
- JRJoe Rogan
And then, you know, uh, I was listening to Tim Dillon's podcast today. Uh, he's got a great podcast with, uh, Ryan Grim and one other gentleman. But one of the things that they br- brought up was that some of these drone attacks, it doesn't even seem like they're from Iran, some of these drone attra- attacks on Gulf states.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like that, the, one of them, um... I, I don't wanna speak out of tune, 'cause, out of turn, 'cause I don't, I'm don't, I'm not exactly sure which ones they're talking about, but they're talking about one of them on, um, either it's a oil refinery, I think it is an oil refinery, that it doesn't seem like it came from Iran.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, okay-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Where did it come from?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a good question.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
One of their proxies?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a good question.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the, the fear is a false flag.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the fear.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm, mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, if you really wanted to get really scared of what we were dragged into-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... you're dragged into an ally that's not telling you the truth and is also doing some other stuff.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I'm not ne- even, uh, saying that that's the case, but a lot of people are assuming that that's what it is.
- FFFrancis Foster
But that's what happens when you have an absence of information.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- FFFrancis Foster
And so the moment you have an absence of information, there's a vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum. You need to have that vacuum filled, so that's where conspiracies naturally flourish, because-
- JRJoe Rogan
100%
- FFFrancis Foster
... because if people don't have information, then they're going to basically theorize.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- FFFrancis Foster
And part of people theorizing is conspiracies are gonna start flourishing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think they were basing it on the, where the drone came from. Like, let's see if we can find some information on that, Jamie.
- SPSpeaker
I will try. And it was, it was Jeremy Scahill was the other-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's right
- 3:35 – 9:39
Hot-take culture: everyone has certainty, nobody has facts
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I just find it amazing now how many people have, like, a hard take on, like, what's g- I'm like, what the... We don't know a fucking thing about what's g- Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... the coin is in the air, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And we do not know how it's gonna... But everyone's got a take.
- JRJoe Rogan
Of course.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Every- everyone knows.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, of course.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Like, we do not fucking... I don't, I don't think anyone knows. Like, I understand if you, if you work at the White House, or if you work in Russian propaganda, or you work in Chinese propaganda, like, or if you work in Iranian, like, you've, you've got to get your point of view across to try and persuade people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
But if you're actually trying to work out what's genuinely happening, I don't think anyone knows how... This is a gamble of gigantic proportions.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And nobody knows how it's gonna end. Uh, it, it's like, it's just so unpredictable. And I can tell you a great story that is, like, positive for the, for the West, let's say, or for America. I can tell you a terrible story, and they both sound very convincing, and no one knows which one of them is true.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's a very good point. Uh, th- this is the hot take culture, right?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- FFFrancis Foster
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Every- everyone has a take, and they're, they want their take to be the expert take. So, uh, specific drone attack incidents that call potential false flags. Saudi Arabia, uh, Saudi, uh, Saudi A- Aramco, rather, um, oil facility attack. So Iranian officials deny striking the Saudi Aramco processing facility and instead suggest Israel may have carried out that attack as a false flag to inflame Gulf opinion and pull Saudi Arabia more directly into the war with Iran. So Ryan Grim explicitly says he thinks Iran's claims that Israel hit the Aramco facility need to be taken seriously, and that it's very possible Israel did it. And this was the other one, the drone strike on the British base in Cyprus.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
That was from Lebanon, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Is that what they're saying?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
May have come from the direction of Lebanon. He places this in the same context of Iran claiming Israel carried out certain attacks in neighboring states as false flags to blame on Iran and drag those countries into the war.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Those countries... This, this doesn't make any logical sense to me, 'cause those countries are already in the war. I mean, Saudi Arabia and UAE have been attacked by Iran because they were on the phone to Trump basically asking him to do this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Here's a... This is another weird one, the Tucker Carlson one.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
You saw that, right?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
So Tucker Carlson said that-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Oh, yeah, yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... Mossad-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
The alleged Mossad, yeah, yeah
- 9:39 – 12:22
Regime change fantasies: Iraq/Libya lessons and why Iran could fracture
- JRJoe Rogan
I th- there's the other thing that... Do you remember Desert Storm?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Desert Storm, quick and easy, baby. Woo, we went in, kicked some ass-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... took some names. That's a wrap.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pulled out. There was only one base that got hit, so there was... The, the amount-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... of deaths by American citizens was fairly minimal.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's what got people so confident into entering Iran after 9/11, or excuse me, Iraq after 9/11.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
To go back-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... like we already fucked them up once.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're gonna go back, and this is gonna be easy. Well, it wasn't easy the second time.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it was drawn out, and it didn't make any sense, but people wanted some form of revenge-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... something for 9/11, and so somehow or another they justified a war with a country that had z- zero to do with it.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, it didn't even make sense.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That one took for... And then we a- also invaded Afghanistan at the same time. Like, what do we do? What the fuck? So in the fog of this idea of American exceptionalism, we're just gonna go in and fix it. We did it before. There's no one even close to us. Well, look how that turned out.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- FFFrancis Foster
Uh, yeah, well, this is completely true, and then it's this idea that it's so easy to take one regime, remove it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- FFFrancis Foster
... and then just put another one in its place, like it's a Lego block.
