YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Gladstein

lines on the record: 163
first: 2021-10-16
most recent: 2021-10-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And there's some practical things, man. Get on signals, start encrypting your messages. Take control over your privacy Media doesn't want you to, but check out Bitcoin. You can be your own bank. You can transact with people around the world and no one can stop you. This can put a stop to a lot of arbitrary power and a lot of human rights violations. Don't use WeChat. Question more. Research what's happening in Xinjiang. I mean, learn about what's happening in the genocide in that country and let's think about how we can build our societies so that we never have that kind of power concentration ever again.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's literally no way for them to access the internet. So there's kind of like social laziness that philosophers have warned about forever that we basically come sheep. And then there's actual like brainwashing and censorship that's possible by closing off your population and keeping them off like the internet, right? So I think these are two very different concepts.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a difference between laziness and ignorance, right? So I would be lazy if I didn't take advantage of the internet, right? Someone in North Korea doesn't have the option.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The open web and encryption in Bitcoin, these are things that help prevent social engineering and that promote more freedom and more possibilities, honestly, and more entrepreneurship and more creativity and more scientific inquiry. I mean, think about the people who tried to shut down scientific inquiry 500, 600 years ago, or whatever that were trying to say the Earth was the center of everything. And they were wrong, you know. And then all these conservative religious types throughout history have always said that there's no value in science and there's no value in technology. And they've been wrong the whole time. So let's continue pushing here. Let's continue pushing.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, technology can play a big role here in terms of the meaning of it all. It can really help emancipate, liberate people, at least so that they can make their own choices about what to do, at least so that we're on a level playing field. So technologies like the internet and Bitcoin, they can at least give you the option to do things your own way on your own terms. And then from there, we'll see. I think it's important that we have design choices where we can have a little more say and that not everything be pre-programmed for us. That would be very disappointing. So, I mean”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've all agreed arbitrary power, torture, executions. We know these things are wrong. I mean, we know they're wrong. We don't have to read a book to know that You do need to, people can get brainwashed. I mean, you talk to people who've grown up in North Korea that they don't know any better. Like they don't know what's going on in the outside world. So they've never experienced anything differently. So that's why.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't often zoom out that much. I feel like my day job is pretty interesting. It keeps me very engaged with all the stuff we've been talking about as far as the meaning of life though. It seems quite clear that we do have the possibility as a species to create these beautiful communities and constructs and to share an exploration of the world together that is often marred by cold realities that we've discussed. But I do feel like in a way that the meaning of life is that pursuit of course, biologically is the spread of our species, right? But also to pursue knowledge and science and innovation and freedom most importantly. I mean, I think freedom has to guide us or else we end up with prison camps. If we don't let freedom guide us, we end up with the prison camps. So we need to have scientific innovation and adventurism and colonization of the stars, but without the slavery and without the prison camps. I think that's so...”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the big question is how do we prevent the rise of this authoritarian surveillance state in China while at the same time kind of diffusing the military industrial complex on our side? That to me is like the biggest challenge of our time. I don't have the answer, but we should keep digging.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our leaders certainly haven't. We have like seven active wars right now. And neither the Russians and the Chinese, everybody's. Starting to invade everybody else.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believing in, you know, Biden announced we're leaving Afghanistan this year. 20 years. For what? Taliban are going to take over again.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can't we be patriotic and be pro-America, but not want the petrodollar? I should be proud of my country. Why do we need to be propping up the Saudis? Why do we need to be I think we can be just as powerful as we are today, if not more powerful in a Bitcoin world. If you think about the infrastructure Americans are building, all the innovations we're building, all the wealth we have, I think we'll be fine, better than fine. And we won't have these horrible negative externalities. It's really an optimistic vision for the future.