From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of My Heart Radio Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, all mission controlled decond Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. If you are listening in the United States, we hear the stuff they don't want you to know. Family, wish you a happy Thanksgiving, Gird yourself for those strange conversations with your family. All of the best. Remember you don't have to eat the turkey if you don't want to. Don't let people make you feel obligated. But there's there's some good in every interaction, virtually, So what we wanted to talk about today is to ring in collectively surviving to another Thanksgiving by sharing some of the messages from your fellow conspiracy realists. We're going to talk about the history of the US addiction to cars, and I do say that as a huge fan of all things automotive. We're going to have some fascinating thought experiments courtesy of the driver, and we're gonna kick off with with a great question. We always talk about the phenomenon of fingers on a hand, meaning that if you see two fingers and the hand is out of frame, they look like separate things, but if you zoom out you can see they are connected. And uh no, we got a great piece of correspondence pretty recently regarding a a similar example of this phenomenon or allegation thereof we should say, yeah, let's not let's not forget that. You know, the middle finger is also part of the hand, So just putting that out there. This comes to us from Cynical Syndicate, which is a great nickname. I'm just gonna read the whole thing because it's great. Call me Cynical Syndicate. Feel free to read me on air. There are big companies out there today that have near monopolies in their space. Google with online search, Amazon with online shopping. In fact, the US House Judiciary Committee brought forward an antitrust investigation into several big tech companies back in twenty nineteen. However, these monopolies extend beyond big tech. There is Lexotica with glasses and Monsanta with agriculture biotech. The list could go on and on. Here's what I wonder. Google has paid Mozilla for being the default search engine and Firefox. But how much of that is actually because Google secretly wants Mozilla to limp along so Google can claim to not have a monopoly in the browser space. That is, rather to let a competitor eat a few percentages of market share than risk the government getting up in your business. I can find ads and being from Google. Does Google buy ad space on being to make sure it keeps limping along? Or at the extreme, could these companies be in cahoots or coerce each other to underfund their competitive products so that no one of them can take government heat? What do you guys think? Can you think of any interesting examples of companies actively propping up competitors just enough to keep them limping along so their monopoly can keep chugging? Love love it? That is good stuff. Please? This is This is for the group, y'all. This is for the table. I think I've got one, but I don't know if it fully applies. Do you guys remember when we talked about ticket Master? Of course, I feel like there's something like this happening there. I remember, I think it was the Canadian Broadcasting Company did an undercover investigation a while back into ticket Masters. I don't know what they call. It was in exchange program basically to where I don't want to call it legal scalping, but I think, I mean, that's what it feels like to me, where large order purchasers can buy tickets in bulk through this system and then sell them back through ticket Master. So it's almost like propping up smaller ticket sales people in order for them to still get a cut, but there are allowing the competition, but it is kind of under their umbrella still, So it's a bit weird. That's a good one. That's a good one. Like so cynical syndicate first off, bonus arbitrary Internet points for your awesome moniker. Uh. The there are a lot of examples of this. One of the big ones, as a guy who skipped lunch today is fast food. You know, yum Brands owns a lot of fast food places, right, and uh, they're there. Examples in the world of cars, Hyundai and Kia also are Like I think it was a nine seven Honda, I bought of Kia. Uh. The Expedia group owns Orbits, hot Wire, Travelocity. That's another thing. It's like the Luxotica model is not unique to sunglasses. Look at cleaning products Procter and Gamble. They're selling you gain, They're selling you downey, They're selling you cheer, They're selling your bounce, they're selling you tied. Well, look at Disney, I mean all of the various studios, all roads kind of lead back to Disney when you you know, pay enough attention. Um. But somehow you know that the legal for these giant companies are doing their due diligence in such a way that they will not be accused of being a monopoly just barely, you know what I mean. Like that's their goal is to get as close to a monopoly as possible, a k a. Owning the largest market share without officially being considered a monopoly. But I would argue that the criteria for being a monopoly is pretty ephemeral. You know, I don't know what that is. Is there an actual formula Ben and Matt for what a monopoly makes? Yes, so it depends on the country or in to be completely fair. Also, uh, anti trust legislation is much stronger in places like the EU than it is in places like the United States, because the people who directly profit from a monopoly also have the juice, the wherewithal the suction, as