US Financial Data + $$$ + AI = Insane Scandals

Brian Chau joins Malcolm and Simone Collins to reveal explosive findings from his new AI-powered investigative outlet, Effort.news.The US Conference of Catholic Bishops derives 81% of its operating revenue from federal refugee and migration contracts (primarily HHS/Office of Refugee Resettlement). Total grant volume in the Preferred Communities program exploded from near-zero to over $1.2 billion after 2021, timed with Ukraine supplemental funding—yet GAO data shows the majority of that money went to non-Ukrainian populations.Similar patterns appear across Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Church World Service, and others. Several of these groups cut or threatened to cut resettlement work rather than assist white Afrikaner refugees. Brian also covers race-restricted prenatal/Medicaid programs that exclude non-Black and non-Brown women (potential Civil Rights Act and Equal Protection violations), the fabricated “Chinese EV dumping” narrative (actual direct subsidies ~1.2%), and more.Effort.news launches with multiple data-driven stories on government grants, religious NGOs, and policy capture. Full investigation and interactive charts at Effort.news. Follow Brian: @BrianChau57.This is independent, primary-source reporting powered by large public datasets and custom tools—exactly the kind of work traditional media has largely abandoned.Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, everyone. We are here with Brian Chow again, who’s putting together a very interesting new project.[00:00:07] He was actually trending on X either yesterday or the day before for these drops[00:00:11] Malcolm Collins: And he pitched a few stories that he has found. Like, he, he made an AI company that goes through public records and looks for coincidences and interesting stories, and then digs into it further.[00:00:24] And so he sends me a number of the really interesting things he found, or he sent it to Simone, because they didn’t wanna, they didn’t wanna s- tell me first. And I was like, “I don’t know- Or maybe because[00:00:33] Simone Collins: you never check signal ... should we,[00:00:34] Malcolm Collins: should we do it? Should we do it?” And she goes, “Malcolm, Malcolm, he found out something very interesting about the Catholics.”[00:00:40] And I was like, “Oh, okay, yeah, let’s have him on.” So let’s- Let’s hope he gets- ... let’s get into it.[00:00:45] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. But Brian, first tell, tell us, yeah, like, a, a little bit about what this is and where people can find it, but also what did you find that was, .[00:00:53] Brian Chau: So there’s a very prominent organization you know, claiming to represent Catholics in the US called the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. What percentage of this organization’s revenue do you think is from refugee and migration contracts from the federal government?[00:01:10] Simone Collins: Malcolm?[00:01:11] Malcolm Collins: Oh, my God. I- I mean, it would be crazy if it was over, like, 10.[00:01:18] Brian Chau: So, so is 10% your guess?[00:01:21] Malcolm Collins: Yes, that’s my guess.[00:01:22] Brian Chau: Your guess is 10%. Do you wanna click bait the, the, the viewers to listen more or do you wanna just say the percent?[00:01:29] Malcolm Collins: What’s the percent? I haven’t seen it.[00:01:31] Simone Collins: Yeah,[00:01:31] Brian Chau: say it. Say it, Brian. It’s 81%. 81%.[00:01:33] Malcolm Collins: 81%. How central is this organization? Like, what, w- are they the, the main bishop’s organization in the United States?[00:01:40] Brian Chau: Yeah. So US Conference for Cath- and for Catholic Bishops, there’s no, S- so there’s not exactly , a, like, official national organization in the, like, Catholic hierarchy. This is my understanding.[00:01:55] But this is basically, like, the largest such organization. It’s, like, a membership-based organization for Catholics in the US, and this is the, this is the largest such one[00:02:06] Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re, they’re nontrivial, and I, I asked Catholic friends of ours because I was like, “I’d never heard of this before.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t know.[00:02:11] Is this some, like, weird splint?” No, no, they-[00:02:14] Malcolm Collins: 81% ...[00:02:14] Simone Collins: they’re well aware of[00:02:15] Malcolm Collins: it. So, yeah So the, the Catholic Church in the United States okay, so the United States of Catholic Bishops is the main and official organization for Catholic bishops in the United States. It is the episcopal conference of the Catholic Church in the US, including the US Virgin Islands.[00:02:28] It brings together the active bishops of the Latin church diocese and the Eastern Catholic some things so that they can exercise certain blah, blah, blah. Its national membership org- Yeah, so it’s the ma- it’s the main one. Yes. Wait, this is so crazy. Th- so are[00:02:44] Simone Collins: they- I think tithing they, they received, like, funding from the Catholic Church from[00:02:48] Malcolm Collins: what I understand, too.[00:02:48] To understand that the, the, the, the majority of their revenue is coming from refugee-based, basically scams on the US government, I guess. W- would most of this be coming from the US government?[00:02:59] Brian Chau: Yeah, so, so all of this is based on federal HHS funding. I believe all of it is under the Office of Refugee Resettlement.[00:03:07] The main grant program that I’ve covered is exclusively from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. All these are classified as, as refugee and migration services. That’s the specific code under the federal grant system[00:03:19] Simone Collins: It’s really crazy. So no,[00:03:21] Malcolm Collins: I wanna, I wanna take a, take a, an aside here to sort of frame this for people[00:03:24] Brian Chau: It, it’s been, it’s been five minutes and you’ve already been truth nuked.[00:03:27] Malcolm Collins: Because I think a lot of people do not realize how much the Catholic Church upper class, the cardinals, the pope, and, and the bishops are profiting from the stripping of the Catholic Church, right? Like, as they lower the numbers of people, like you’re like, “Well, if the Roman Mass is more popular, why aren’t they doing it?”[00:03:49] If they can get a diocese to, like, super low numbers, then they can sell off all the stuff in the diocese and make a lot of money, and they’ve been selling these very frequently recently- Oh ... to become [00:04:00] mosques. And what’s interesting is they’ll take these old Catholic institutions and the SPSX, multiple times, has raised the money to buy these old, you know, cathedrals and, and Catholic schools and stuff like that, but they refuse to sell to the SSPX, and then they convert them into mosques, and they, and they run off with the money.[00:04:17] But it’s not just there. It’s also that they benefit from the leftist policies through bringing in just endless waves of immigration. And so if you’re wondering, like, why is this being pushed so hard for by the Vatican, ‘cause they have written a number of things about like, “No, you need unlimited immigration into Europe and into the United States,” is th- that they are directly fi- not just financially benefiting from this, but it is their primary source of income.[00:04:41] But continue.[00:04:42] Brian Chau: Yeah, you can pull up the auditing here. Actually, what you just said might explain something else interesting that I found. So there’s two revenue numbers here. There’s a smaller one and, and a bigger one. 81% is, is the fraction of the smaller one, which excludes net assets released from restrictions, which is this, like, interesting thing.[00:05:04] It’s not, like, necessarily revenue, but it’s this kind of internal transfer of assets. And that was actually also a massive amount. It was like $80 million. Oh,[00:05:13] Simone Collins: no.[00:05:14] Brian Chau: Oh, no. Oh, no. The, the total revenue is, is a bit over 300 million, and so, so it’s, it’s around 220 million without the net assets released from re- from restrictions, and 180 million of that is from the MRS Migration and Refugee Services contracts.[00:05:29] So around 81% of the total, not including the assets released from restrictions. But the assets released from restrictions, I never really, like... i’ve been kind of rushing to, to do launch and, and get the story published, but I never really fully looked into what the assets released from restrictions were.[00:05:45] And it might be that. It might be what you’re talking about[00:05:48] Malcolm Collins: Well, something that makes this story a little interesting for me, so I’m, I’m digging a bit deeper on this, is I remember that they shut down one of their major immigration branches right when the Afrikaners, the white Afrikaners were looking to immigrate to the United States.[00:06:02] Now maybe-[00:06:02] Brian Chau: Yeah, yeah, that actually that intersects with the story. Oh. Because the, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, that, that was the org that, I believe they, they cut ties with the specific refugee resettlement services under Trump. There, there was this different organization that kind of picked up the grant where it left off called the the, the acronym is CCUSA.[00:06:23] Let me just quickly look up what the organization is. Catholic Charities USA. Yeah. So, so, so that might have been a little overstated, but yeah, that, that, that ties into the story.