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned about it more recently because of Bitcoin. And today, when I look back, it seems kind of obvious that the reason we invaded Iraq was because Saddam Hussein wanted to sell oil and euros. It seems really obvious when you go back and look at the chronology of it. And we were like, no, we actually don't want you to sell dollars in euros because that would threaten the dollar. So we're going to invade you and then you're not going to do it and then no one else is going to like sell dollars in oil and euros, right? I guess you could say the same thing about Gaddafi. But we as a nation have very much protected our reserve currency, let's put it that way.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a confusing time. There's a really good book by Ian McEwen called Saturday, a fiction book that takes place during, I think, 2003. And it's one day in the life of the doctor in London. It's really good, though, to revisit this time because he has two characters in the book, one of whom is very pro-war and one of them is very against war. Basically, he, the father himself, is pro-war and his son is against it. And they have all these debates. And it's nice to go back to revisit, but that time was, it's really crazy. And it really showed you that like the media could be captured into helping promote this idea of invading another country. So I was very curious about why we did it and who was pulling the strings and why what are the reasons that we went? And what's really interesting is that I took all these courses on and interviewed all these decision makers, whether they were neocons or whatever, different people who were involved. And the whole like dollar reserve currency thing really never came up until.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think, first of all, 9 11 just shifted the world dynamics completely from a focus on big power politics between the US, Russia, and China to this new threat of Islamic terror. And a lot of it we learned later, a lot of the things we did were manufactured, choreographed. There were no WMDs in Iraq. The reason our rulers said we needed to invade and destroy this country was a lie. And that, I think, is really been forgotten. I think a lot of the Zoomers today don't really know a lot about that time period. I mean, it was pretty crazy. Unanimously, I mean, Democrat, Republican, like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, like, and the Republicans, everybody wanted to invade this country. And it was very, it's very...”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was going to be an engineer actually, and then in 2003, we invaded Iraq, and I got very interested in why we did that as a nation. And I switched to my focus of study to international relations. And that's how I kind of went down the kind of political science democracy rabbit hole and ended up getting a job at the Human Rights Foundation. So I'm a very much a child of like 9-11 and the Iraq war. Those are the two really formative events for me personally.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just weirdos like you, yeah, I was going to mention one of the people I got who taught me about Bitcoin, her name's Roya Mapub. She's an Afghan technology CEO. And in 2013, she started paying her employees in Bitcoin because they were not allowed to open bank accounts. The women that worked for her, she started the country's first female, like all-female software company. If they brought cash home, they're like husbands or uncles or brothers would steal it from them. There's like a power, patriarchal dominance thing going on. But they had phones and she was able to pay them in Bitcoin and no one knew. And it gave them that power. And that's always stuck in my mind as a very interesting effect of this kind of thing of permissionless money that it can be an empowerment tool. So absolutely.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, think about that maturity that is capable and possible in many people. Like, I've participated in some of the years ago, some of the sort of selection processes for like the Teal Fellowship, which is like really amazing, like these people who are 14, 15, 16, who don't need to go to college. They're already so smart they can figure it out. But they wouldn't be allowed to have a bank account, right? So, hey, that's kind of cool. Like now you have a permissionless money. You can open up yourself without permission from your parents. That's kind of cool.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You need to be 18 to have a bank account or whatever. One of the people that we supported at HRF through our, we do software development funding for people in Bitcoin, open source projects. And one of the guys we funded is this very young, smart sort of prodigy. He's like 17. One of the reasons he got into Bitcoin was because he wanted to have control of his money when he was like 14 I mean, if you think in history, people who invented all kinds of incredible contributions to science or math, I mean, a lot of them did it before they were 15.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so core to everything. The United States, whether you want to call it the Taximericana, the Empire, the hyperpower, whatever you want to call this moment in time where the US is dominant around the world, it is because of the fact that we have this petrodollar system where we are able to force the Saudis and other oil-producing nations to sell their oil in dollars. That is really inescapable, inseparable from our power. And that's very rarely talked about. And it's very important to understand. So yeah, if young people can start thinking about that stuff, it'd be good.