they say on the wire, to change the legal ecosystem such that they are not breaking the law. Right you want to you want to make sure nothing you do as a crime, then get your hooks on the people who decide what is and is not illegal. Uh. This like a legal monopoly, I believe, is a firm that is protected in the legal system from competitors, a firm that gets a government mandate to operate as a monopoly. But you can also see, Oh, another great example cable companies. Right, if you live in the US, your cable companies likely have already negotiated their own turf with each other. Right, so that's why you moved to a place. And maybe you really want Google Fiber. Maybe for some reason, you really want Comcast or Exfinity or whatever they're calling themselves in your neck of the woods. You might not be able to do that because those come but he's have agreed already just on their own that they won't go past you know, or whatever, there was that whole thing too, And then he was m C. I was a company that was trying to offer a long distance calling at a reduced rate, but A T and T literally controlled a lot of the equipment that they would need to have in place in order to do that, and there was some internal memos from A T and T that lead where they were basically saying, let's choke them out before they can get to market, you know. Um, so that's anti competitive at its finest um. But also like, there's no rule that says you have to be nice to your competitors to a point, right, Like that's my that's my whole thing is like, what is the actual line that you cross that at that point you are now a monopoly? And so many of these legacy companies just have a leg up that no new entrance into the space will ever have. So, who's that guy that's on TV that the stock guy that's kind of keyed up and crazy and has a button makes sound effects you know I'm talking about Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh. He's got some big energy, that big energy. I can't remember his name, but he's on MSNBC I think, And he said something to the effect. I think this was actually on John Oliver, where he's like, you know, yeah, Google is is the best at what they do. Show me another company that can do it better, and then I'll be like, you know, okay, cool. They don't get a monopoly anymore. But the point that he was missing that John Oliver pointed out is that they're literally depriving anybody else ever having that opportunity to even try to even get into the space at a competitive level because they own so much of the means of production I guess, for lack of a better term, or just the whole space, they just own it so lockstock and barrel that, and it's hard for the ever meant to wrap their heads around and regulate it properly because it's happened so fast, and government stuff happened so slow. Look at Preston Tucker, right, the Tucker forty eight, uh, or the Tucker Torpedo. Preston Tucker went up against the big three auto manufacturers and got waxed and Congress helped. You can call it a conspiracy if it makes you feel better, folks. Uh, you can call it a conspiracy theory rather, if it makes you feel better. But this is like, okay, to your example, think of let's think of things like Uni lever, right, Uni lever is Disney all its own in terms of what it owns. Let's think of Johnson and Johnson. They're selling you Thailand all, they're selling your motron, They're selling you a number of other like non name brand things that include similar ingredients. Fingers on a hand. To your earlier question about like what is anti trust or what what is an illegal monopoly in the US, it goes back to something called the Sherman Act in a ten nine, and that's still that's still technically the basis for most anti trust laws, and it argues that, well, it bans any agreements and conspiracies that restrain trade and commerce. So that's stuff like price fixing, boycotts, rigging bids, you know, things of that nature, the kind of the kind of crime that people wear white collars for. And it's also not you know, there are a lot of problems people have with how it's enforced. Like think of, um, you know, vertical versus horizontal integration. Right, how Henry Ford said, I want to own every piece of what eventually becomes a Ford car. Right, that's why, well, that's the supply chain. That's also taking ownership of the supply chain, And can you begrudge someone that laid the groundwork for that so far back? Are they supposed to give pieces of out a way? Like like, I mean, I sound like I'm being an apologist for this kind of iron fisted market kind of you know, capitalism. But they were first to the market and they own all the pieces, so don't you have to play ball with them? And uh, it just seems like a flawed system, I guess, is what I'm getting at it. Yeah, it's stuff because of what you pointed out earlier and uh cynical syndicate. We we hope these examples are helpful and again love that you point out Monsanto, Luxotica and uh an Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Uh. The the issue is if some entity has that stranglehold, they get first to the post, right, and they now own the door. Right. If they own the door, then they get into this sort of cost benefit analysis. Is it more bang for your buck to allow competition and improve of your products and services or is it more bang for your buck too? Not so much worry about whether you're doing a good job and focus on preventing other people from getting into that space, and it happens a lot. That's why a lot of legacy technology and