[00:06:35] Malcolm Collins: Okay, continue. Just, just go with the story. I wanna hear the whole thing.[00:06:38] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so we can pull it up. There’s a lot of beautiful graphs.[00:06:42] Know you guys love the graphs. We love the graphs. We all love the graphs here. You can put up here the grant size by start month graph, and let me know what you see in this graph. Should, should be the graph that says grant size by start month.[00:06:54] Preferred committees 1.2. Yeah, go, go[00:06:57] Malcolm Collins: to grant size by start month one.[00:06:59] Simone Collins: Oh, this should be the- Should be the, should be the[00:07:00] Brian Chau: first page[00:07:01] Brian. Yeah.[00:07:01] Simone Collins: Yeah. So what we’re looking at is basically a graph of on the y-axis, grant size, x-axis, grant start month and year. So it’s functionally zero, 2007, 2008, ‘09, ‘10, ‘13. Tiny, tiny little bit in 2014. Then again in 2017 a little higher. Yeah,[00:07:22] Brian Chau: that’s around 16 million- Oh ... in uh, in 2016. In[00:07:26] Simone Collins: 2016.[00:07:26] Brian Chau: And then it jumps to 1.2 billion total, and each individual grant size is around 100 to $150 million in 20- So what happened in[00:07:37] Simone Collins: 2022?[00:07:37] ‘Cause sud- yeah, suddenly, like it’s like basically this is a chart of just sudden and weird activity out of nowhere in 2022.[00:07:42] Brian Chau: Yeah, it’s, it’s booming. This, this is the, this is the out of control exponential growth of the of the grant sizes. I was gonna draw the exponential curve here, you know, at this rate, you know, preferred communities program will, will consume all world GDP by 2030.[00:07:57] It’s a little joke about the, the, the [00:08:00] AI, AI discourse, but So this was like right at the end of COVID You’re right at the end[00:08:04] Simone Collins: of[00:08:04] Brian Chau: COVID ... a bit after the end of COVID, and it, what it really consi- coincides with is the Ukraine war. You can actually see the systematic way-[00:08:13] Malcolm Collins: COVID, by the way- And you, and-[00:08:14] for people who don’t know, caused by a Catholic. Anthony Fauci is a Catholic for people who don’t know. Oh, he is? Biden is a Catholic. Oh,[00:08:22] Simone Collins: God.[00:08:23] Malcolm Collins: Oh. Just putting this out there, guys. If, if[00:08:26] Simone Collins: COVID. Making[00:08:27] Malcolm Collins: political here. I was like- Because we have a good Catholic fan base. We like our Catholic fans. It’s just the church and some of your members , are, you know, kinda sus.[00:08:36] Simone Collins: Oh, my God. Okay, great.[00:08:37] Brian Chau: So I jumped ahead a little bit here, but here you can see the, the timeline. Oh looks like there’s a little bit of an issue in the prints one. The numbers are certainly in the right box on the actual website.[00:08:49] But here you can see the grant expansion amounts, and this is actually a very common pattern not just in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, but across the entire US government-[00:08:59] Malcolm Collins: Mm ...[00:08:59] Brian Chau: where there are legal limits to how large the grants can be. In this case- Mm ... 4.5 million a year. Obviously by the end of, you know, this, this program it was not five, 4.5 million a year, not even close per grant.[00:09:13] And it, you know, it was a, a, up to 160 something million across s- five years. And how that happened was that there’s systematic grant expansion. You apply for a grant for a much smaller amount, and then you apply for an extension of that grant by, you know, essentially 100 times the original amounts.[00:09:34] Oh. The specific funding package that was tied to this expansion was kind of interesting. So this, after the start of the Ukraine war HHS got 3.7 billion for refugee resettlement. And, and, and you, you would in your mind you would think, “Okay, that kind of makes sense. There’s U- there’s the Ukraine war, Ukrainian refugees actually fleeing conflict.”[00:09:53] And so, so you take that money and you would use it to help resettle Ukrainian refugees. Maybe you’re for that, maybe you’re against that, but that’s a, at least a story that kind of makes sense. What actually happened so based on a government accountability office report 47% of that, around 1.79 billion went to it was estimated to go to Ukrainian beneficiaries.[00:10:12] Okay ... they were able to track down 982 million of that that was definitely allocated to Ukrainian refugees. That means the majority of the, the funding package 1.99 billion went to, as they describe it, other populations eligible for OR ser- services. Oh. So the Ukraine war package, part of the Ukraine war bill that was passed as the Ukraine war bill more than half of that[00:10:34] Malcolm Collins: Went to Somalians[00:10:35] Brian Chau: Actually, yeah.[00:10:36] No. To- Or[00:10:38] Malcolm Collins: the Catholic Church[00:10:38] Brian Chau: Was not related to, to, to the Ukrainian refugees at all. And even- This is[00:10:43] Malcolm Collins: wild. Well,[00:10:43] Brian Chau: I want to[00:10:44] Malcolm Collins: highlight for people, like, where, where we are with this. Imagine if a Jewish president was elected, right? Like, first imagine if Fauci was Jewish, what, what, you know, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes would be saying right now instead of a Catholic.[00:10:58] Imagine if we elected a, Because all of this happened under the Biden presidency, who was a Catholic, right? This is why the church fights so hard against right-wing causes. I think a lot of people think, oh, it’s just... It, it, it is ideological, but it’s also financial, right? Th- is, is what we’re seeing here, and this is amazing that you got this data.[00:11:18] And it’s so structurally, And again, when I’m like, “No, we’re, we’re pro-individual Catholics,” the, the analogy I always make here is I’m always very confused by it. It’s like you have a friend who’s like a henchman for like an obvious super villain and, and he’s like a really nice guy. And you’re like-[00:11:34] why, why do you, why do you hench for this guy, right? Like- What a henchman ... he’s actually evil. Like, like transparently it’s, it’s, his, it’s his motto is like, “I do evil.” But anyway, continue.[00:11:46] Speaker: Awesome. We are back, dude oh, I will be [00:12:00] there.[00:12:37] Brian Chau: Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, I’m a, I’m a huge fan of, like, almost every Russian that I meet. Like Pavel, you know, amazing.[00:12:44] Yeah. But like, you know, the Russian government, not a, not a huge fan. Not a huge fan. Yeah, I’m[00:12:49] Malcolm Collins: the same way. I, I like, I like pretty much every Russian I’ve, I, I’ve met. But I, I also- Yeah,[00:12:54] Simone Collins: actually Russians are weirdly cool[00:12:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Same with Chinese people, for example. Nobody ever gets confused around the, with like Chinese people thinking you’re anti-Chinese person because you’re against the CCP, right?[00:13:04] But like, I don’t, I don’t know why like Chinese people still s- the, the, if y- I guess if you actively support the CCP-[00:13:11] Simone Collins: You kind of don’t get to not actively support the CCP ... No, you[00:13:14] Malcolm Collins: do if you’re in another country, right? Like, but I- I know ... I guess it’s, it’s, it’s harder because like if you’re a Catholic you still have to be in submission to the Magisterium.[00:13:22] And, you know, your money goes to this if you’re tithing, so.[00:13:25] Simone Collins: Whereas in contrast, if you’re[00:13:27] Brian Chau: an American- Yeah, although it’s, it’s interesting because it, it kind of is the other way around. So, so if you keep going in the article I, I pulled the audit statements for 2023 and 2024 from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.[00:13:44] Hmm. So you can see that the, the grant amounts, this is where the 81.8% number comes from.[00:13:50] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.[00:13:50] Brian Chau: Government contracts and grants revenue, and it’s c- clarified later on that all of that exclusively comes from migration and refugee services. That’s 180 million. It’s around 81 per- percent of the total revenue, not including assets released from restrictions.[00:14:05] And actually s- around 13 million of that, 13.4 million, goes to paying salaries for, for, for USCCB members. So a lot of their around a third of their total like employee salaries, taxes, and benefits are being paid out of this program.[00:14:23] Simone Collins: Wow.[00:14:23] Malcolm Collins: Being paid by you the taxpayer. Like it, it, it, this is the thing when we talk about like parasitic religious organizations and stuff like this that make it very difficult to, even if the individual members are nice, to allow to set up, operate, or allow them to have positions of power within your government when, when they’re milking us dry with stuff like this.[00:14:44] And it’s, it’s one of these groups that we don’t even that I, that I think a lot of people, maybe on our channel we talk about it more, but like this is horrifying. Continue.[00:14:53] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so if you go to, Actually a few pages back. So you can see how these, these grants were scaled up. I have both the ordinary, you know, linear scale and the log scale here.[00:15:06] Malcolm Collins: Hmm.