- 12:22 – 19:15
Venezuela as a ‘regime adjustment’: oil leverage, Hezbollah claims, and conspiracy rabbit holes
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah. And also with Venezuela, it wasn't a regime change. Practically everybody who was in the old regime is still there.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It's a regime adjustment.
- FFFrancis Foster
Exactly. [laughs] Exactly.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- FFFrancis Foster
So Delcy Rodriguez was one of the senior leaders in Ma- uh, Maduro's regime. They just took out Maduro and his wife, they put Delcy Rodriguez there, but the whole structureThe whole leadership, the whole party is still in place. So they've just... What they've done is they put Delcy at the top, and they've said to her, "Look, if you fuck about, you're gonna get what your boss got. So you're gonna follow what we say. You're gonna do what we say. You are gonna open up the oil refineries. We're gonna build it. We're gonna s- you're gonna start pumping oil out. You're gonna stop messing about with Hezbollah," which they had training camps in the island of Margarita, which is a little Caribbean island two and a half hours away from Miami. Training camps, you can't have that. You're not gonna be fraternizing with the Cubans, and you're gonna play ball. And essentially, Venezuela is now a colony of the United States. That's what it's now become.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's wild. Well, there's also [laughs] the Kurt Metzger angle, which is hilarious.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Ku- Kurt Metzger cornered me one night at the co-
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
... at the mothership, and, uh, he explained to me that this was all about the 2020 election.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
And that Maduro somehow or another had something to do with rigging the 2020 election, and he's going to say it as a part of his testimony. He's like, "Just wait. Just wait. Mark my words."
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So he's, he's convinced of this.
- FFFrancis Foster
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
He goes down the rabbit hole to the lava.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, he passes, and he's like, "This rabbit hole's been covered up."
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
It goes deeper.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
And he keep, he keeps going till he's at the fucking center of the earth.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
He's a funny guy, though.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, he's hilarious. He's hilarious. He's mentally ill.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
But he's hilarious. He's one of the funniest people I know.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, ever. Fantastic joke writer, too.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- 19:15 – 20:47
What is the actual strategy? Oil shocks, midterms, and competing endgames
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Um, and so that, that's, I think that's part of the thinking. But your, your point is interesting to me about the fact that this doesn't reflect what people, the m- you know, as we're not Americans, but it doesn't seem to have been part of the policy platform of the Trump, uh, election at the last election, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, not at all.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
But I do think there is some kind of strategy behind all of this, and I'm very curious what that is. Uh, because I guess, uh, if, if you think about it logically, you would say, well, is it an attempt to effectively push back against China and Russia infiltrating all these countries, right? China and, and Russia were very close with Ven- with Maduro in Venezuela.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Very, very... Like Francis is saying, Hezbollah training camps, Isla Margarita. Where was the oil going, right? Same with Iran. I mean, Iran sells its oil to China-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... uh, and s- sends suicide drones to Russia to use in Ukraine. So m- maybe it's that. Maybe the strategy is you're trying to push back against Chinese and Russian influence in, in all these countries because you can't attack them directly, 'cause you can't attack them directly, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Uh, but this is all just guessing on, on my part, and that's what I'm really curious. We're gonna do some interviews on this trip to kind of... Like, I wanna get someone on the show who can go, "This is the strategy."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
"This is what we're doing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
'Cause I think, as we were saying earlier, it's not very clear to most people what the rationale behind all of this is, but I also don't think this sort of, like, mad dog Trump idea is true either. I think he has a strategy. I'd just love to know what it is.