practices are around and sometimes you don't see it when you're bubbled. It's about optics here too. I mean, what Cynical Syndicate is implying is that they're propping up lesser competitors and allowing them, by their their good graces to exist so that they can create the illusion of competition where non actually exists because they still have their you know, the glove analogy. They still it's part of their glove, but they're just allowing that finger to operate seemingly independently. But it's to the benefit of like the regulatory optics of it all, you know. I mean, Coca Cola wants PEPSI around PEPs she once Coca Cola route. I want to talk about two things because we're talking about browsers, right, we're talking about Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. At least in in that middle paragraph of what Cynical Syndicate sent to us, the reason why Microsoft got in trouble as being a monopoly back in the day was because of Internet Explorer, right, because on their operating system, they installed Internet Explorer. It just came with the system, so users found it really difficult. Where it made it it was disincentivizing anybody who had a Microsoft operating system from downloading a different browser and accessing the internet. Right, it's already there. Just use the one that's there. If you want to download another one, you've got to use Internet Explorer to get it. Anyway. Well, just to interject really quickly, UM, I was not aware, and I'm a little confused as to why Google is paying Mozilla four fifty million dollars a year to be the default search engine on Firefox. Does Google o Firefox? I thought Google was Chrome? What is Google's interest in Firefox? And uh? Why? Yeah? Because anytime you type into your bar, well, whatever browser you use, you just type some stuff into there and it searches. It's you have to tell your browser which search engine you want to use. I got that right, yeah, And and and and typically people aren't going to customize, They're gonna go with whatever the thing that's stuck because it's the path of least resistance from someone's listening on Netscape right now, Hello, how are you? Uh? The Mozilla was an escape, right, is at Mozilla the little monster that was. Aren't they related Mozilla Netscape? We know there is definitely a conflict of interest between Firefox and Google. Uh cynical. You may enjoy a c net article by Chris Sukhoyan in two thousand and seven which talks about how Google is participating in this relationship. And for many years since oh seven, Uh, it had been considered an open secret in the world of tech that Google calls the shots for Mozilla Firefox. Although I believe to your point you well, I believe Mozilla is a nonprofit. It was sort of an open source thing. Like so, Netscape was the original browser, as many of us remember from early early Internet days. It had like a sort of a nautical theme, right, didn't it kind of like a like a lighthouse sort of vibe. So I just looked up Netscape. Mozilla. Mozilla, which was once stylized as moz colon slash slash, as a free software community founded in by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses developed spreads and supports Mozilla products, there by promoting exclusively free software and open standards with only minor exceptions. I may have um misspoke earlier. So essentially, Google paid Mozilla a bunch of money to keep Google as the default search engine for Mozilla. Is that right? I don't think that's quite what our listener said. Our listeners said, Google. Let's see our listeners said, Google paid Mozilla. Yep, sorry, that's correct. Google paid Mozilla for being the default search engine and Firefox. So Firefox is a product. It's it's a web browser, but not a search it says. Yeah, So that's why I'm confused, Like, how does propping up a browser protect them from being accused of having a monopoly over search because it's It's what our listeners saying is they're protecting themselves over being seen to have a monopoly over browsers. But so if they pay the money to be the default search engine within another browser, their Google still getting what they need, you know, part of their primary business through that search and the ads on that search. By the way, um, and Mozilla still gets to have Firefox, and then you get to still have Chrome, and nobody can say Chrome is trying to take over everything, right, And Firefox is also still a pretty popular browser because it has a lot of extensions that you can use that like allow it to interact with you know, um crypto type stuff like I think Firefox is also considered a little less bloated, like Google Chrome is a bit of a hog, a CPU hog. So I do think there is a market for UM Firefox already, like it's sort of beloved to a degree anyway, UM, I think this is really good food for thought and something to think about bigger picture in terms of like are their companies that are secretly colluding with other companies to create the illusion of competition. That is interesting to me and I think to to all of us. So thank you Cynical Syndicate for your email, UM, and we will take a quick break and then come back with more listenermail. And we have returned for any friends on Twitter. This is why wire Pow was slaminized coffee. For the entirety of the day, I'm wired, uh and uh. I wish cities were wired with public transit. So here we are hearing from Mologato. Mologato, thank you for including a photo of your cat hanging out and reading the book. Much appreciated. Always always a fan of pet