[00:15:07] Brian Chau: And, and this is, I think the more... The, the most important, like, systematic pattern is this trend of grant expansion. I’ll be doing another story. This, this one’s not, not ready yet. It’s a, it’s, it’s this massive story where we saw something very similar and up to an even bigger number, a number 10 times as much with with Medicaid as well.[00:15:28] Simone Collins: Oh, no. No, no, no. And[00:15:29] Brian Chau: so, th- there’s this systematic strategy of applying for awards, and I think that the accountability measures that did exist in the United States I, I think they’re actually, like, pretty good for, for this even though there’s a loophole which is that it set initial grant limits, right?[00:15:47] Hmm. It set initial limits to, to the grants, and the way that this was circumvented by the agencies was that it’s almost this, like, kind of silly, like, software bug where you can kind of apply for a grant and then you can o- [00:16:00] you can expand the grants- Yeah, yeah.[00:16:01] Malcolm Collins: You mentioned this already ...[00:16:02] Brian Chau: 100 times the original amount.[00:16:04] Simone Collins: It- 100 times? ...[00:16:05] Brian Chau: it’s this pattern. Yeah, yeah. It, it’s this, like, crazy pattern a, 100 times in some of these in- individual grants, and then at a, at a collective level around roughly I guess also ar- around 100 times. From around 60 million total to around 1.2 billion total. And a lot of that goes into as you were saying direct support of either pro-asylum policies and, and opposition to, to Trump’s statements.[00:16:30] So you can see in this- I did wanna- ... page here. Oh, God. There’s this graph. This is every official statement by, by each of these organizations-[00:16:38] Simone Collins: Oh ...[00:16:38] Brian Chau: about, you know, Trump or Trump[00:16:40] Malcolm Collins: policies. What, what, what I found very interesting about this is this isn’t just the main one. It looks like all, all the Catholic organizations are involved in this.[00:16:47] You[00:16:48] Brian Chau: know, like- Yeah, and it’s not just Catholics. So, so there’s organizations... A- and to, to me at least, I think it’s very important to de- delineate between, like, a lot of the time the, the membership of of not just the Catholic Church but, but all, all of these church, churches, it’s, it’s actually not just them.[00:17:02] There are many- Yeah, so wait ... religious denominations that have groups- Episcopal Migration Ministries. Well, let, let’s see what religions are- ... which represent them or claim to represent them but are really, like overwhelmingly funded by these mi- migration contracts. So, Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries.[00:17:17] Of course, there’s been a lot of controversy recently around Episcopalians a- and, and you know, their church leadership. Yeah. Lutheran- They were the ones who shut down their[00:17:25] Malcolm Collins: entire thing over... rather[00:17:27] Simone Collins: than help, No, who split off, right? ... white supremacists. There was just a split-off group, right?[00:17:30] Brian Chau: Yeah, and, and then there, there, there’s Chayes which claims to represent Jewish values.[00:17:35] So, there, there’s a lot of religious dom- denominations whose leadership or, or, you know, who- whose the, the, the organizations which claim to be their leaders are, are majority receiving these grants. And you can go on-[00:17:47] Malcolm Collins: Episcopal Migration Ministries, how, what... Well, I mean, the, the-[00:17:50] Brian Chau: Yeah ...[00:17:50] Malcolm Collins: the, I think a lot of this also shows the rot within, well, I mean, Episc- are, are the Episcopal Migration Ministries Episcopals or do they mean Episcopal Catholics?[00:18:01] Simone Collins: Also, one thing I’m curious about is- Christian Ministries ... because I, I, when I i- initially looked it up, I don’t remember getting a really satisfactory answer. Do you, did you get any color on what- Oh, it’s the Episcopal Church.[00:18:12] Brian Chau: Okay. It’s it’s the Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Advocacy program of the Episcopal Church.[00:18:17] Oh,[00:18:17] Simone Collins: okay.[00:18:17] Brian Chau: Yeah, it’s the Episcopal Church. I remember now, actually. So if you go to the statements section- Yeah ... there’s actually a letter from the leadership of the Episcopal Migration Min- Ministries that was published by the Episcopal Church. So I, I was actually very curious about this, of how much these organizations of the Episcopal Migration Ministry specifically, how much that represented the official positions of the church.[00:18:42] And it seems to be a pretty direct representation, because this was published on the Episcopal on the Episcopal Church website, the statement from the Episcopal Migration Ministries, which appears which appears to be the kind of like subcomponent of, of the Episcopal Church focused on migration[00:19:00] Malcolm Collins: And so what, what does it say?[00:19:03] Brian Chau: Yeah, so, Oh ... yeah, it, it’s on the screen right now.[00:19:06] Yeah, so that I can- “The Episcopal Church. I’m writing with some significant news about Episcopal Migration Ministries organization that leads Episcopal Church’s Refugee Resettlement Ministry.[00:19:13] Since January, the previous bipartisan US Refugee Admissions Program, which, in, in which we participate, has essentially shut down. Virtually no new refugees have arrived, hundreds of staff and resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain.[00:19:28] Then, just over two, two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to ref- resettle Afrikaners from South Africa whom the US government has classified as refugees. In light of our church’s steadfast commis- commitment to racial justice and reconciliation-[00:19:44] Simone Collins: Ah[00:19:44] Brian Chau: and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of South, in Southern Africa, we will, we’re not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the fiscal feder- federal fiscal year, we’ll conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the US federal government. I want to be very clear about why we made this decision and what we [00:20:00] believe lies ahead for E- Episcopal Migration Ministries’ w- vital work.[00:20:03] It has been painful to watch one group of refugees selected in highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I’m sha- saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who, who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now face danger at home because of their service to our co- country.”[00:20:23] So on and so forth. So they[00:20:24] Malcolm Collins: literally shut down- Other groups as well ... the entire scam rather than accidentally help white people.[00:20:29] Brian Chau: Yeah. And, and I think there, there’s a small correction I wanna make. This one was the one that was more explicit about connection and disconnecting their funding due to due to- Yeah, yeah[00:20:38] the,[00:20:38] Malcolm Collins: the, the African refugees The Catholic one didn’t say that’s why they were shutting[00:20:40] Brian Chau: it down. Well, the Catholic ones- They just shut it- Yeah, the Catholic ones also- ... at the same time ... disconnected their funding. The, the funding I think got transferred to Catholic Charities USA, so I think it wasn’t a total, you know, disconnect.[00:20:50] But that, that one was not the one that was explicitly about the S- South African resettlement issue.[00:20:54] Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, but they didn’t, they didn’t say it was. It just happened at the same time.[00:20:58] Brian Chau: Yeah, it happened around roughly the same time, yeah.[00:21:00] Malcolm Collins: Which-[00:21:00] Simone Collins: What exactly were they doing? So y- you mentioned, for example advocating for certain policy.[00:21:06] But were they actually on the ground helping refugees find apartments? Like, what exactly were they getting paid to do per the preferred settlement program?[00:21:17] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so a lot of this was finding housing, actually like physically relocating refugees. So specifically or, or, you know, This gets a little fuzzy as well because we know that not all of the people served by these programs in the by the respective churches are actually people who have refugee status.[00:21:38] But at least nominally a- and there are actually other grants as well, so it’s kind of mixed in so that we- Even though this specific grant is earmarked for refugee services, or at least, you know, that’s the purpose of the grant we don’t know how much of this in practice goes towards people who have refugee status versus or other kinds of migrants.[00:22:01] And there are other grants that they receive that are legally, like, allowed to be used for other migrants, but it’s all sort of mixed in into, into the same few programs.[00:22:10] Simone Collins: Hmm.[00:22:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. Oh, and for people who aren’t familiar with what the Episcopal Church is, because I think some people could hear that and they could think it’s just a, a generic Protestant church.[00:22:20] When the Catholic Church broke off from the English church the version of the Protestants that wanted to continue to still worship as if they were Catholic using all of the iconography and everything like that, they became the Anglicans. And when the Anglicans came to the United States, they became the Episcopals.