- 20:47 – 22:36
Cuba and the Chávez-Castro pipeline: how Venezuela propped up a dictatorship model
- FFFrancis Foster
And it's very interesting because there's been talk about regime change in Cuba.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- FFFrancis Foster
And one of the things... So wh- [laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I think that's next.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Genuinely.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, my God.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I think that's next.
- FFFrancis Foster
So when Chávez came to power in '99, what he did, and not enough people talk about this, is he turned what was a very corrupt, admittedly, liberal, Western-style democracy into a communist dictatorship. And how do you do that? You, you can't just literally do that overnight. So what he did is he allied with the Cubans and, um, Fidel in particular, Fidel Castro. Venezuela provided Cuba with cheap oil, which helped to keep the Cuban economy afloat, 'cause Cuba's been going broke since however many years, 40-odd years. And what Castro did was he gave him the boots on the ground in Venezuela, but also the technical expertise and know-how in order to change a Western liberal democracy into a communist state with permanent surveillance, secret police, subjugate the population, so there was no chance of them ever being able to revolt, and ma- make every... and turn everything into, like I said, into a communist state. So by what they did in Venezuela, Venezuela can no longer support Cuba, so Cuba is literally now withering on the vine as a result-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- FFFrancis Foster
... of them knocking out the Venezuelans.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- FFFrancis Foster
So it's gonna come to a point where you could say Cuba are effectively gonna go bankrupt, which could precipitate an uprising, a revolution by people when people can no longer eat, and that would mean that that country's then weakened. Finally, they can get rid of the communist regime there, and they can have a different type of government, one which will be far more sympathetic, shall we say, to working with America and being an American island.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
See-
- FFFrancis Foster
Possibly
- 22:36 – 37:51
Who replaces Iran’s leadership? Pahlavi doubts, ‘no-kill lists,’ and the problem of “what comes after”
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... that makes sense to me in a way. What I don't understand about the Iran thing is, like, what is the end goal here? Like, you've got the Reza Pahlavi, the Shah's son. I mean, he left Iran a long time ago as a kid, right? The, you know, the idea that he's gonna go back in there and be welcomed by the masses, uh, maybe that's true. Maybe that's-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like Daenerys returning to the-
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
... Iron Throne. [laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah, but Daenery- Daenerys had three fucking dragons.
- FFFrancis Foster
Exactly. [laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right? [laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
But you know what I'm saying? Like, she left when she was a baby.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah, that's right.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
That's right.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And the pe- it's not like the people are desperately... I, I don't know. Maybe the people are desperate for the return of the Shah's son.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it seems like some people are desperate for a change there, the people that were protesting.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
100%.
- FFFrancis Foster
Of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
The people that risked their lives.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
100%.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
100%. But like every country, like, if you only listen to the liberals in this country, you, you would think that, uh, you know, that no one's illegal on stolen land.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- FFFrancis Foster
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
If you only listen to the Republicans in this country, you would think we gotta find every illegal and get them out of our country and make America great again.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, this, it doesn't make sense-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... if we just go only by the protesters. Like, we don't really have accurate polling 'cause they don't have any free speech over there.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- FFFrancis Foster
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they've, they've killed, like, famous athletes over there for protesting.
- 37:51 – 46:14
Media framing and Islamism: the Mamdani protest bombing story and headline ‘gaslighting’
- SPSpeaker
Because this is a problem, Joe-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm gonna send that article to Jamie.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jamie, uh, we- you could probably find it on CNN, 'cause it's kind of hilarious.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It's incredible. This was actually incredible.
- SPSpeaker
The New York Times title change thing?