pictures, Please feel free to send your own. The weirder or more unusual your pets are the better. We read every email we get. Uh, and here's what Mologato says. Greetings and salutations. Fair podcast host on a recent episode, I believe about the deep dive into food deserts. One of you all made a comment about Martha being only profitable on the Buford Highway root That was me. Now, I'm not from Atlanta, but I've been listening to stuff you should know and stuff they don't want you to know for a decade, so I have a vivid image of Atlanta in my mind. Your public transit comment got me thinking about the GM street car conspiracy, where GM and others monopolize the production of parts sold to National city lines transit. I'm from Metro Detroit. We don't really have public transportation. We have smart busses that show up ten to twenty minutes late, and if you need them as your primary form of transportation, it will take you several hours to get ten miles. The Big Three those are that's the nickname for the Big three car companies in the US. Historically, the Big Three have continuously stifled the growth of public transit in the Metro Detroit area because it could hurt the sale of cars. Last week, GM announced that all its employees were going to have to return to the office. I suspect remote workers means less car wear and air and less car purchases from employees who I like it. The Big Three have long been in control of many aspects of Michigander's lives. This is just the latest example of their overreach. I'd love to hear you guys do an episode on why the US is so car centric when so many other places have bike lanes and trains, we lack the infrastructure. Is it poor planning or is it something more? Feel free to read on air much love Molato. Oh man, you guys know this is this is one of those ones for me. As they say on the l A leakers. Uh, it's strange right, One of, if not the most powerful country on the planet, the country that made the interstate happen, like as a matter of national defense, The country that can pour billions of dollars in descending weird autonomous ships into space. Can't it a decent train system, can't get a bus line, you know what I mean? If they just don't work so great right right right now. As folks may know, Matt, no, you guys have been in all of us have been in areas that do have better public transit than Atlanta. What were the experiences did you feel like when you were there? Did you think this is a horrible idea everywhere that's literally the opposite of a good idea. I mean I did find in Germany and Berlin in particular, the public transit was very spot on in terms of the arrival of these kind of street car type deals and um, incredibly efficient. In New York, when you go and you don't live there, you would maybe think the same thing. People that live there might argue otherwise, Uh, there certainly are it an aged infrastructure, so there's a lot of like maintenance and things that have to happen over the weekend, which causes lines to be diverted. And you know, unless you're kind of familiar with it as a tourist, you could easily get on the wrong train on a weekend because the signs don't change and there's like posted bills and stuff to tell you. But it can be a little bit of a cluster f um. But yeah, I mean, when it's done right, boy is it? Boy? Is it better than the alternative? Here in Atlanta, we have a very basic public transit system, same with l a uh that only goes in kind of like an X shape um and doesn't really you know, go to outlying regions. And also once you have to start riding the bus, that's less fun because the bus is slower and less predictable, and because it you know, it depends on traffic, whereas you know, rails and underground things and elevated trains do not. And that's the part that makes public transit very efficient. Yeah, I'm agreeing with the points you guys are making, and that I have also in a hurry, I've been using ubers and lits on work trips. It just it makes things faster, uh, depending on where you are, because sometimes just being on a bike we'll get you to where you need to go faster than a car, especially in very dense areas like parts of Chicago or New York, maybe not Los Angeles. Yeah, that's the that's the point I wanted to make. I think it's a tendency for our city centers to be pretty spread out, and in order to have a really good train system or even bus system, you have to have so much infrastructure installed and all you're talking about the age of the New York City subway system, and it is aged, and it's been around for a long time, and it's because it was necessary. I mean, it really wasn't needed. Um. But then if you imagine it like you're saying, l A a couple other places like Atlanta, those systems are so expensive to install and many, many people are coming into that more dense area from outside of it in order to work. So just getting back to that question of like, why so many cars, why so car centric? That's a thing that's been happening for a long time in this country. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you point that out, Matt, because I do have a few answers for this, and it won't go on a dated Dennis Miller rants here. But there is a lot of history here. We have to remember, mass motorization occurred in the United States way earlier than Europe. This is the home of Henry Ford in the assembly line, right, Henry Ford, famous anti semi also kind of into cars. By the mid nineteen thirties, there was already one car for every two households, right, And at that same exact time in history, owning a car in Europe was like a tool of new money and aristocracy or a status mark, right. And also US cities were the first to wide scale adopt the car, adapt the car, and the powers that be in government and related industries really wanted this to happen. They did things like lowering tax cost for car ownership and use that's traditionally still higher in Europe, right, and there are a lot of people who argue it should be. And then of course we are already mentioned the interstate system, which is objectively awesome. It's crazy that that happened. Uh. And it also goes through cities. The interstate goes through cities in the US places like European highway systems, a lot of them, like thinking the Auto Bonn in Germany, they link cities, they don't cut through them. There are also a ton of government subsidies because a lot of members of various iterations of Congress had money on the table in the grand casino of investment. And we know that, we know that there was a huge focus there still is a huge focus thematically on changing technology rather than attempting to incentivize and change behavior on a micro or macroeconomic scale. Well, because changing technology also makes people money, right, just so changing behavior really doesn't It just you know, makes people's lives better, and it's harder to do. It requires discipline and really messaging, like very distinct messaging. And this okay. And there's another thing, technology versus legislation. We've been saying it for years. Technology always outpaces legislation. That's not a ding on lawmakers. It's just the fact it's kind of a ding. I admit, Okay, it's like a ding. So the US did have public train If you go to places like them, that awesome Automotive Museum out in Hershey, Pennsylvania, then you will see the golden era when buses were used the way that people use airplanes now. Airplanes are not the reason that public transit disappeared. What happened was that after World War Two, roughly a lot of these transit systems there were a networker privately owned regional or city entities, right, and they were increasing their fares, they were cutting their service, they were losing riders, and so they started going out of business. And the US government Uncle Sam in some form, would try to come along and help, but often too late. The big question about the conspiracy, you just mentioned the most famous one Mologato, which I believe is true, the idea that GM and other big carman manufacturers laid a heavy hand on trolley systems and cities that that were working to incentivize people to get the car. Right, you see your trolley system is getting crappier and crappier, and you see that cars are appearing more and more desirable and affordable. Again, fingers on a hand. Those two pressures likely came from some of the same actors, and you can read all about the GM streetcar conspiracy. They did go to court, they did get found culpable of some of the charges, and they paid a fine of one dollar. Around this time, as as cars are becoming a thing, you run into the problem of people, children, animals, buildings getting hit, getting the snot smacked out of them fatally often because this is it was still a country full of new drive verse early adopters, right, and just look at automotive safety technology. There used to be steering I'm doing the rant, well, there used to be steering wheels that straight up like a torpedo looking thing facing the driver. Right seatbelts came after the car. Early adopters have always been guinea pigs. Now it's like easier to not get maybe as mad about it because it's more guinea pigs in terms of tech, But back then it was guinea pigs in terms of safety, bodily autonomy. You know, I'm glad you're bringing up autonomy too. That's one of the reasons that I love cars personally is the ability to wake up one evening one day and just go and you don't have to wait for a trained schedule. Right there. It feeds into the idea of individualism that is so culturally important in this part of the world, land of the free. Well Asterix, But I agree with you, is this this thing, though it's bonkers. Is there was a modification of behavior. But it didn't come from uh, the ground up. It didn't come from the public. Uh. It came in a Bernese style series of p s a s. To combat the growing number, the exploding number of automobile related deaths, the powers that be decided to blame the victims. These are not human beings who got hit by an arrant driver. They're pedestrians. They're jaywalking and from yea. Even the term pedestrian, though, is taken on a negative connotation. If something's pedestrian, it means it's sort of like you know, basic, you know, I mean, they're not the same thing. But yes, jaywalking bend that that whole concept. It was like a marketing smear campaign. Yeah. So imagine a lot of people are dying because they're being a hit by these crazy machines that goes super fast, where the and and the folks in charge of these machines don't ah know what they're doing, you know what I mean. It's not like a pilot license. You didn't have to log a bunch of hours with someone sitting in the shotgun seat. So JA the reason jay walking came about as it came from the idea of JA drivers back in the day, J meant being like a newbie, a rookie, a rube like J V. Junior. Yeah yeah, yeah, I like that, h J. Jay Walking comes about in the days when cars were still being called horseless carriages. So people are dying, and your decision is not immediately to make laws tighter around