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Bitcoin Entrepreneur: 'Something Happens to the Social Fabric When People Cannot Trust Something As Basic As Money'

August 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

The CEO of a Bitcoin wallet startup explained the social importance of a digital currency that isn’t controlled by the government on radio Tuesday.

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been rising in value but is still mysterious to most people. One of its distinguishing characteristics is that bitcoin is a currency that operates outside any government, country or other entity that could manipulate it.

Wences Casares, founder of Bitcoin wallet startup Xapo, shared a moving story from his childhood to illustrate why an independent currency could be the future.

Glenn Beck asked about Casares’ experience growing up in Argentina at the time when their currency collapsed.

“I’m imagining that that drives you quite a bit when it comes to Bitcoin,” Glenn noted.

Casares recalled the day that his mom interrupted the school day to pick up him and his two sisters for a trip to get groceries, something that was highly unusual. His mom carried two plastic bags of cash because she had been paid that day, and she gave each child a list of groceries to get. When they had gotten everything on the list and had money left, she told them to get more food, saying, “Tomorrow, [the money is] going to be worth less. We have to spend it all today.”

A currency that can’t be devalued overnight could not only help people to eat that day, but also hold society together. “Something happens to the social fabric when people cannot trust something as basic as money,” Casares said.

GLENN: Wences Casares, he is the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. He's a technology entrepreneur, founder and CEO of this bitcoin wallet start-up. He says that bitcoin will end up being bigger that night internet itself and changing our lives more than the internet.

That is quite a claim, Wences.

WENCES: Yes. I also think that bitcoin is an experiment still. And as such, it has chances of failing and chances of failing that are nontrivial. So it's quite broad that it can also fail.

GLENN: Yes.

WENCES: But if it succeeds, it's likely to be more important than the internet itself, especially for many billions of people I could imagine in the future, preferring that you take away their internet, but not their bitcoin.

GLENN: Okay. So I want to get to that in a second. But I want to just explain what he said is so true. And it's why I've said to people, look, you have $500, you should put it into bitcoin. But don't put anything into bitcoin that you actually think, "Oh, man, I'd hate to lose that." Then don't put it in. Because it is really risky. You don't make the kind of money that is being made right now on something that isn't risky. This is really risky.

WENCES: This is incredibly risky. And what you're saying is very good advice. Which is: Nobody should own an amount of bitcoin they cannot afford to lose because they may very well lose it. So it's important to understand that any money you cannot afford to lose, you should not have in bitcoin. It should only be play money, that if you lose it, you're okay. It's a small amount.

GLENN: Right. And that kind of explains, I mean, there are -- what? Ninety percent of the people who own bitcoin, maybe more, own less than one bitcoin.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: I mean, people are in it literally for 500 bucks or $100 or whatever.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: Is there a minimum getting in?

WENCES: There is no minimum.

GLENN: So tell me how you believe people will say, "Don't take my bitcoin, but you can take my internet." What do you mean by that?

WENCES: Understanding bitcoin -- bitcoin is simpler than the internet at a technical level, if you will. And I think when people don't understand it, it's not their fault, but our fault. The people explaining it. We make it more complicated than it needs to be, because it makes us sound more intelligent, I guess, or something.

STU: We try that a lot too. It doesn't work for us.

(chuckling)

WENCES: You think about it, most people feel confident and comfortable about their understanding of the internet. Right? Without really understanding how --

GLENN: How it works.

WENCES: -- it really works, technically. It's not necessary to understand it. Or even a credit card. Right? Most people feel very confident with a credit card, understanding how it works.

But if you ask them, what happens when you swipe the card, where does that information go? Does it go to your bank or to the merchant's bank? At what point does it get approved? Who says it, right?

We don't really need to understand a lot of those details, to understand how credit cards work and what they can and cannot do for us. The same thing with internet and the same thing for bitcoin.

And the things that do matter and that we do need to understand of bitcoin are quite simple, really. And it's three, three things that make bitcoin unique, that we're not -- that did not exist before bitcoin existed, that bitcoin brought to the world.