- JRJoe Rogan
And did the New York Times change their title?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
They did? Well, they- [laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
I wonder why. [laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
All, all Astia scholars.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm gonna send you the CNN one first. Um, the CNN one is, is really wild. I'm gonna-
- SPSpeaker
What was it called? Like, they had, like, s- fuses of things with smoke or something, and they had to change it to bombs or something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, fucking duh.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, I'm sending you this one, 'cause the CNN one is, believe it or not, more preposterous. The CNN one is so kooky, you, you, you see their headline, and you're like, "What, what kind of story are you painting here?" Like, this is such a crazy way to frame a guy showed up with bombs and was hurling them at people. You know-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
No, they made it sound like the exact opposite of what actually happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it sounded like it was just a regular day.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Just a regular, just a regular day for this fella, and then things just went a little sideways-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... somewhere along the line.
- SPSpeaker
Listen, we've all got hobbies, man. You know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
To the left.
- SPSpeaker
You like working out, and he has nail bombs.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Come on.
- 46:14 – 1:03:22
Religious extremism on the right: Armageddon beliefs and military briefings
- JRJoe Rogan
But then you have the crazy Christians, and that thing that I sent you, the Yahoo thing that we talked about yesterday with Schoenberger, the Yahoo thing is nuts. So these military leaders... So, so this, this comes from one of the non-commissioned officers who went to a briefing. He goes to a briefing, and they inform him that you shouldn't be scared because this is all because President Trump is anointed by Jesus, and this is to bring about Armageddon so that Jesus returns to Earth. This is in a fucking military briefing. One such note included an a- anecdote from a non-commissioned officer who reported that their commander had urged us to tell our troops this war was all a part of God's divine plan, and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelations referring to Armageddon and the eminent return of Jesus Christ. This is fucking crazy. Um, he said, "This morning our command..." So this is, this is a, an officer who's talking about this. "This morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us to not be afraid as to what was happening with our combat operations in Iran." He said, "President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." He said he had a big grin on his face when he said all this, which made his message seem even more crazy.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Well, that's reassuring. [laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, that... Well, this is, this is the scary arm of the, the right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
That right.
- JRJoe Rogan
This is the scariest arm of the right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... people that think that this is one of the main reasons, the Mike Huckabee people-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... that think this is the main reason to protect Israel. It's a part of God's plan. You know, Israel is where Jesus is gonna return.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's gonna return to Jerusalem. Yikes.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah, I've never really understood that. Like, I think you can argue for... You can be pro-Israel for pragmatic reasons. This religious stuff is a little bit s- weird to me. I don't get-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, this... But the problem is you've got fanatics-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... like the Islamists.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you've also got these Christian hard right Christian nationalists-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... that really believe that this is a part of biblical prophecy.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that they, this is Book of Revelations. It's about to go down.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they, they want it to go down. This is fucking terrifying.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- FFFrancis Foster
This is really interesting for us because in our, in, in the UK, Christianity has been de-fanged to the point where there's a trans flag on practically every church. So this idea of having these hardcore right-wing fundamentalist Christians, we, we just don't experience that.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
No, we don't have that really.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It's like, can't anyb- everybody live in the middle? Why, why do you have to go all the way over to-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- 1:03:22 – 1:12:58
Information warfare, bots, and AI: authenticity collapse and the coming verification crisis
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And then on top of that... And look, this is a kind of... I'm cutting my own balls off here, 'cause I c- I make good money from posting stuff on X, right? But the monetization of content has made things different, and we can all see it in our feed, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
You've seen this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
I mean, you must see it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
So now you have people who are basically... Like, I go on Twitter, on X, to express my opinion and to engage in discussion with people who have a different opinion. That's what I do, right? But there are now lots and lots of people who go to work. They go to X to work.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And that's what they're doing. Now, the incentive structure of that is not conducive to a healthy debate-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... at all.