automobiles. You want to incentivize people chase that individualism, chase that dream. So instead you say, you know, these dead people, they're kind of rubes. Let's be honest, they're just walking out there free as a jay bird. They're not paying attention. It's on them, which is a lot like saying those people should stop standing in front of guns. That'll solve it, which I know the torpedoes theory wheel. Oh my god, I want one of those cars. Wrong place, wrong time. It was on you. You should have known better. And this now leads us to without making this full episode, you can hear me in our pal Scott Benjamin uh talking about this on our old show Car stuff. Um. What this leads to in the next step is something called path dependence. Path dependence is essentially the argument that once a large group of people or entity decides to go one way, they reach a decision point right a fork in the woods, to be Robert Frost about it, and they go one way. It becomes increasingly difficult for them to turn back the clock and go in another direction. You you get to a point where you can only sort of branch out based in some part of what you have already built, unless there's a catastrophe, unless there's a extinction level event or your entire infrastructure gets wiped out. So there is a great argument that the US is in a path dependent state. This does not mean that everybody who works on the auto line is a super villain. This doesn't mean that every member of Congress is some Monty Burns esque you know, uh, James Bond villain. What it does mean is that over time people made decisions that reinforced the path they were already on. And that's I mean, it's a huge stumbling block. We can talk about for hours. It's like confirmation bias as an individual, where you you look at things and choose to pay to spend time with sources that make you feel good about how you already feel. But this is on a much larger scale when it comes to like corporations and technology, and like you know, it's it's a lot has more consequences, has much further reaching consequences, and this situation may not be um may not be long for the world in the US. As the rise of autonomous vehicles grows, so does the rise for infrastructure for increased control from an outside party over the vehicle that you are writing in and driving. Right. So it's again I'm conflicted about it on on a personal level because I know all trust me, folks. I know all the problems, all four of us know all the problems with internal combustion, with footprints, with sprawl and traffic jams. And still, probably because I spent so many formative years here, I still love cars. There's nothing quite like waking up one day and saying I'm just gonna drive. I'm gonna pick a direction. I'm gonna drive until I hit the ocean. That is so cool. Very few people in history have ever been able to do that. So, with that very conflicted answer that we hope, we hope breaks down the highlights of why the US remains so car centric, I propose we pause for word from our sponsor and return with a message from you. And we're back, and guess what we're going to the phone lines. We're gonna hear a message from the driver. Feels like a really nice segue from the car segment. So here we go. Hey, guys, you can call me the driver. I just wanted to relate a quick story that my father told me. I was regarding his brother who was in via know, and one day they were sitting around after his brother had gotten back, and his brother they were having some drinks. His brother related a story where they were him and his men were taken into a room and shown a video or a film I suppose of what he claimed was a some sort of laser weapon that was literally cutting po W's I don't know as other enemy soldiers in half. I assume it was some sort of test. Uh. And that's really all he said. My dad that he didn't his brother didn't really like talking about it. But I would be fascinated to know if there's any truth to that. I know laser weapons even today need to be the size of a truck to do any damage. Um. I intentionally haven't looked into it. I'd love to hear guy's opinion. Love the show, UH, and you could use my voice on the air if you wish. Thanks guys, thank you very much the driver for sharing that information with us. Can wait to talk about this with you, Ben. I've got a lot of questions. I think that I haven't spoken with the driver, by the way, we have a lot of questions or like maybe additions that I'd love to get from the driver to that story. But I guess let's let's jump right in. What are your thoughts in terms of uh sketchy experimentation yeah, well, specifically during the Vietnam War and with the lasers. I think that so a lot of my questioning comes from that, because if you look at the timelines or at least the official timelines of lasers and masers, the thing that they were before they were lasers basically directed energy devices UM. Lasers were officially invented at least in the public sphere that we know of, and patented in the nineteen sixties, and we're talking nineteen sixty and only what gosh, maybe six years before that. That's when masers were a thing and they were directing different types of energy. Lasers are specifically directed energy in the light spectrum, which is an important thing UM. And then the end of the Vietnam War is nineteen so there's not much time for that overlap, but it would be a pretty good time for experimentation if you're thinking, maybe we could weaponize this thing right after it gets invented. Yeah, yeah, man, I love that you're