Number one and most important: It's that it's not controlled by anyone. And it is not possible to control it. And it's a key feature. Without it, it would be irrelevant. It has a lot of very positive consequences. It has some potentially negative consequences. But it's what makes bitcoin bitcoin. Nobody can control it. Not me. Not any group of people. Not any company. Not any country. Not any army. Nobody can control it. That's number one.

Number two, is there will never be more than 21 million bitcoin. It's a finite number. And that cannot be changed.

And number three, whenever you have some bitcoin, you are free to send it to anyone you want, anywhere in the world, pretty much in real time, and pretty much for a very, very low cost. That last quality, it's quite revolutionary. And I call -- a lot of people call it the uncensorability of bitcoin.

No one can keep you from acquiring some bitcoin. It's impossible to do. No one can keep you from keeping those bitcoin, and no one can keep you from sending those bitcoin to whomever you want.

When you put those three qualities together, that's really all you need to understand about bitcoin. How that gets accomplished, it's complicated and technical, but not really needed to understand. Just like you don't need to understand how the internet manages to deliver all of this movies and stuff that it does.

GLENN: You grew up in Argentina --

WENCES: Yep.

GLENN: -- when the economy collapsed. When the money collapsed.

WENCES: Correct.

GLENN: And I am imagining that that drives you quite a bit when it comes to bitcoin.

WENCES: I think so, yes. I would imagine so.

GLENN: Tell me the story of what it's like when there's a currency collapse.

WENCES: My parents are sheep ranchers. And in my lifetime, in my childhood, I saw them lose everything three times. The first time that I have a memory of it, it's because of hyperinflation. And I have this -- everything -- that they lose everything, it was because something happened with a country, either hyperinflation or the government confiscated all bank deposits or a huge devaluation, right?

All kinds of crazy experiments that are hard to fathom from the perspective of someone who has lived in an economy where you've always been able to trust the dollar and the banks. And so did your parents and grandparents.

I have this memory of my mom coming to get my two sisters and I out of school. That never happened before, so something was going on in the middle of the school day.

And she was carrying two plastic bags full of cash. And she was a receptionist at the government bureau. And she had just been paid. And her salary, two plastic bags of cash, of bills.

GLENN: Wow.

WENCES: And she took us to the supermarket, and she gave us each a list and told us what to carry. We each had an aisle. Got all of those things, and we all met at the cashier.

And after everything had gone through the cashier, there was some money left over, and she sent us back to get more stuff.

And one of my sisters asked, "Why don't we save money for tomorrow?" And my mom explained, "No. Tomorrow, it's going to be worth less. We have to spend it all today."

And I'll never forget that. Partly because it's easy to understand the economic and financial consequences in a family, in a society of that. But it's harder to imagine what's really going on, which is much more beyond financial consequences. Something happens to the social fabric, when people cannot trust something as basic as money. And a lot of people go crazy and desperate. And something -- very quickly, some trust breaks down that takes years or generations to rebuild.

GLENN: Yeah. Talking to the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. It is a bitcoin wallet startup.

So I buy my bitcoin. And it's now in a wallet. It's in your bank, if you will. If I'm not mistaken, your bank is buried in some mountain in Switzerland or something, right?

WENCES: Correct.

GLENN: But it's not a bank like we think of a bank.

WENCES: No. It is a bank in that you can use us to buy bitcoin, to store, to keep the bitcoin safely, to make it very easy to acquire the bitcoin, to store them safely, to send bitcoin.

It is not like a bank in a more technical manner, in which today the -- when you go to a normal bank, they own your money. And they owe it to you. So if you look at their balance sheet, they have an asset. That is the money you gave them and a liability, that is what they owe to you.

We are a purely custodian. So we do not own your bitcoins. Your bitcoins are only yours. And there are many reasons why we think that that's a lot safer. So we are the digital equivalent of a safety deposit box, right?

And the safety-deposit box is ours. But whatever is inside, it's yours. And if we were to disappear or go bankrupt, what can go away is the safety deposit box, but the contents have to go back to you.