[00:22:38] So they are a, a mirror of the... Pretty much I think where we’re seeing this is in, in, in all of the high church sort of religious institutions with- within the United States.[00:22:49] Simone Collins: So you’re just saying Episcopals are like the Diane Catholics. We don’t quite call them[00:22:51] Brian Chau: Catholics, but they’re Catholics.[00:22:54] Malcolm Collins: Oh no. Look, their churches are all fancy. Oh, no. They, they got all the, the, the fancies.[00:22:58] Simone Collins: Idolatrous churches. Yeah, they- Oh, the scandal.[00:23:03] Malcolm Collins: Scandal. But yeah, a bunch of... Oh, and look who, who we got here as well, Simone, the Lutherans.[00:23:08] Simone Collins: Oh, great. You- Yeah.[00:23:10] Malcolm Collins: You know my thoughts that that’s where[00:23:12] Simone Collins: Lyman Stone comes from.[00:23:12] Yes, we, we know how you feel about the Lutherans. Well, Brian,[00:23:17] Brian Chau: you just- Is Brian’s thoughts on the Lutherans formed by Lyman Stone or, or, or is it the other way around?[00:23:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right.[00:23:23] Simone Collins: Oh, no comment. We love- Yeah, you, you would think that would- We love Lyman Stone ...[00:23:28] Brian Chau: Lu- you would think that would make you guys more favorable to the Lutheran Church, but maybe not.[00:23:34] Simone Collins: Yeah, you’d think that, yeah, the, the heavy- The- ... you know, Protestant[00:23:37] Brian Chau: nature ... yeah, but, but you can see here vast majority, like nine- 90-plus percent in some of these cases, of their revenue come from these migration services grants. And so they are-[00:23:48] Simone Collins: That’s so... Do you think a part of this is that they just don’t have tithing parishioners anymore, and so the fundamental business model of being a religious institution today has changed?[00:23:57] And the surviving religious institutions that [00:24:00] have non-trivial infrastructure and bureaucracy have to basically become de facto government NGOs, like, getting these grants? Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. Like, what, what[00:24:08] Brian Chau: is going on? Like, if you’re thinking of it from, like, a, a, a mergers and acquisitions perspective, it’s like, okay, what do, what do, what did they have?[00:24:15] They, they have churches in, in communities. A lot of these communities are shrinking. Mm-hmm. Like if I were to give the, the positive case for this, is that there is a kind of business synergy there, right? Where you have like, you, you have land, you have like at least some amount of parishioners that, that, that can work and, you know, theoretically help people settle in.[00:24:36] And so it’s not it’s not like out of the, out of question to say, you know, to be fair to them, to say like, “Oh, this is a, a service that they would be somewhat competent in, in, in providing.” So that I think is fair. But especially when you get to the political statements and it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like saying like, you know, you know, of course people will, will talk about this as like the most common example, but if defense contractors were kind of like commonly like paraded out by the media every time there was a scandal over defense, and they were taken as a credible, you know, neutral source of saying like, you know, the, the, the fact that there’s opposition to more, more wars and more defense contracts is a moral outrage, you know, it, it would be at least a little suspect, right?[00:25:25] Hmm. And, and that’s why I think the, the, the angle here, where it’s like, okay, you can provide these services. In, in many cases maybe you’re, you know, maybe that’s a policy we don’t wanna be funding, maybe it’s a policy we do wanna be funding, you know. You can have a debate over that. But if your primary source of income is coming from migration contractors, then you should not be taken as a credible source either morally or, or kind of, factually on you know, migration policy by the media, which often very uncritically is what happens here.[00:25:56] These organizations will come out, they’ll, they’ll def- denounce the Trump migration policies and there will be no mention whatsoever of the, the majority, you know, stake in migration contracting revenue that all these organizations have.[00:26:11] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That is wild. Well, and it also shows why for a lot of these high church iterations of Christianity, the motivation that they have to create sort of the, a, you know, a, a leftist bureaucrat state because they have such an easy time sipping from it, right?[00:26:29] You know, the, the like, well like ticks, like parasites. You know, they call it the swamp. And that the-[00:26:34] Brian Chau: Well, this, this is a fascinating problem, right? We, we kind of still don’t know why. We don’t know how the cycle starts. Is it the bureaucracy that causes the leftism or the leftism- Yeah ... that causes the bureaucracy?[00:26:43] And, Maybe it’s both, right?[00:26:46] Simone Collins: Well, and also, like, to what, how, how much, are you aware of how much of the migrant resettlement or preferred community programs revenue or, like, grant revenue went to, or sorry, grant money went to religious institutions to execute it? Because something that also surprises me is there’s kind of this reputation among leftist YouTubers that I listen to, for example, that like, “Well, religious conservatives are, you know, they’re like the bad guy, they’re not help...[00:27:12] You know, we need to help immigrate immigrants, we need to help migrants.” And, and they would never think that this huge portion of people actually out there helping migrants resettle in the United States are the very religious institutions that they demonize. So I, I’m wondering, like, how, how much- Well, I mean,[00:27:28] Malcolm Collins: the institutions are entirely captured, Simone.[00:27:30] Like-[00:27:31] Simone Collins: Well, I’m, I’m aware of that, but they aren’t. I’m just wondering how much of the migrant resettlement is being done by religious institutions versus just other nonprofits. Yeah,[00:27:39] Brian Chau: it’s not exclusively. It’s a bit over half. It might be 60%. Oh, that’s[00:27:43] Simone Collins: a lot. No, that’s-[00:27:44] That’s huge.[00:27:45] Brian Chau: Yeah. But there are, there are other large recipients.[00:27:49] The, the largest recipient, I, I, I believe, at least based on the terms of the initial contract, was USCCB which, which was 164 million, I believe. Let me quickly [00:28:00] double-check that , Church World Service, 162 million. Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service, 159 million.[00:28:05] USCCB, 141 million. Episcopal Migration Ministry is 80 million. A- and that’s about half the pool. So, so the entire pool was just over $1.2 billion.[00:28:18] Simone Collins: Okay. Wow. Yeah. No, that’s, that is, that is non-trivial. That just... Yeah. What surprises me first off is just knowing that the Catholic Church has such a big specialty in helping m- helping migrants resettle.[00:28:29] Two, that this much money is going out to this, and that also this grant expansion trick, I love it. My gosh. I mean, I, I hate it obviously, but like, it makes sense. We have won government contracts through some business things we’ve worked on in the past, and the amount of oversight once you’ve won them is, is kind of atrociously low and, and very sloppy.[00:28:51] And m- the-[00:28:52] Brian Chau: Yeah, it’s all concentrated on this bidding process, right?[00:28:55] Simone Collins: Yes. It’s... Well, it’s- And that’s what makes sense from an incentive model ... but the bidding process is extremely corrupt. It, it’s, it’s, it’s l- it’s corrupt and it’s loaded, and it’s not actually taken that seriously. And then once[00:29:05] Brian Chau: you win- But it’s corrupt in an interesting way.[00:29:06] There, there’s actually an in progress story that, that I’m reporting out on this. It’s corrupt in an interesting way- Mm ... which is actually that there is a lot of oversight, and that oversight is kind of selective. It’s, i- it’s sometimes applied as, as, as a weapon or an effective tool to keep people out.[00:29:18] It’s[00:29:19] Simone Collins: performative oversight. It’s like, “Look, we did all the right things, and just happened to give it to our person who we chose ahead of time.”[00:29:26] Brian Chau: Yeah. I, I think that’s true in part. But it, it’s also true that like, it creates a number of check boxes where you can just say like, “Actually, these new competitors do not fill out the proper check boxes.”[00:29:40] So, so, so it is this like somewhat procedurally effective gate keeping mechanism.[00:29:45] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.[00:29:46] Brian Chau: But once that... Y- you’re, you’re right that once that grant approves is approved, there’s very little recourse. And, and there’s very little that, that you can actually do to, to continue applying oversight or, or to request further information.[00:30:00] It’s, it- it’s this very sort of one-way door.[00:30:05] Simone Collins: It’s really s- I, I just, I, I don’t know. It horrifies me. And now that I know that there’s addit- this additional way that people are getting a ton of extra money- Yeah ... re- it really freaks me out. So this is fascinating. Where can people find the article? And like, what, what is- Yeah,[00:30:18] Brian Chau: Effort.news.[00:30:20] Simone Collins: What?[00:30:21] Brian Chau: Effort.news.