pointing out the timeline, because laser guided bombs were invented or developed we should say, by Uncle Sam during the Vietnam War, and they were precise, they worked. We have to remember war drives, UM, innovation concurrently with human misery. Right, So so the driver you're you're correct, like the story you heard does have does have some solid evidence to it. The idea of miniaturization comes up, like you were saying that you look at the early lasers and those are some big boys. Those are some chokers, right, Yeah, those are definitely some chokers. Uh if you wanted well, I mean even right now, because there are directed energy lasers that are meant to do harm to my knowledge, I do apologize. And my dogs barking in the background. She's upset there. She loves lasers. She's super hype about there some some fellows working on my h v a C system right now. She's really excited. Okay, so a laser right now that would be considered a laser weapon that because they do exist to an extent, but they're not the type that are going to cut anybody in half, at least that's not acknowledged anywhere. Those things are the size of a truck. I'd love to hear from maybe scientists out there are people who do work in optics, people who work in this type of energy field. I'd love to know, like, what are what is the actual state of laser weaponry because I'm looking online and trying to find just what the US government would state about a laser weapon and the actual capabilities, and I'm having a hard time unders finding first of all, and then understanding what I'm reading. Yeah, yeah, it's a bit of rarefied air. Sometimes there's the focus on the past stuff that we can do with a little bit more accuracy. Right, not quite laser guided, but there have been things declassified that are now publicly available information. There's a great article, uh in. You can find it on j store and it's free to read. It's called Vietnam War by a guy named Donald blackwelder In and it's all about the development of precision guided bombs and it starts with laser and infrared guided munitions in Southeast Asia during that conflict. Uh Matt. I would further add a little bit of fuel to the fire by pointing out that at this juncture, we can conclusively say that technological suppression exists and technology Like for anybody wondering, who's wondering why we're vibing so hard on I don't know, I can't find it, it's because we do know that it is completely possible for these things to exist well before they are revealed publicly. Right, come on with the Department of Defense. Thirty five years after the end of the Calm Flict in Vietnam, least America is part of it. In nineteen sixty four, five years after that, the US government officially declared lasers as future weapons. It's like, these are these are future weapons, but that doesn't mean they weren't attempting to develop lasers into weapons, like throughout the late sixties to the late nineties. Um, it's really interesting. There's this thing, the last name. This thing called the Joint Technology Office of High Energy Lasers is a thing that was created for the government in the year two thousand to develop laser weapons and developed not events. Also shout out of Vegan Secrecy Act. Check it out. There's a page on Lockheed Martin's website devoted to lasers harnessing the power of lasers. So, I mean, it's definitely what. It doesn't have anything about weaponry though, Yeah, I mean it's got a video direct and energy the time for laser weapons systems has come. I'll put it. I'll put it in the chat. Yeah, it's pretty wild because I mean, we know lasers can do cool stuff, we know, but they have to be close range usually, I think, right, and to use them for long range would require more energy than an autonomous you know, plane or vehicle could maybe have on board. Perhaps is the issue. But yeah, look at this, Look at this thing. Laser weapons systems like harnessing. It's literally at sea, in the air, and on the ground. Lockheed Martin is developing laser weapons systems to protect war fighters on the battlefield. Combined with expert platform integration, these systems are designed to defeat a growing range of threats to military forces and infrastructure. Yeah. I would also go back further to back to the seventies and sixties. We know that nineteen seventy one, collectively, like the US government and it's defense contractor Lattice, we're spending six point three billion dollars on advanced laser weaponry. Like not to sound all conspiratorial and black Monday murders about it, but the money moves, you know, and they're making money moves. Yes, Yeah, Just so there are field test of this, and we know that not everybody was impressed, but we also know that a lot of people were frightened by the potential of what they saw. You know this they gave it would be. This is not like investigation into psychic powers, right, or the creation of Manchurian candidates. This is not Yeah, this is not Hey, what if blah blah blah the Soviets are doing it to uh kind of lollygagging. They knew that the Soviet Union was working on laser technology, right, and so they were able to prove consistent, reproducible results. They knew, they knew something was up, and they were still working on it. It would be naive to assume otherwise. It's just more in public now. Well in kudos to the graphics department of Lockheed Martin. The header image on this page that I was talking about has like a battleship at sea with a tiny laser cannon with a purple beam of light shooting up into the sky