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking about my own upbringing, I went to a public school here, and we never learned about money. It was never part of our curriculum. Even personal finances was not part of our curriculum. You could take like an optional course to learn about business or something. And I think that that would be really valuable as a young person or as a teenager to start incorporating into your children's lives is a curiosity about what is money. I think it would be very healthy, regardless of what path that takes them down, because we don't think about it enough, either from an administrative sort of personal finance thing about like responsibility or more fundamentally, what is it and who creates it, where did it come from? Both of those things are very important. So my advice to a young person would be to get to the point where you feel like you can answer the question, what is money?”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, I'm a lot more concerned about what's happening right now. Like, what is destroying ourselves? If you were to go and see what's happening in Xinjiang or North Korea right now or Eritrea, that is destroying ourselves. And it's already happened. So I guess the end, that's why I said. Yes. I mean, if you don't decentralize and power is completely under one Life is destroyed as we know it. And you don't have to go into science fiction to know what a totalitarian hellscape dystopia is. There's several that exist already. And, you know, let's try to like help those people at the same time as we're trying to push out into space would be my counter, I guess.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I guess if we do not, okay, fine. If we do not decentralize properly out into different. Physical spaces, probably, I guess. Yeah.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I was born the day before the Challenger blew up and it was always so tragic for me to look back on that because that really altered our arc in terms of space exploration. That had not happened. We'd be on a very different arc. And I do respect and admire people pushing for exploration. But at the same time, I just want to recognize we know how unique Earth is. And I do think we got to do everything we can to protect it.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But no, I mean, you look at all this kind of like space fiction. And I mean, who would want to live on Mars, man? It's like a freaking desert. I mean, the Earth is so beautiful. I hope we can save it, you know, it's just so gorgeous. When you look at the Earth compared to any other exoplanet or whatever, you look at it. I mean, the Earth is so spectacular and wondrous and singular. I think we've got to do everything we can to save it here.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I guess long term we'd want to decentralize, right? We don't want a single point of failure in the physical space. The Earth is a single point of failure.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it got really bad. It was sort of a very existential threat. And Bitcoin survived. And that's why I'm so intrigued by it is that it basically survived an attack in an environment several years ago when Bitcoin was much more vulnerable than it is today. It survived an attack by a conglomeration of Chinese billionaires, Silicon Valley corporations, and a ton of people who owned the majority of the hash rate in all of this infrastructure. They had 83% of all the hash rate, and they couldn't get what they wanted. And that was so intriguing to me. Like, why didn't it get killed? So as Nick said, I think you should read the block size war, which is a book that you can get on Amazon by Jonathan Beer. Really good, kind of like really important to understand the scaling conflict and the visions over the different visions of what Bitcoin should be. And, you know, again, people like me believe it should be a freedom tool, not like a pain.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, first of all, Bitcoin has been attacked again many times. And we talk about you spoke about this with Nick Carter on your show, the sort of protocol wars or conflict or whatever, right? And Bitcoin almost died a whole bunch of times during that. And it ended up surviving.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Based on the idea of the executive order 6102, which is from 1933 when FDR made holding gold illegal in the United States. The idea is that banks would go around now with governments and try to steal everybody's Bitcoin. Well, in Bitcoin, we have a practice called proof of keys day every January 3rd, which is coinciding with the launch of the Bitcoin blockchain, where we all withdraw our keys from exchanges and we be sovereign users. What we are doing is we are preparing for a 6102 attack, which will one day probably come, right? The essay just goes through all of the possible attacks and it runs through the ones that have By making something public and saying you shouldn't do X, it actually increases attention about X a lot more, right? So I think there's a lot of interesting game theory there that people would enjoy”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, at the end, it does get into that, but it really also just kind of goes through technically why is it hard to do a 51% attack? If a government wanted to, could it really get all that equipment? There's a semiconductor shortage. It can't. There's certain things that stop governments from doing it, right? And same thing with this idea of a 6102, which would be”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I was really excited about Arabic Farsi. And I mean, it spreads, man. It's been really, really cool. So I'm proud of that. I also made a video that did very well for Reason magazine called Why Is Bitcoin Protecting Human Rights Around the World. It's five minutes and it just, I feel like I tried to boil everything that I. I want to tell you into this five minute video. So there's that. I would recommend that. And then if you're interested in the Why have governments not stopped it? Which I think is really intriguing. I wrote this long essay in Quillette in February called Why Haven't Governments banned Bitcoin? And maybe that'll be a helpful guide to some folks.