GLENN: And what makes you think that -- well, before we get there, tell me what happened with this fork in the road. Because this caused some real panic with people because they didn't know -- they didn't really even understand the concept that bitcoin because it's -- it's becoming to be used more frequently. I believe Japan now has recognized it as an official currency. And if I'm not mistaken, isn't Japan becoming a bitcoin society?

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: And because the transactions are happening so rapidly, there was talk about, we have to have a faster way to process these.

This is my understanding.

WENCES: Yeah.

GLENN: And there became this fork in the road between bitcoin cash and bitcoin. I don't know the difference. What is the difference?

WENCES: Not really -- again, it's not really a big deal basically what happened. And bitcoin is an open source software. So we all can see every single line is public. And the five of us could do another fork, and if we wanted. Right? Just copy all the code, paste it, and run it ourselves, or run it with another group of people. And it's up to the market to decide if they want to use ours or the other one. So this was always a possibility. Finally, someone did it for the first time. I think this would be a feature, bitcoin going forward, we'll see forks here or there. And there will always be one version of bitcoin that is the most used, the one that has the longest history, and then there will be others that will be like cousins that were derived of bitcoin, but will turn out to be different. Right?

GLENN: Can you turn your bitcoin into cash?

WENCES: Of course. Into normal cash?

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

WENCES: Of course, yeah. It's like any currency.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. And what is the percentage now of things that you can buy -- I mean, there was a big push -- we spoke five years ago. You know, people need to start -- you know, companies need to start taking bitcoin as payment.

What are the big companies doing to accept it? Are you seeing any big movement?

WENCES: There's about 100,000 merchants online that accept bitcoin. It's my opinion that bitcoin has been around for -- for less than nine years. And it will take another decade or two for it to get established. I think that the age of bitcoin becoming a way to pay at a merchant is quite far away.

I think that the era we're looking at is about something very different. In fact, I think that things like what we're seeing -- we had to go this year through the fork, for everybody to stop worrying about and learn that it's not a big deal.

Forks are something we can live with. It doesn't really hurt anyone. And -- but until it happened, a lot of people were freaking out about it, right? And I can tell you so many things that people freaked out about, every three months, in bitcoin. And we have to see them happen. People say, "Oh, that's good. Oh, it's robust. It works." I think we have a lot more of that to come.

Right now, I think bitcoin is in this first stage establishing itself more as a -- as a -- not so much for payment. What you said you were doing, Glenn, which you're holding it as historic value, just in case, not unlike what some families did with -- they had somewhere in the house, a stash of some jewelry, just in case, right? Or gold. It's more like that.

And only if it succeeds at that first, with very massive adoption, and hundreds of millions of people, it will then make sense as a payment mechanism.

GLENN: Yeah.

WENCES: But right now, it's a bit too early. It can be used. And a lot of people do use it. But from my subjective point of view, the more important thing that is happening at this stage is it's standing at historic value.

GLENN: Wences Casares, he is the CEO of Xapo.com. X-A-P-O.com. You should check it out. And as I said earlier, don't -- don't put money into this that you can't -- you can't easily say, "Oh. I'm fine without it." At this point, it's one of those things that could make you a lot of money and you could lose every single dime. And -- and so you put just a little bit in there to -- to just, what the heck, let's give it a whirl, and see what happens.

Thank you, Wences. I appreciate it. God bless.

WENCES: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

(OUT AT 10:25AM)

GLENN: We -- we're going to have -- we're going to have --

STU: It's fascinating.

JEFFY: It sure is.

GLENN: The CEO of Xapo stay with us for a second. Because we were just talking in the break, there is a real downside, a risk to this. But the world completely changes if it works. And you were just saying that there's about a 20 percent chance that you use all the money, right?

WENCES: I would say at least a 20 percent chance that you use all the money.

JEFFY: At least.

GLENN: And you said that there was --

PAT: On the other side, there's an upside.

GLENN: You were saying that there's a 50 percent chance --

WENCES: Yes.

GLENN: -- that bitcoin, one single bitcoin, now worth $4,000. Was worth 200 when Trump took that long escalator ride down, two years ago. You're saying that in ten years, you believe that could hit a million dollars?