[00:30:23] Simone Collins: Effort[00:30:23] Brian Chau: dot is it live now? That, that will not be up at the time of recording- Okay ... but it will be up at the time of releasing this. The launch is August 10th-[00:30:29] Malcolm Collins: Do you[00:30:29] Brian Chau: have any other fun findings that you can give as like[00:30:32] Malcolm Collins: summaries for people that they can dig deeper on?[00:30:34] Simone Collins: Oh, he has other fun findings.[00:30:35] Brian Chau: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. There is a ton of stuff that, that we’re launching. We’re launching with between five to seven stories depending on how much time I have to, to, to typeset the other stories later today. But there, there is a lot there. There is foreign interference by the British government pushing censor- censorship laws in the United States.[00:30:57] There is this one I think is one that you guys will also find really delightful. Were you guys aware of that, like, degrowth letter that was going around a few months ago? Mm-mm. No. I think a month ago. There, there was this, this degrowth letter. A lot of people made fun of it because it was like, the headline was like we’ve...[00:31:14] “the economists have done the math, you know, we need degrowth,” or something like that. It, that’s not the exact quote. But, but of course, like, economists were, were, like, dunking on this because y- of course most economists do not believe that we need degrowth. But this organization was funded by a number of European NGOs who were founded by a- and who receive the majority of their money from literal 19th century heirs.[00:31:38] Literally, like, people whose, like, great-great-grandfather started, like, an oil business in, like, the f*****g 1800s and are now s- like, donating their, like, dead great-great-grandfather’s money to, like, fund degrowth in Europe.[00:31:54] Malcolm Collins: God.[00:31:55] Simone Collins: That checks out. Yeah, that, that makes a lot[00:31:56] Malcolm Collins: of sense. That class that we’ve talked about is one of the most ideologically [00:32:00] captured classes.[00:32:00] Yes. God, imagine if we had rich people who, who wanted to fund us.[00:32:03] Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah,[00:32:04] Brian Chau: it actually, it actually makes me respect the American socialists more. There’s a large American foundation that’s also funding some of these projects called the Omidyar Network. And even the socialists in the United States make their own money.[00:32:20] They, they actually founded eBay. So, so, so even, even the socialists in, in America are more hardworking than the, than the socialists in, in Europe[00:32:30] Simone Collins: We can take pride in that at least. Yes, that is, that is somewhat encouraging. Some of the socialists, Brian. I mean, you know, let’s not be too generous.[00:32:38] Brian Chau: Yeah, at least the- Yeah[00:32:40] at least the, at least the donors, right? Yes, the donors. This is- You know, it, it’s actually a lot more admirable, I think. If you’re, if you’re like an, an heir to like a 19th century fortune and that’s what you’re spending your money on, it’s actually like, I think, a totally different valence, you know, than, than if you a- actually were, were, were legitimately successful, right?[00:32:57] And then you decide to spend your money on, on, on policies. I mean, I don’t agree with those policies, but it’s actually like a lot more respectable, at least in my view. We have a, we have a, also in the, in the launch, we have a race-based Medicare rationing. Do you wanna talk about race-based Medicare rationing?[00:33:13] Simone Collins: Yeah, I thought that that was- We’re[00:33:14] Brian Chau: still doing it ...[00:33:14] Simone Collins: really interesting. They[00:33:16] Brian Chau: are. Yeah, let’s talk about that. Yeah, it’s[00:33:16] Malcolm Collins: about Nate and McCall. Yeah. Talk about race-based Medicare rationing. What did you find in that?[00:33:20] Brian Chau: Sure. We can pull that up. Let’s,[00:33:23] Simone Collins: Yeah, this is the other article you sent to me, Brian, right?[00:33:25] And this, this is actually a, a pro-natalist story too because-[00:33:28] Brian Chau: Yeah. Oh, yeah, the, the, the race-based natalism policy.[00:33:31] Simone Collins: This one was crazy, too. W- with the punchline being-[00:33:34] Brian Chau: I can provide more proper typesetting ...[00:33:34] Simone Collins: that people who were not basically Black or brown broadly were being denied in some cases, like prenatal services because they were not Black or brown, which is race-based discrimination of w- with, with federally funded programs, Mm[00:33:49] which is super not okay to do. Like technically, like not, not legal to do, but it’s still happening.[00:33:55] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so this is against the Equal Protection Clause of the, the 14th Amendment and the the Civil Rights Act. But it was not enforced until very recently. There is a chance that we might actually get something from this because I, I talk about this in the article.[00:34:10] It’s a policy that’s changed very recently in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.. It, it might be fun to talk about how I got some of these stories.[00:34:19] Yeah.[00:34:19] Simone Collins: I,[00:34:20] Brian Chau: I would really like to know that- It was mostly like taking large federal data sets and then using some modified LM tools, really more so from a cost perspective. I think you could theoretically do this if you’re, if you’re just using one of the, the vanilla models, but it’ll cost you more and take you a lot longer.[00:34:35] I’m basically saying, like, “Find me a story.” It’s like, fin- find newsworthy material- Really? Wait, you’re[00:34:40] Simone Collins: not even like, “I want you to look in this data set for this specific thing”? You’re just like, “I don’t know. Do you think... Do you see anything interesting?”[00:34:47] Brian Chau: Yeah. In some ways it’s a lot more open-minded way to do journalism, right?[00:34:52] Simone Collins: Yeah ... I mean, yeah, but, like, dude.[00:34:54] Brian Chau: I think a lot of the stories will be right-wing, because, like, this is not new information. This is stuff that happened, like, five years ago or more, right? Most of these grants for the first story were issued in 2021, so you could’ve reported this in 2021. Conservative media I mean, like, like it or not, and of course, like, The New York Times is biased and so on, but I think the left-wing stories are kind of, like, actually, actually get reported out.[00:35:17] I think that’s the thing. So I think even though, like, I was not going into this with a, with an angle of like, “Oh, I’m going to just go out of my way to find, like, stories that are interesting to the right,” that may be how it gets picked up anyway, because that’s just the stories that haven’t been reported on yet.[00:35:32] Simone Collins: Yeah, I agree. But I, I really hope you can pick this up. Let’s see if I can make this a little bigger. No.[00:35:39] Brian Chau: Yeah, California’s race-based natal policy. Yeah.[00:35:42] Simone Collins: Yeah. Wait, hold on. I’m bringing it back. Just give me a second here, ‘cause we, we don’t typically get to show PDFs. Anyway, I guess we can’t zoom in. Oh, well.[00:35:51] But yeah, so yeah, ex- explain[00:35:53] Brian Chau: it[00:35:53] Simone Collins: to- I can[00:35:54] Brian Chau: give you, I can s- send you a website preview later and, and you can have some higher [00:36:00] quality graphics if you wanna edit those in. But,[00:36:01] Simone Collins: And you, by the way, I made it so that you can page through this at, at your leisure on your own from your... Yeah, there we go.[00:36:07] Brian Chau: Perfect.[00:36:08] Malcolm Collins: Can you go to the first page of that, Simone? So[00:36:09] Brian Chau: there’s there’s this three program-[00:36:10] Simone Collins: Wait, Malcolm wants you to go back to the first page of it.[00:36:12] Malcolm Collins: So you didn’t even read it. You gotta read it. Programs for Black women birthing people could have Medicare funding cut off. All right, now, now go to the next thing.[00:36:22] Brian Chau: Yeah. So, all these programs take federal Medicaid funding. They’re all also both facially against the text of the Civil Rights Act and against the recent you know... But historically it hasn’t been, been enforced that way. But, but also against the recent revisions in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division rulemaking which I also quote here.[00:36:43] And it’s basically saying, like, actually equal protection does apply to all races. And you can... So there were some cases previously where Title VI agreements were used to either force essentially force states to open these programs up to all races, which is what happened in the past, or to threaten to cut off Medicaid funding if that doesn’t exist.[00:37:06] Simone Collins: Yikes.[00:37:07] Brian Chau: So, so there is a remedy legally, which is that the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division can actually shut off Medicaid funding if they continue to racially discriminate. And there are two cases before where they started that process once in Minnesota and another time in Illinois, both with these kind of race-based Medicaid rationing programs.[00:37:26] And in both cases, the DOJ managed to get those programs basically opened up to all races.