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So two years ago, I came together with seven other people from around the world, and we wrote a book in a book sprint. We lived in a house for four days. We wrote a book together. It was really cool. It was like a design sprint, but we did it in book format. And my co-authors are from Nigeria, Venezuela, the Philippines, from former Soviet Union from all over. And it's called the Little Bitcoin Book. And I'm still proud of it. It's 100 pages. It's something you give to somebody who knows nothing about the topic. And it's not a technical book. It's about the sort of social, political aspect of it. Like, why is it important for you, for your finances, for your freedom, for your future? And we've translated it into a lot of languages by now. I think English, Spanish, and Portuguese are for sale, and little Bitcoinbook.com, you know, you go buy it. But we've made it as a free PDF in Mandarin, Hindi, Punjab, Korean Uyghur.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Andreas is the goat. Andreas is the goat. Dreas is the goat. I know a lot of people have issues with some of his more recent work, but Andreas is the goat. He's the reason I'm in Bitcoin. I mean, he's the reason I'm in Bitcoin.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very different from the Bitcoin standard. It's more for the average person. It's not a history book. It's a collection of his talks that he gave over like two or three years. It's not very technical. It's very approachable. And some of it might be dated now because it's like 2015, 2016. But I mean.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I did it by audiobook. And I just think this is an important one for people to start with because he goes through all the main concepts, whether it be proof of work or how the network functions, but he does it in a way that's extremely engaging and really fascinating. And it really just kind of like sparked my curiosity.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's this one character who's like an economist, and he's basically, he gets to the point where he's living as a refugee in prospect park in Brooklyn, and he's still saying everything's fine. So it's like it's dry, it's witty, but it's also about the surveillance state. It's about centralization of power. It's really good. So the mandibles, I would highly recommend. So those three books. And then on the topic of Bitcoin, because we talked about it a lot, I would just say that my portal into Bitcoin was the Internet of Money by Andreas Antonopoulos.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That one's the best. I mean, she's just so fearless, incredible. She interviews Putin in the book at the end. It's really good. Third one is a fiction book called The Mandibles, written by Lionel Shriver. This one's good. It's a good gift book. It's funny. It's dark. It's witty. But it's about the United States losing its status as the reserve currency and going into hyperinflation. And what's interesting is that the characters in the book map where we are today. The book itself is about the late, I think it's the late 2020s, and we have a populist president who decides to announce that the United States is like basically going to default on its debts. And the rest of the world comes up with a new currency. And everybody switches to that one. And the dollar overnight becomes worthless. And all these economists are saying, no, it's fine. Inflation won't be a problem.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit, a little bit. I would say it's not deep. I have another book on that, which I'll recommend in a second, but I would just say that it's a very powerfully written book about how society can basically deteriorate and how you can lose everything. The second book is, I just mentioned it, but The Man Without a Face by Masha Gess, an incredible book about modern Russia and Putin, just a masterpiece.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, yeah, because it's part of his whole family story and he's in there. He's interviewing people personally. So I would say that one is”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have four books I'll briefly mention. Number one is The Fear. The fear had a deep impact on me. The fear was written by Peter Godwin. It's about the systematic dismantling of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. Peter Zimbabwean, and it is a riveting book. I think everyone should read it because it helps you understand what it's like to go through not just authoritarianism, but also hyperinflation. And I mean, really, you know, at the end of the day, what the fear describes is how Mugabe took this country in the 1980s, and he actually brought it back in time to the 1920s in terms of infrastructure, literacy rates, health rates, all these things. He stole so much from the people. And it's a heartbreaking book, but it's a very important book. And it's a way to do excellent, excellent journalism. So the fear is a good one.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you just, if you've researched the topic, you should know it inside you because it would be, is there anything you're afraid to ask? That would be it. Make sure you're asking all the questions. As long as you're asking all the questions that you have, you're good. But if there's something you're afraid to ask, then maybe you're self-censoring, right?”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's quite clear when it descends into a PR session and you just have to be very careful about it. Asma al-Assad, the wife of the butcher in Syria, was like profiled by Vogue and it was this whole rose in the desert thing. It's a bunch of nonsense. Terrible, terrible, terrible, total propaganda. But a like honest interview where you're asking about all the tough questions, very important. So I think it's just a matter of content, right?”