WENCES: I think there is a 50 percent chance that one bitcoin could be worth more than a million dollars and less than --

PAT: I mean, that's -- that's worth the 4,000-dollar investment. Right?

WENCES: What I would say is that it's very worthwhile -- just like I would say, the most irresponsible thing you could do would be to own an amount of bitcoin you cannot afford to lose, to have the kid's college fund there or your retirement or mortgage. That would be really -- the most irresponsible thing you can do.

GLENN: But if you put $500 in because you're like, "You know what, we're going to scrimp, and we're going to save. And I'm not touching our savings. I'm not touching anything. We're just going to stop going to movies. Going out to eat for a while. I'll put $500 in." $500 is worth a lot of money if this is right in ten years.

PAT: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

WENCES: Yeah. Yeah. That's my point, is that the second most irresponsible thing you could do is not to have any. Right? It's so asymmetrical, that you can have something that doesn't really -- is not material to you, but it can have a very material impact on your life.

So why not do it?

 

Fort Knox exposed: Is America's gold MISSING?

Christopher Furlong / Staff | Getty Images

President Trump promised that we would get a peek inside Fort Knox, but are we ready for what we might find?

In this new era of radical transparency, the possibility that the Deep State's darkest secrets could be exposed has many desperate for answers to old questions. Recently, Glenn has zeroed in on gold, specifically America's gold reserves, which are supposed to be locked away inside the vaults of Fort Knox. According to the government, there are 147.3 million ounces of gold stored within several small secured rooms that are themselves locked behind a massive 22 ton vault door, but the truth is that no one has officially seen this gold since 1953. An audit is long overdue, and President Trump has already shown interest in the idea.

America's gold reserve has been surrounded by suspicion for the better part of a hundred years. It all started in 1933, when FDR effectivelynationalized the United States's private gold stores, forcing Americans to sell their gold to the government. This gold was melted down, forged into bars, and stored in the newly constructed U.S. Bullion Depository building at Fort Knox. By 1941, Fort Knox had held 649.6 million ounces of gold—which, you may have noticed, was 502.3 million ounces more than today. We'll come back to that.

By 1944, World War II was ending, and the Allies began planning how to rebuild Europe. The U.N. held a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the USD was established as the world's reserve currency. This meant that any country (though not U.S. citizens) could exchange the USD for gold at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. Already, you can see where our gold might have gone.

Jump to the 1960s, where Lyndon B. Johnson was busy digging America into a massive debt hole. Between the Vietnam War and Johnson's "Great Society" project, the U.S. was bleeding cash and printing money to keep up. But now Fort Knox no longer held enough physical gold to cover the $35 an ounce rate promised by the Bretton Woods agreement. France took notice of this weakness and began to redeem hundreds of millions of dollars. In the 70s Nixon staunched this gushing wound by halting foreign nations from redeeming dollars for gold, but this had the adverse effect of ending the gold standard.

This brings us to the present, where inflation is through the roof, no one knows how much gold is actually inside Fort Knox, and someone in America has been buying a LOT of gold. Who is buying this gold? Where is it going and for what purpose? Glenn has a few ideas, and one of them is MUCH better than the other:

The path back to gold

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

One possibility is that all of this gold that has been flooding into America is in preparation for a shift back to a gold-backed, or partial-gold-backed system. The influx of gold corresponds with a comment recently made by Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who said he was going to:

“Monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.”

Glenn pointed out that per a 1972 law, the gold in Fort Knox is currently set at a fixed value of $42 an ounce. At the time of this writing, gold was valued at $2,912.09 an ounce, which is more than a 6,800 percent increase. If the U.S. stockpile was revalued to reflect current market prices, it could be used to stabilize the dollar. This could even mean a full, or partial return to the gold standard, depending on the amount of gold currently being imported.

Empty coffers—you will own nothing

Raymond Boyd / Contributor | Getty Images

Unfortunately, Glenn suspects there is another, darker purpose behind the recent gold hubbub.