- SPSpeaker
No.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
What you've got now is people going, "Okay, a thing has happened. What is my t- Venezuela got invaded. It was Israel's fault. Okay, here's, here's some content about that."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And it's no longer authentic communication, unfortunately.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's just actual people doing it.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And then you've got AI on top of that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
And then you've got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Bot farms
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... foreign bot farms-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- KKKonstantin Kisin
... and foreign governments trying to influence this shit.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's this-
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... one currently popular, uh, page that I follow that's clearly AI. You mean, you could just read it and tell-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm
- 1:12:58 – 1:53:52
Robots, AGI, and sci‑fi becoming policy: from fake robot videos to real deployments
- SPSpeaker
You know? And then a d- a, a mutual friend of ours, Melissa Chen, was telling me that there's a Chinese, one of the Chinese robotics companies, it's called Skynet.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God
- FFFrancis Foster
And they had, they released a robot called the T-900, and I'm like, "Who says Chi- the, you know, the CCP don't have a sense of humor?"
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, that's wild.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Is that actually true?
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you've seen the robots that they have now that will work in your home and, like, fold your sheets-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... and make your bed and stuff.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And do it remarkably human-like. There's a video that was released yesterday. Again, I don't know if it's real.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
But it looks real. It looks like an actual robot that's making your bed. And they've gotten the, the dexterity to the point where you could imagine things like this happening, and I think this is one of the reason why Elon is shifting his focus away from some Tesla models so that they can reset up one of their factories to make these Optimus robots, that you're gonna have them as home companions.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they're gonna be able to do kitchen work for you, and maybe even cook.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm. My acupuncturist, she's Chinese, she went back to China, and she was saying, she stayed at the hotel and, like, most of the services there is provided by robots. So, like, she, she went to her room, ordered some food. Three minutes, knock, knock, and it's a fucking robot delivering the food.
- JRJoe Rogan
An actual humanoid-looking robot?
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Uh, no, I don't think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause there's a restaurant out here that you go to and when you order drinks-
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... it comes by on a little robot trolley.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have that in the UK as well.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you have to say accept.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
You take your tea. Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's kinda cool.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fun.
- 1:53:52 – 2:01:19
Conspiracy adjacency and secret weapons: LifeLog/Facebook claims and Havana Syndrome microwaves
- JRJoe Rogan
... show us this, uh, Sam Tripoli Facebook take. [laughs] He was on, uh, Danny Jones, and this is what he said about Facebook.
- SPSpeaker
Hold on. Uh, damn it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fine.
- SPSpeaker
Now there's a little muted here.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's a giant lie. It's a propaganda piece. That was a Pentagon program called Life Log. Life Log is a Pentagon program-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh
- SPSpeaker
... that wants to collect all your data for your whole life. What day did the government stop the Life Log project?
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. DARPA shut down the Life Log project February 4th, 2004.
- SPSpeaker
What day was Facebook registered as a business?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, my God. No way, bro.
- SPSpeaker
The exact same day.
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
They don't even hide it, dude.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was created by DARPA.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. They hand it to Mark Zuckerberg, and then the, the vassal twins are like-
- JRJoe Rogan
What about the other... Yeah, yeah, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... that's all, and that's why they became the first Bitcoin millionaires, 'cause they played ball.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, my God.
- SPSpeaker
It's all theater, dude.
- JRJoe Rogan
So what is the purpose of Life Log?
- SPSpeaker
To collect all your data for your whole entire life. The wh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay. Take this with many grains of salt.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- KKKonstantin Kisin
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
Sam is one of my best friends.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
I've known him for decades. He's a wonderful person, but he's a kook.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs] Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But he's right a lot.
- 2:01:19 – 2:25:41
Venezuela on the ground: crime drop claims, Maduro’s incompetence, and resource-curse mechanics
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- FFFrancis Foster
... it's, it's interesting that the way that they did that, they did that operation. Because when I was talking to my cousins and my friends about what happened, no one in Venezuela had a clue, and they were... My friend said that he was woken up around 2:00 in the morning by a plane going overhead, and there's a no-fly zone around, over Caracas at that time especially, and he was like, "What is this?" And he said you heard this almighty boom, and everybody was just... Nobody knew what was happening. They don't have X in Venezuela for obvious reasons, so everybody was in the dark, and it was only via Instagram and Facebook that they started to understand what had just gone on. But it was complete disbelief that the Americans had done that.
- JRJoe Rogan
If they, uh, they don't have, uh, X, do they have Threads?
- FFFrancis Foster
Uh, they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is like X zero.
- FFFrancis Foster
I, I imagine-
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs] Yeah. X zero, yeah. I imagine they must do, but he said the way that everybody was communicating was via Instagram.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
What are people saying now in Venezuela?