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But whitewashing is a huge issue. So I think it's completely fair to interview dictators and stuff like that. Amonpur does a pretty good job. She's really good. She makes sure that there's no messing around. I mean, her interviews of Museveni recently, the Ugandan dictator, was very good. I mean, she's basically like, well, why are you rigging another election? Please tell us, you know, and she's fearless and she's good. And that can be a helpful thing to have on YouTube as a resource.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not ask about the prison camps Yeah. Yeah. No, so from the human rights perspective, one of our programs is we try to. After people who do like PR for dictators. So then a lot of people do. Like PR firms in Washington get hired by all these dictators. And they make a lot of money to make them look good. It's called whitewashing or putting lipstick on a pig or whatever you want to do. Astro turfing is like the fake, make like fake social media accounts to make it seem like you're popular.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really good journalism is still something I absolutely love and I enjoy to say again this New Yorker piece on what's happening to the Uyghurs is incredibly well reported. However, on the other hand, you have this sort of clickbaity journalism that's all about sensationalism and that gets used as a tool. I mean, whether it be against things like privacy or Bitcoin or whatever, you have like people who sensationalize and it gets used in the service of the surveillance state, the war on terror, whatever. It's difficult. But, you know, I think journalism is essential to a free society. But it can sometimes be, it can wear my patients thin sometimes.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a conflicted relationship with journalism because to me, press freedom is so core. And independent journalists around the world are so brave. Especially in countries like Russia or China, et cetera.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, that's very different from advocacy or strategic thinking about what to do with Russia. Absolutely. Yeah, we should interview everybody and everybody should know exactly what they're thinking.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Handful of other Russian activists that we work closely with, including Vladimir Kara Murza, who again, I mean, it's just incredibly heroic. The man has survived two poisonings by Putin. They like to say that, you know, Russians will bring democracy to Russia on their own terms. They don't need our help. This is what Vladimir especially says. But what he does say is that we should stop propping up Putin. Like, that's kind of his step kind of legitimizing him. That's kind of his argument. He's like, we don't need your foreign interference. We don't need your ideas. We don't, you know, we don't need your help. We can do it on our own, but please stop propping up our illegitimate ruler. That's kind of like his point of view, which I think is interesting and fair.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things around the world together. He's come out to a lot of events in different cities around the world. And he's been a very active chairman. This isn't some figurehead. He's very involved. And it's really, really great. I mean, everything he's involved with is, you know, as one journalist who attends our events says when he walks in the room, the average IQ of the room goes up pretty significantly. I'm not a big chess person, unfortunately, so I have not been able to connect with him on that. But I think he probably would prefer it that way. All he gets is people who want to talk to him about chess, you know. So, here we can talk about kind of human rights strategy and how to improve our fight against dictators. But he really has that moral clarity that I really appreciate.”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if one could, it would be Gary, right? So we like really tried to get Gary to join, and thankfully he agreed. And we've had an amazing relationship with Gary over the years. I mean, he's been relentless in his pursuit of freedom. I mean, he could have retired and taken his career in a different direction. And he could be hanging out with Putin and have a pleasure yacht and all kinds of stuff. But he decided to risk it. And if you actually study like the times when he was running for president in Russia, Masha Gessen followed him around in The Man Without a Face. It's a great, great book about Putin. There's a fabulous chapter where she's following around Gary when he's campaigning. And I mean, he risked a lot. I mean, he can't go back to Russia anymore. He gave up his country. He's given up a huge amount to be able to speak his mind and to have this dream, this beautiful vision of a free and democratic Russia. He really believes in it. It's been a great experience. I work very closely with Gary. We talk a lot. We do different”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, our chairman at the Human Rights Foundation was Vaslav Havel, who, of course, was like the famous Czech democracy activist who helped lead the Velvet Revolution and then ended up becoming the first democratically elected leader of the Czech Republic after the Soviet Union fell. He passed away in 2011. And it was very difficult to find a replacement because who can fill Havel's shoes, you know?”
2021-10-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #231 – Alex Gladstein: Bitcoin, Authoritarianism, and Human Rights · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source