As mentioned before, the last realaudit of Fort Knox was done under President Eisenhower, in 1953. While the audit passed, a report from the Secretary of the Treasury revealed that a mere 13.6 percent was checked. For the better part of a century, we've had no idea how much gold is present under Fort Knox. After the gold hemorrhage in the 60s, many were suspicious of the status of our gold supply. In the 80s, a wealthy businessman named Edward Durell released over a decade's worth of research that led him to conclude that Fort Knox was all but empty. In short, he claimed that the Federal Reserve had siphoned off all the gold and sold it to Europe.

What would it mean if America's coffers are empty? According to a post by X user Matt Smith that Glenn shared, empty coffers combined with an influx of foreign gold could represent the beginning of a new, controlled economy. We couldstill be headed towards a future where you'll ownnothing.

Glenn: The most important warning of your lifetime—AI is coming for you

NurPhoto / Contributor | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence isn’t coming. It’s here. The future we once speculated about is no longer science fiction—it’s reality. Every aspect of our lives, from how we work to how we think, is about to change forever. And if you’re not ready for it, you’re already behind. This isn’t just another technological leap. This is the biggest shift humanity has ever faced.

The last call before the singularity

I've been ringing this bell for 30 years. Thirty years warning you about what’s coming. And now, here we are. This isn’t a drill. This isn’t some distant future. It’s happening now. If you don’t understand what’s at stake, you need to wake up—because we have officially crossed the event horizon of artificial intelligence.

What’s an event horizon? It’s the edge of a black hole—the point where you can’t escape, no matter how hard you try. AI is that black hole. The current is too strong. The waterfall is too close. If you haven’t been paying attention, you need to start right now. Because once we reach Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), there is no turning back.

You’ve heard me talk about this for decades. AI isn’t just a fancy Siri. It isn’t just ChatGPT. We are on the verge of machines that will outthink every human who has ever lived—combined. ASI won’t just process information—it will anticipate, decide, and act faster than any of us can comprehend. It will change everything about our world, about our lives.

And yet, the conversation around AI has been wrong. People think the real dangers are coming later—some distant dystopian nightmare. But we are already in it. We’ve passed the point where AI is just a tool. It’s becoming the master. And the people who don’t learn to use it now—who don’t understand it, who don’t prepare for it—are going to be swallowed whole.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Glenn, you’ve spent years warning us about AI, about how dangerous it is. And now you’re telling us to embrace it?" Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Because if you don’t use this tool—if you don’t learn to master it—then you will be at its mercy.

This is not an option anymore. This is survival.

How you must prepare—today

I need you to take AI seriously—right now. Not next year, not five years from now. This weekend.

Here’s what I want you to do: Open up one of these AI tools—Grok 3, ChatGPT, anything advanced—and start using it. If you’re a CEO, have it analyze your competitors. If you’re an artist, let it critique your work. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, have it optimize your budget. Ask it questions. Push it to its limits. Learn what it can do—because if you don’t, you will be left behind.

Let me be crystal clear: AI is not your friend. It’s not your partner. It’s not something to trust. AI is a shovel—an extremely powerful shovel, but still just a tool. And if you don’t understand that, you’re in trouble.

We’ve already seen what happens when we surrender to technology without thinking. Social media rewired our brains. Smartphones reshaped our culture. AI will do all that—and more. If you don’t take control now, AI will control you.

Ask yourself: When AI makes decisions for you—when it anticipates your needs before you even know them—at what point do you stop being the one in charge? At what point does AI stop being a tool and start being your master?

And that’s not even the worst of it. The next step—transhumanism—is coming. It will start with good intentions. Elon Musk is already developing implants to help people walk again. And that’s great. But where does it stop? What happens when people start “upgrading” themselves? What happens when people choose to merge with AI?

I know my answer. I won’t cross that line. But you’re going to have to decide for yourself. And if you don’t start preparing now, that decision will be made for you.


The final warning—act now or be left behind

I need you to hear me. This is not optional. This is not something you can ignore. AI is here. And if you don’t act now, you will be lost.

The next 18 months will change everything. People who don’t prepare—who don’t learn to use AI—will be scrambling to catch up. And they won’t catch up. The gap will be too wide. You’ll either be leading, or you’ll be swallowed whole.

So start this weekend. Learn it. Test it. Push it. Master it. Because the people who don’t? They will be the tools.

The decision is yours. But time is running out.

The coming AI economy and the collapse of traditional jobs

Think back to past technological revolutions. The industrial revolution put countless blacksmiths, carriage makers, and farmhands out of business. The internet wiped out entire industries, from travel agencies to brick-and-mortar retail. AI is bigger than all of those combined. This isn’t just about job automation—it’s about job obliteration.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers—people who thought their jobs were untouchable—will find themselves replaced by AI. A machine that can diagnose disease with greater accuracy, draft legal documents in seconds, or design infrastructure faster than an entire team of engineers will be cheaper, faster, and better than human labor. If you’re not preparing for that reality, you’re already falling behind.

What does this mean for you? It means constant adaptation. Every three to five years, you will need to redefine your role, retrain, and retool. The only people who survive this AI revolution will be the ones who understand its capabilities and learn to work with it, not against it.

The moral dilemma: When do you stop being human?

The real danger of AI isn’t just economic—it’s existential. When AI merges with humans, we will face an unprecedented question: At what point do we stop being human?

Think about it. If you implant a neural chip that gives you access to the entire internet in your mind, are you still the same person? If your thoughts are intertwined with AI-generated responses, where do you end and AI begins? This is the future we are hurtling toward, and few people are even asking the right questions.

I’m asking them now. And you should be too. Because that line—between human and machine—is coming fast. You need to decide now where you stand. Because once we cross it, there is no going back.

Final thoughts: Be a leader, not a follower

AI isn’t a passing trend. It’s not a gadget or a convenience. It is the most powerful force humanity has ever created. And if you don’t take the time to understand it now, you will be at its mercy.

This is the defining moment of our time. Will you be a master of AI? Or will you be mastered by it? The choice is yours. But if you wait too long, you won’t have a choice at all.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Trump's Zelenskyy deal falls apart: What happened and what's next?

SAUL LOEB / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump offered Zelenskyy a deal he couldn’t refuse—but Zelenskyy rejected it outright.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump welcomed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington to sign a historic agreement aimed at ending the brutal war ravaging Ukraine. Joined by Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump met with Zelenskyy and the press before the leaders were set to retreat behind closed doors to finalize the deal. Acting as a gracious host, Trump opened the meeting by praising Zelenskyy and the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed agreement, emphasizing its benefits—such as access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals for the U.S.—and publicly pledged continued American aid in exchange.

Zelenskyy, however, didn’t share Trump’s optimism. Throughout the meeting, he interrupted repeatedly and openly criticized both Trump and Vance in front of reporters. Tensions escalated until Vance, visibly frustrated, fired back. The exchange turned the meeting hostile, and by its conclusion, Trump withdrew his offer. Rather than staying in Washington to resolve the conflict, Zelenskyy promptly left for Europe to seek support from the European Union.

As Glenn pointed out, Trump had carefully crafted this deal to benefit all parties, including Russia. Zelenskyy’s rejection was a major misstep.

Trump's generous offer to Zelenskyy

Glenn took to his whiteboard—swapping out his usual chalkboard—to break down Trump’s remarkable deal for Zelenskyy. He explained how it aligned with several of Trump’s goals: cutting spending, advancing technology and AI, and restoring America’s position as the dominant world power without military action. The deal would have also benefited the EU by preventing another war, revitalizing their economy, and restoring Europe’s global relevance. Ukraine and Russia would have gained as well, with the war—already claiming over 250,000 lives—finally coming to an end.

The media has portrayed last week’s fiasco as an ambush orchestrated by Trump to humiliate Zelenskyy, but that’s far from the truth. Zelenskyy was only in Washington because he had already rejected the deal twice—first refusing Vice President Vance and then Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It was Zelenskyy who insisted on traveling to America to sign the deal at the White House. If anyone set an ambush, it was him.

The EU can't help Ukraine

JUSTIN TALLIS / Contributor | Getty Images

After clashing with Trump and Vance, Zelenskyy wasted no time leaving D.C. The Ukrainian president should have stayed, apologized to Trump, and signed the deal. Given Trump’s enthusiasm and a later comment on Truth Social—where he wrote, “Zelenskyy can come back when he is ready for peace”—the deal could likely have been revived.