[00:37:31] Simone Collins: But not the case now. No one has done this[00:37:33] Brian Chau: Yeah. I, I mean, I don’t really know if they know about it. They have not yet responded to my request for comment. Maybe they will by the time this is published. But, but as of, as of recording, they have not.[00:37:44] So I don’t know if they even know about this[00:37:47] Simone Collins: Interesting. So-[00:37:48] Brian Chau: Maybe that’s, that’s how you guys help, right? Yeah. You, you guys get more, more people to know about this know about what- So they’re[00:37:53] Malcolm Collins: literally[00:37:54] Brian Chau: birthing to try to- ... you, you know, allegedly a, a civil rights violation ...[00:37:57] Malcolm Collins: So they, they, they’re using Medicaid money to try to increase the Black birth rate?[00:38:01] Like, that’s, that’s what-[00:38:03] Brian Chau: They’re providing medical services only to in some cases, only to Black people. In some cases, only to Black as well as American Indian, Alaska Native, Pacific Islanders. Yeah, it seems super- ... they’re selectively providing medical services based on race. And in this case, it’s like basically like prenatal services.[00:38:20] Simone Collins: And I think you even mentioned in the article from when I first read it, that like one woman reported just being turned away when she asked[00:38:28] Brian Chau: for services. Yeah. So, so this is interesting, too. This will be a super interesting case of whether you can have more private rights of action based on discrimination where historically this has been an enormous cash cow for a lot of the kind of DEI NGOs where, you know, th- they’ll sue on behalf of minority groups, mostly either on behalf of people who are Black or on behalf of women.[00:38:53] But really, you know, the civil rights... The text of the Civil Rights Act allow these suits in any direction. So if this case can, can prove out whether there can be more of a, a rights towards, you know, discrimination on behalf of other groups or, or against other groups a- and whether those will be rewarded a similar kind of settlement in, in court.[00:39:14] So you have this program where based on, ba- based on her name seemingly, like a white Hispanic lady went in to try to access one of these services and then was denied those services, and is now filing a Title VI suit a civil rights lawsuit about this refusal. And that’s that’s kind of still in court right now.[00:39:32] We don’t know where that’s going.[00:39:34] Simone Collins: Good for her, though. It’s... I, I’ve, I’ve been surprised in the past. I think a, a lot of people actually e- experienced things like this in the past. Or I, I remember going to Planned Parenthood one, once and being like, “Well, I’m, I’m interested in planning a family now.[00:39:49] Like, what should I do?” And they’re like, “We can’t help you here. We, we only do the other stuff.” And I was like, “Hold on. That’s not what I was told.” But I guess people just kind of... I think most people have weird [00:40:00] experiences but they don’t, don’t report them. They don’t try to start a lawsuit. So I don’t...[00:40:04] I mean, who knows how many people have encountered this. That’s really[00:40:08] Brian Chau: wild. Yeah. Something that’s, that’s also kind of relevant to this, I don’t know if you saw this, so this is already public. This is not something that we are exclusively reporting. Hmm. But, the Justice Department, I, I don’t know if you guys saw this op- published some information about a case they have against Duke University.[00:40:24] And that has the amazing statistic that rejected white and Asian applicants have a higher average SAT score than accepted Black applicants.[00:40:34] Simone Collins: Oh, w- yeah. Yeah. We’ve seen that headline, and I mean, I, I guess now it’s just like, well, of course. Everyone assumes that. Everybody knows it now. Yeah. I mean, the[00:40:42] Malcolm Collins: leaflet’s on, racist against whites and Asians.[00:40:44] Yeah. Colleges. Yeah.[00:40:46][00:41:07] Brian Chau: Yeah, and, and the thing about, you know, Harmeet posting about this is that she actually, you know, is the main person to do something about this, and I think has been one of the, the most effective members of the Trump administration. This might actually be, you know, I sh- I guess I should praise her more if I, if I want us, actually, you know, the, the, the stories that I’m breaking to, to have some consequence.[00:41:29] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.[00:41:29] Simone Collins: This is such an interesting effort though because it’s, it’s both investigative journalism that we’ve really lost for 10, 20 years maybe. Like, there just really hasn’t been much work coming out like this that I would’ve expected to get and, and all powered by AI, which is super, super cool, plus your brilliant mind.[00:41:51] Then this additional layer of activism, which I guess, I mean, do you primary expect to enact it by asking people for comment and getting other people to do something? Or is there an additional branch of what you’re working on where you’re actually going to push harder for, like to deploy people to take action on the information that you publish?[00:42:07] I just wanna[00:42:07] Brian Chau: publish the most keynote publication out there. Like, the, the best news that is fit to print, you know. And, and part of that is also the data presentation. I think it’s this, like, crazy thing where even, like, I was showing my friend the Vercel dashboard the other day. This is a very, very successful software company- Yeah[00:42:24] Used for, for, for front-end hosting for, for a lot of sites. But really it’s not just Vercel. It’s like every series A or B or later startup has better data presentation than New York Times. It’s a, it’s a very common skill now. It’s a skill that I have and I think that’s reflected in this site. Where really there are a single-digit number of, like, really competent data presentation people in the mainstream press.[00:42:47] Maybe the most famous- Mm ... is John Burn-Murdoch from the, from the Financial Times. Mm. Who is, like, a household name basically by... I don’t wanna be mean to John Burn-Murdoch. I think he does good work. But basically he’s become a household name by, like, publishing charts that are about the same quality as, like, a series A or series B startup.[00:43:04] So there’s plenty- ... of capability to pr- have much better data presentation actually. And this is the other thing it’s, that I’m kind of, like, frustrated by with kind of new media companies is number one, they don’t break stories. Number two they don’t really go for a more, like, high-quality publication.[00:43:22] A lot of them just end up looking like the New York Post. And actually, the New York Post is an interesting example because they do break stories, but they also look like the New York Post, which is re- really unfortunate. Yeah ... I, I, I really think that this is the, the crown in the gutter. Because right now is a complete change in the scope and possibility of what kind of stories can be reported.[00:43:47] Mm. It would take a team of multiple people working for years to report the kinds of stories I’m reporting now. So it’s not an entire surprise that they’ve gone unreported for a long time. That’s changing now. It’s the crown in the [00:44:00] gutter. You can absolutely do it. I mean, I, I am doing it. And I think this will be very c- soon the greatest investigative reporting publication in the world[00:44:09] Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I hope so, and we’re glad to have you on, and I hope that it’s upstream of a bunch of YouTubers like I to just read the story and then go, “Ah.”[00:44:17] You know, that’s the, that’s the way to do it. Oh,[00:44:20] Simone Collins: yeah. You’re, you’re gonna give us so much episode fodder[00:44:21] Brian Chau: Can we talk about the new media ecosystem for a bit? Like, you know, we’re in the Fox Girls or the media chat. There’s, like, an entire, you know, new ecosystem that’s popping up, and you guys really, I think you guys know more about this than me, so it’d be interesting to get your thoughts on it.[00:44:37] Simone Collins: The VTuber ecosystem?[00:44:38] Malcolm Collins: Well, that’s what we play in. That’s what we do. But the interesting thing about this new media ecosystem is it has a few people who are sort of top of the funnel and c- find the stories first, and, and they’re r- like Kirsha is an example of one of these. She’ll do the n- the app synthesis, and then the story flows down.[00:44:56] So if we have more people there, then that’s more for the rest of us, right? You know, make[00:45:01] Brian Chau: sure we- So, so is she like i- is she like f- finding the stories from scratch or is she kind of like serving as a bridge between, like,[00:45:08] Malcolm Collins: normal- No ... or stuff like that? She seems to be finding them from scratch.[00:45:11] So what she does- Oh, that’s super[00:45:12] Brian Chau: interesting ...[00:45:12] Malcolm Collins: is she goes and she’ll, like, look when somebody’ll be like, “Oh, X company was woke and then it was fixed,” and then she tries to go into their public documentation and everything like that to see if they’re actually not woke now, looking up the programs they’re doing and stuff like that.[00:45:27] And that’s, that’s an area of, of, of research that you could definitely use more re- is the crazy woke programs that companies are doing that large companies are doing and shining a light on those, because that’s something that I think people would find pretty interesting.