- FFFrancis Foster
So, and now when I talk to my friends, he said that things is, are getting better. He said things are getting better. He said that crime was down 75%. I mean, I don't know how true this is. He said things are slowly starting to get liberalized. He also... The... I was talking to a Colombian friend of mine who was saying that people, Venezuelans in Colombia are now starting to go back because whilst the regime is still obviously not perfect, what you essentially have is a puppet regime, and they know that the moment they step out of line, they know the moment they, to use Trump's parlance, fuck about, something will happen. They're kept in, they c- they're, they're kept, they're kept in the, on a straight line.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
They have to behave.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah. They, they have to behave. They can't do what Maduro did, and what's interesting about when Maduro was captured is nobody really mentioned that much about his wife. But a lot of people say that his wife was the brains behind the operation because Maduro, there's clips of him that went viral on TikTok and Instagram and on Twitter as well, where he was doing speeches, and he had to do basic mental arithmetic, and he couldn't do it. This guy was a bus driver. He was picked by Chávez when Chávez was on his deathbed in 2013, dying from stomach cancer, and he appointed Maduro. Everybody was shocked because they were saying, well, Maduro wasn't the most capable. He wasn't the most intelligent. But what Maduro was is he was the most loyal out of all Chávez's underlings.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- FFFrancis Foster
So he was picked not for his brilliance, not for his sharpness, but because he was a company man, and actually, the, the person who the Venezuelans hated the most was his wife because she was the brains behind the operation. She was the one in charge of the kidnappings, the tortures, the murders. So when she was kidnapped, people were happier that she was on the helicopter than Maduro himself.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Lady Macbeth.
- FFFrancis Foster
[sighs] She was way more cruel than Maduro.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
Mm.
- FFFrancis Foster
Way more cruel.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
It's interesting you say things are getting better now 'cause, like, it's short term, right? We don't know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- FFFrancis Foster
Yeah.
- KKKonstantin Kisin
You know, some, some... This has happened a lot of times in Latin America, right? Like, people get overthrown, things are getting better, and then some shit happens.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, not the most stable place.
- FFFrancis Foster
[laughs]
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- FFFrancis Foster
Not the most stable people, Joe, I'm gonna be honest with you.
- 2:25:41 – 2:27:19
Hard pivot to fight business: Zuffa Boxing, Netflix-era spectacle fights, and UFC vs boxing incentives
- SPSpeaker
... but have you, have you been following this beef between Eddie Hearn and Dana White?
- JRJoe Rogan
A little bit.
- SPSpeaker
'Cause it's kind of interesting to me, 'cause boxing seems to be, like, changing, right? Because of what the, Zuffa Boxing is doing.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
Is that, is that something you're, like, e-excited about? The possibility of the boxing, which has been in s- you know, there's so much bullshit going on, and you ve- so very rarely see the best fighters fighting each other, that that might change?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the beef with those two, I, I don't know the root of it. I think it's essentially the, the, you know, it's competition. Like Dana's-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- JRJoe Rogan
... now entering into the MMA space.
- SPSpeaker
Into the boxing space.
- JRJoe Rogan
E- excuse me, the boxing space.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And now, I, I was gonna say, Eddie Hearn is now entering into the MMA space, 'cause now he's, uh, a manager of Tom Aspinall.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is very interesting. Um, okay, anything that gets fighters more money, I'm for.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And if, you know, more attention, more money, more different promoters, more people competing to give people higher purses. The real problem is with MMA, there's nothing. I mean, there's essentially the UFC, and everything else is a, a distant second.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's a distant second in terms of, uh, attention. Uh, in some places it's not a distant section- uh, it's not a distant second in terms of revenue, right? So, like, the PFL, for instance. The PFL was offering a million dollars for anybody who could win these tournaments, and the, the caliber of fighters that were winning this tournament were not the same caliber as UFC champions. And then some of the people that were competing in the UFC were not making as much money as these people that had left the UFC, 'cause they really weren't-Able to beat the best guys. They went over there and they made a million dollars.
Episode duration: 3:09:47
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode zm1Ar5HckwA