Meanwhile, in London, over a dozen European leaders, joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, convened an emergency meeting dubbed the “coalition of the willing” to ensure peace in Ukraine. This coalition emerged as Europe’s response to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal. By the meeting’s end, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a four-point plan to secure Ukrainian independence.

Zelenskyy, however, appears less than confident in the coalition’s plan. Recently, he has shifted his stance toward the U.S., apologizing to Trump and Vance and expressing gratitude for the generous military support America has already provided. Zelenskyy now says he wants to sign Trump’s deal and work under his leadership.

This is shaping up to be another Trump victory.

Glenn: No more money for the war machine, Senator McConnell

Tom Williams / Contributor | Getty Images

Senator McConnell, your call for more Pentagon spending is as tone-deaf as it is reckless. The United States already spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined — over $877 billion in 2023 alone, dwarfing China ($292 billion), Russia ($86 billion), and the entire EU’s collective defense budgets. And yet here you are, clamoring for more, as if throwing cash at an outdated war machine will somehow secure our future.

The world is changing, Senator, and your priorities are stuck in a bygone era.

Aircraft carriers — those floating behemoths you and the Pentagon so dearly love — are relics of the past. In the next real conflict, they’ll be as useless as horses were in World War I. Speaking of which, Europe entered that war with roughly 25 million horses; by 1918, fewer than 10 million remained, slaughtered by machine guns and artillery they couldn’t outrun.

That’s the fate awaiting your precious carriers against modern threats — sunk by hypersonic missiles or swarms of AI-driven drones before they can even launch a jet. The 1950s called, Senator — they want their war plans back.

The future isn’t in steel and jet fuel; it’s in artificial intelligence and artificial superintelligence. Every dollar spent on yesterday’s hardware is a dollar wasted in three years when AI upends everything we know about warfare. Worse, with the Pentagon’s track record, every dollar spent today could balloon into two or three dollars of inflation tomorrow, thanks to the House and Senate’s obscene spending spree.

We’re drowning in $34 trillion of national debt — 128% of GDP, a level unseen since World War II. Annual deficits hit $1.7 trillion in 2023, and interest payments alone are projected to top $1 trillion by 2026.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s a fiscal time bomb.

And yet you want to shovel more taxpayer money into a Pentagon that hasn’t passed a single audit in its history? Six attempts since 2018, six failures — trillions unaccounted for, waste so rampant that it defies comprehension. It’s irresponsible — bordering on criminal — to suggest more spending when the DOD can’t even count the cash it’s got.

The real threat isn’t just from abroad, though those dangers are profound. It’s from within. The call is coming from inside the house, Senator — and not just the House, but the Senate too. Your refusal to adapt is jeopardizing our security more than any foreign adversary.

Look at China’s drone shows — thousands of synchronized lights painting the sky. Now imagine those aren’t fireworks but weaponized drones, each one cheap, precise, and networked by AI. A single swarm could cripple our planes, ships, tanks, and troops before we fire a shot. Ukraine’s drone wars have already shown this reality: $500 drones taking out $10 million tanks. That’s the future staring us down, and we’re still polishing Cold War relics.

Freeze every bloated project.

Redirect everything — every dime, every mind — toward winning the AI/ASI race. That’s the only battlefield that matters. We’ve got enough stockpiles to handle any foreseeable war in the next three years and a president fighting to end conflicts, not start them. Your plea for more spending isn’t just misguided — it’s a betrayal of the American people sinking under debt and inflation while you chase ghosts of wars past.

Or is it even that senator? Perhaps I have buried the lede, but I am not sure if the following stats will help people understand why this op-ed might have been written by someone in your office.

Your state, Kentucky is:

  • 45th in GDP Per Capita
  • 44th in Employment
  • 42nd in High School Diplomas

And 11th in Defense-related defense contract spending

Who are you actually concerned about, Senator? The safety of the American people or your war machine buddies?

Thanks, but no thanks.