[00:45:41] Brian Chau: Yeah, so there was this story.[00:45:43] I, like, kind of got scooped on this. A, a lot of the data was already public but, but kind of, independently found the same, same data of company filings earnings calls and, and such. The mentions of diversity, equity, inclusion, stuff like that, has dropped more than 90%. That, that’s of course just the overt public statements.[00:46:00] That’s like the, the, the- Yeah ... the branding, right? It’s not always reflecting the underlying stuff. But that is actually pretty interesting. Maybe you guys can, can put that graphic up as well. I think a lot of these stories, there’s like- There’s like a pretty long incubation period o- of before they actually see the light of day.[00:46:20] That’s something that if I am successful with this company will absolutely change in five years, where it’s like right now, like the, the, the Office of Refugee Resettlement story we’ve had that information, that information has been publicly available for five years or maybe a little less than five years.[00:46:38] I think the, the first grants appeared, or like the first grants in this latest expansion appeared- Hmm ... in September 2021. Oh, from 20... Yeah,[00:46:44] Simone Collins: well[00:46:44] Brian Chau: 2016 was- So it’s about the five-year anniversary.[00:46:47] Simone Collins: Okay.[00:46:47] Brian Chau: So this could have been reported for a long time. It absolutely wasn’t. And it’s this like crazy it’s this crazy inefficient market.[00:46:56] Hmm. A lot of people I’ve talked to leading up to this launch, even a lot of people who already work in media are like shocked at this. They’re like, “Oh, why, why is it, and why has no one done this yet?” And most of the time the answer is that people just don’t wanna put in the effort. So th- that’s really going to change.[00:47:12] I guess like the, the interesting thing about new media as well is like there’s a convergence on the idea, and this is especially true in the tech space. There’s a convergence on the idea that like all you need to do is sort of reframe the discussion from a different opinion, right? And I think some of that has been good, you know.[00:47:31] I’ll be actually, you know, doing a lot of interviews with the, those tech podcast publications you know, video video shows as well. So, so, so I, I, I’m... it’s not like I dislike them, but a lot of the time what they’ll do is like they’ll talk about the same stories reported from The New York Times, but they’ll talk about it in a kind of like conservative or kind of libertarian pro-tech opinion angle.[00:47:53] And, you know, maybe that’s better than nothing. I certainly think it’s better than nothing, but I don’t know. It, it, it seems kind of narrow. Like, why do [00:48:00] you guys think it, it, it like ended up that way?[00:48:03] Simone Collins: I think first off, not that many people are responsible, like not that many people care. And if you’re looking at something like, okay, so you’re looking at a publication that has to stay alive, and that depends on clicks or something like that and they’re trying to get people to click over.[00:48:21] They’re way more likely to get a bunch of attention and money by posting something stupid and culture-warry and not actually substantive or something about celebrities than they are to post something- I don’t[00:48:32] Brian Chau: even think that’s true. Like-[00:48:34] Simone Collins: Really?[00:48:35] Brian Chau: Yeah. I, I think you need to break stories. I guess you need to have a judgment to break stories, right?[00:48:39] I mean, we’ll see with the launch, but I, I think it will be quite a successful launch. I mean, obviously you know, I haven’t been exposed to the actual... I haven’t, you know, posted any of these stories publicly yet, so it’s like, you know, a big question mark. Maybe it’ll fail and there’ll be a big, you know, egg on my face.[00:48:54] But I think there is interest in investigative stuff. I think that if you are ahead of, ahead of the curve and you publish something that then becomes viral, then becomes a center of attention, you do get credit for that. But, but people just don’t do it. Maybe it’s like a cost benefit thing. Maybe they haven’t fully priced in AI.[00:49:11] I’m, I’m not entirely sure. But yeah, it’s, it’s still seems, still seems very odd to me.[00:49:18] Simone Collins: It is. I think... I mean, to your point, a, a lot of it can come down to good visuals. A lot of the stuff that ends up going viral that is more substantive goes viral because there’s some striking graph that people can share online.[00:49:31] Like you have to think about what is someone’s motivation to share something online, and Malcolm’s model for that has always been, well, then this is going to reinforce someone’s self-image, for example. Like, I’m the person who shares stories about this, or it, it just validates their self-image. Like, m- family members selling sending us information about studies that show that reading physical paper objects is m- better for your brain or something, right?[00:49:58] And they’re like, “I told you so.” So you have to think about why someone’s gonna be compelled to share your story, and also how much that share on its own is going to captivate audiences. And if you have a really compelling visual, then it is going to captivate audiences. Like I’ve seen so much of the almond water versus data center water graphic floating around recently.[00:50:18] Brian Chau: Yeah,[00:50:19] Simone Collins: yeah. Because it’s just so like salient and easy. And also for anyone who’s on the pro data center side, like we can so smugly share it and be like, “So there you go, ha ha ha.” And it makes us feel very smug. And so I think it, it comes down to that. And I, and I think that’s why it’s so good that you’re looking at- The importance of really strong visuals.[00:50:40] If you can create visuals that people can smugly post and that make them look so smart and well-informed, and, “Oh, you d- you idiots don’t realize how serious this problem is,” especially if it feeds into conspiratoriness- Yeah,[00:50:52] Brian Chau: no, and a lot of it is, you know, a lot of it is, like, the immediate truth nuke, right?[00:50:56] Simone Collins: Yes.[00:50:57] Brian Chau: Yeah. That’s something that, that I want to... Obviously, that’s not most of these stories. Most of these stories are kind of, longer investigations using data from a timeframe of, like, five to 10 years. But something else I wanna do a lot more of is, like, the immediate truth nuke. One of these stories is kind of like this.[00:51:11] The data is actually kind of old, but I have this story on, like, the, the, the EV dumping theory, which- Yeah ... to my knowledge, is, was, was completely fabricated by kind of, like, the auto lobby a- and, and by defense inter- and by, by, like, kind of, like, Department of Defense type- Wait, what is this?[00:51:25] Malcolm Collins: Is it[00:51:26] Simone Collins: So what is the EV dumping theory?[00:51:27] Yeah,[00:51:28] i’m gonna bring it[00:51:28] Brian Chau: up and put it up So there will be all sorts of these stories that pop up that are just, like, clearly fabricated.[00:51:33] The one that I remember the best, because I was kind of, like, directly involved with this one- Okay ... is the, the 10,000 H100 story. So there was this story around the time when DeepSeek came out. Of course, it’s like wildly cheaper model than anything that you saw was published before.[00:51:48] Malcolm Collins: Okay.[00:51:48] Brian Chau: A- and a bunch of like defense industry types were, like, very enthusiastic about promoting this H100 10,000 smuggled H100s claim, and this claim was [00:52:00] completely false.[00:52:01] The original source for the, this claim I actually kind of respect that he did this which is D- Dylan from SemiAnalysis. He had kind of like a, a, like a tweet that like, “Oh, there are 10,000... I- I... DeepSeek has 10,000 H100s,” or something. And then he, like, later published a full article ki- kind of like retracting that claim, saying like, “Oh, what I actually meant was 10,000 H100 equivalents, including hardware that was legally purchased from NVIDIA and allowed under US law.”[00:52:29] Which is obviously- Oh ... a different claim, but I, I, I, I, I actually respect... I don’t really blame Dy- Dylan for this. I think what probably happened was that he had a source inside, like, state or defense that just straight up lied to him. And he, he, he got got, and he didn’t know that, like, people from defense or state would just straight up lie to you, and then go, you know, pr- promote these completely false claims everywhere.[00:52:51] Anyways, we, we, we now know that that that absolutely did not happen, and this was just kind of, like, fabricated by, by the defense, defense industry. Anyways-[00:52:58] Malcolm Collins: So EVs are, are way, what, more environmentally friendly than...?[00:53:03] Brian Chau: No. So, so that was related to the, the DeepSeek H100 stuff, whi- which I was kind of, like, directly involved in.[00:53:08] I, I was kind of like, Yeah, but what’s the point? ... working on some AI stuff with the admin at the time. But-[00:53:13] Malcolm Collins: What’s the[00:53:13] Brian Chau: point of this direction? But th- this is a similar thing happening with EVs, right? It’s, it’s the same, like, f*****g export control people, No, but[00:53:19] Malcolm Collins: what’s the point? Like what, so what were they trying to argue?