and uh blowing up a plane. Yeah. Yeah. I want to point something out that they that Lockeed Martin has written on their website here quote as fiber laser power levels increase, our systems will be able to disable larger threats and do so across greater distances. When operated in conjunction with kinetic energy weapons. These systems can serve as a force multiplier. So what they're saying is these well, at least that's exactly what you're talking about, Ben, They're not saying it out loud, but they are not saying that these lasers are disintegrating or are destroying any enemy weapons systems. They are disabling them, which is a huge difference, right, because we're talking about potentially well, no, no, it's it's regarding this voicemail that we got. It's a story about an uncle who is engaged in the Vietnam War being shown a film of lasers back then cutting through enemy soldiers, like cutting them in half, which we're we're just trying to discuss. Would a laser ever have the power to do that? Could it even it? I mean I think if we're using the word could, then absolutely it could write the questions when does humanity right arrive at this at this ability. We also have to remember the US was up to all sorts of mad science during the Vietnam War. Agent orange is real, cloud seeding is real. They change the movements of the sky. You know, this is this is like some you got so involved in whether you could do it that you did ask whether you should kind of kind of stuff. That's the part of the equation, because should implies responsibility. Should implies some sort of moral you know, calculation that doesn't typically come into play in these scenarios. Um. You know what it makes me think of is that that show an amazing comic series, The Boys, where they use superheroes in Vietnam as weapons, and you know, laser eyes are like slicing through you know, enemies, and they also have like a big debacle where they accidentally blow up the wrong thing and create like an international you know event of some sort. Um. The last thing I want to read from this site is, uh, a quote from Paul Shattuck, the director of Directed Energy Systems. He says, quote, our beam control technology enables precision equivalent to shooting a beach ball off the top of the Empire State Building from the sand and Cisco Bay Bridge. So that's the kind of big picture future stuff, doomsday type stuff that I think, you know, science fiction has taught us to fear. Uh you know what, Okay, Yeah, that makes sense. I just I got a sound bite from that same website. You guys, they use the phrase a surgical scalpel when talking about one of their tactical lasers, and then they can also argue that's going to reduce collateral damage because they can literally laser focus on targets and you know, like from a far distance take out one target or or one you know, as opposed to broad stroke drone attacks that you know, kill lots of people, and even drones are are a more focused version of that. You know, it's definitely better than like dropping a nuke, you know what. Could use one of these laser systems. Ben, what's that d X thirty seven b oh god, yeah, yeah, totally, you know, get a little like, uh, get a case a d M maker on there just in case someone someone really out there. Yeah. Uh, maybe they will use the Helios system which has been delivered to the U. S. Navy sixty kill a lot high energy laser, right, that's the that's the solution. Yeah, funny words. Solution though, is weird because it makes me think of the final solution, you know. Uh. The Air Force also got something from Lockheed, the Lance Laser Advancements for Next Generation Compact Environments Smallest Airborne Laser Weapons System publicly admitted today that that was as of September nine this year. Wow, oh here here's the other thing. We're gonna learn the driver and maybe you can just write to us conspiracy at I heeart radio dot com. We'd love to know what branch of military your uncle was in and at what level he was operating, right, so, like what's the rank? Like, well, what was he doing? Because that might inform how we feel about the the story of the film, because maybe he was right onto something. M yeah, just so quite possibly. And you know, maybe it's unfair logically to say, well, the US was getting up to a bunch of bad science during that conflict, because war drives mad science. And just because it was experimentation of one unorthodox approach doesn't necessarily mean that all the stories about the other stuff are true. We just have to say that. But also again, technological suppression is real. It is real. National Invention Secrecy Act. Please please please, you've heard us mentioned it before. Look it up right, start asking why there's not more about it in the public sphere. And that's I don't know, man. Is that where we leave it today? Before we get lasered? We drop it right now because I'm you know, I'm getting my heat fixed right now, so I'm not feeling particularly warm yet, but if I heat up real fast all of a sudden, I'll let you all know there is and and let us know what you think. Folks. As always, thanks for tuning in. We hope this finds you. If you're a US resident, we hope this finds you amid a wonderful Thanksgiving with your friends and family. If you're not in the US, we hope you are having an amazing day or evening as well. Most importantly, we'd like to invite you over to our house digitally. We can't wait to hear stories from you. We try to be easy to find online. 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