[00:53:22] What-[00:53:22] Brian Chau: Oh, the EV thing was that people were just ... Oh, so go, go on.[00:53:26] Malcolm Collins: No, no. Like, what were they trying to argue versus what’s the reality? I, like, the, the, to the average person here, they don’t know[00:53:32] Brian Chau: what DeepSeek is. Well, the reality is that, that DeepSeek made a number of algorithmic improvements mostly that made their model a lot cheaper to train and run.[00:53:38] Mm. They, they were arguing that, you know, there were all of these smuggled H100s, these smuggled, like, a- AI- Oh ... specific hardware- Oh, so[00:53:44] Simone Collins: they were saying they were getting really good machinery- ...[00:53:46] Brian Chau: that they were secretly running it on. But really...[00:53:47] Simone Collins: Okay.[00:53:48] Brian Chau: They were seeing more efficient. It was this kind of, like, wild, like, conspiracy brained take that, like, actually DeepSeek was trained on all of this hardware because there is no way that they trained they trained their model on, like, limited hardware that they were legally allowed to purchase.[00:54:00] But turns out that actually they, they did train it on the legally purchased hardware and that the model is just better. And in fact, they’ve continued not just creating but publishing those model improvements, tho- those, like, algorithmic improvements to their models, including the, the, the recent V4 Flash.[00:54:16] Malcolm Collins: Okay.[00:54:17] Brian Chau: So- And, and the, the EV tariff thing- We know basically for cert- certain now that that claim, claim was false, that, that DeepSeek the, the, the, the more efficient models come from just better model designs and don’t come from, you know, all these secret H100s.[00:54:30] Malcolm Collins: The, the secret H100s- In this instance[00:54:31] being that they pretended that it was running on much more advanced software, hardware than it actually was, and it actually was running on limited hardware. Yeah ... is that what you’re talking about was the EV story? What, what, what is, what did EVs have to do with[00:54:42] Brian Chau: this? It’s a similar thing where you can see that there is this completely fabricated story about EV dumping.[00:54:48] So the EV dumping theory, this was promoted by, like, both the last two presidents all sorts of people from both political parties. I think it kind of originated in a bunch of, like, US, like, auto trade associations. But the claim is that Chinese EV exports are heavily subsidized. You can go down the claim ta- claim table here.[00:55:07] It’s, like, massive subsidies, you know, propelled by subsidies, all this stuff. Would you like to guess- How could[00:55:11] Simone Collins: that be possible when we’re paying- Let’s play a[00:55:12] Brian Chau: similar game. Let’s play a similar game where we guess the number, the total amount of the subsidy, right? What is the total amount out, as a percentage of the total price what do you think a, a BYD EV, this is, like, one of the most popular c- EV companies in China what amount of that price is subsidized?[00:55:30] What would you guess?[00:55:33] Simone Collins: 5% Well, I don’t imagine... I mean, don’t we- More than that ... we have 100% import taxes in the US on EVs, so nothing? ‘[00:55:40] Brian Chau: Cause I- Yeah, it’s, it’s 170... 27.5 now, and, and they’re doing a different ban. You, you have this super interesting, you know, may- maybe not interesting, but, like, funny thing where they had to keep upgrading the tariffs because it sounds, kinda sounds crazy, but, like, there was this theoretical model where, like, even if you had 25% tariffs, the, the, the Chinese cars would still out-compete the [00:56:00] American ones.[00:56:00] Yeah. Which i- i- if you’re coming from a s- from the software world, it’s like, oh, you c- 25% off your margin, maybe that’s doable. But if you’re coming from manufacturing, that’s, like, f*****g crazy. That’s, that’s how much of a difference in technology there is. But the actual answer is around 1.2%.[00:56:14] Simone Collins: Yeah, that makes sense.[00:56:14] Brian Chau: So, you can scroll down here. Why, why would they subsidize them? Yeah. You, you, you can scroll down here. It’s this tiny section. And even- You can even see it ... if you count, like... Yeah, ex- exactly. And even if you count all of the like, differences in financing laws, which, like, we could reform our financing laws at home.[00:56:29] Yeah. But even if you count those as, like, de facto sev- subsidies, it is roughly 7% of the price difference between Tesla and BYD. Tesla is, of course, the most efficient American company which is around 2.3% of the total BYD price. Mm. So even if you’re... So it’s 1.2% for direct subsidies, and even if you’re counting all of this, like, financing reform stuff that we could totally implement in the US, that’s, like, 2.3% of, of the total price.[00:56:55] So it is this, like, massive truth nuke, where there’s the story that was being passed around all the time, this, like, cope about Chinese EVs of, like, “Oh, they’re massively subsidized. That’s why we can’t compete with them.” Turns out that’s completely untrue. Most of the, most of the savings are based on, like, supply chain integration and genuine, like, business im- improvements compared to even Tesla, right?[00:57:16] Of course, the gap will be even bigger than, than this for the, the non-Tesla EVs. Well, but[00:57:20] Simone Collins: also necessity. You’re not gonna sell an EV in China if the vast majority of people can’t afford it. Y- it’s, it’s for a market that has, I would argue, much narrower car[00:57:29] Brian Chau: range. This, this is this is comparison of Chinese prices.[00:57:32] Oh. So[00:57:34] Simone Collins: this is a Tesla price in China. Really? Oh my gosh. Yes. That’s even crazier than I thought then. Okay.[00:57:38] Brian Chau: Yeah, so, so China is currently, like, signif- or, s- sorry. Tesla is currently significantly losing market share in China. There was this interesting rumor recently that, that Tesla would sell off its China China section for for, basically political reasons.[00:57:54] Elon said this wasn’t true. It was interesting because when I originally saw that story, I thought, “Oh, this is like cope,” right? This is gonna be like Tesla’s gonna sell off their, their, their Chinese section and they’re gonna say it was because of politics, but really it’s because they’re not, not really making money off that, and they’re being out-competed, and this is just like the cope.[00:58:11] But Elon said that’s not true, so, so, so apparently, apparently it’s fake news.[00:58:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.[00:58:16] Simone Collins: That is so great. Well,[00:58:17] Malcolm Collins: interesting stuff. Thanks for finding this.[00:58:19] Simone Collins: This is gonna be so great for... I mean, I think the other thing that really gives you good tailwinds for this venture is that there is this growing ecosystem of streamers who, instead of playing games, is turning to news stories, and they need good, salacious truth nukes.[00:58:35] You’ll be delivering them, so that is, that is very favorable. Congratulations, Brian. And everyone, check out Effort.news because- Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, what’s the frequency of publication you’re aiming for here?[00:58:47] Brian Chau: Effort.news. BrianChao57 on Twitter. Frequency of publication, it will vary a lot. More...[00:58:55] Probably one to three times per week and a lot of- That’s[00:58:59] Simone Collins: pretty good ...[00:58:59] Brian Chau: will also be based off of the initial wave of hiring. I’m interviewing several people for the publication both this week and next week. I scheduled that during the launch, so I don’t know how that’ll go. But if we can scale up, I, I’d ideally get it to a daily publication, right?[00:59:14] But as of now, at least once per week probably closer to three times a week. And if we can really scale up, then we can really get to the point of where, where it’s, like, one per day, or, or, like, multiple per day.[00:59:25] Simone Collins: That is so cool. Congratulations, Brian. And yeah, I’m super excited to see what you guys turn out.[00:59:29] So thank you for, thank you for giving us some, like, basically launch day details and we will be watching this very closely going forward.[00:59:39] Brian Chau: Yeah. You can, you, you can put the Base Camp exclusive, Yes ... on the title. Cha-ching, cha-ching. Even though we’ll be doing a bunch of other streams on the launch day.[00:59:45] But yeah, this was super fun. I’m glad you enjoyed the story about about the Catholics.[00:59:50] Simone Collins: Always.[00:59:51] Brian Chau: Always. And, and the large number of other religious religious charities, religious organizations. Yeah, it was super fun. Thanks for having [01:00:00] me on.[01:00:01] Simone Collins: All right. Thank you, Brian. Yeah. All right.[01:00:03] Well, Godspeed, sir. You’re doing very important work. All right.[01:00:08] Speaker 4: Show me What’s going on here? That’s the thing. Tell me. Well, who’s, who’s what down here? What’s going on?[01:00:25] Those are the, my army men and that’s the giant boat, the giant boat. What does a giant boat do? A giant boat uses it that armor to catch the- Can you show me how? Yeah, but you have to take a picture of me, too.[01:00:39] Of course, I promise[01:00:47] I’m gonna take a picture of me Give me your best pose then That’s your pose? I like it This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe