How Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang Would Respond to Russian Troll Farms | Joe Rogan

Last question, because I guess no discussion of presidential policy and the possibility of someone like you running this country is, how do you feel about international relations and the obvious issues of dealing with other countries and what's going on with China and Russia and the interference of our democracy and all the different various issues that we've experienced over the last, particularly over the last couple of years with Russia? Yeah, sure. So about Russia, and you and I were talking about this before we went on air. When I'm president, I will say, look, Russia, I get it. We have tampered with other people's elections for years and decades. Like we America have done that. You've done it to us for the last number of years. It is going to stop right now. And if we have any credible evidence that you are tampering with our information, our democracy, we will take that as an act of hostility and aggression. And we will retaliate in some way that will make your life very, very painful and inconvenient. And the people of the United States will support me on this. And so here is your drop dead date, like turn off the bots. And if we find that your bots are still going after this date, I will just bring the evidence, the American people and then we will act and you will not like it one bit. Now, if if I'm thinking 80, 90% of Americans would get behind that and be like, how are we just like looking at it being like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And in this one, I actually feel a little bit for the tech companies, because it's very difficult for the tech companies to, to prevent this almost impossible, almost impossible, almost impossible to identify. And if you go back to Sam Harris's podcast that we were discussing, which is called the war of information, I think that's what it's called information war or war of information, a recent podcast from the last couple of weeks. They detail how there's essentially just giant groups of people that work for the Russian government that pretend to be people that are involved in Black Lives Matter, pretend to be people that are involved in Texas culture, Southern culture, and they're just sowing seeds of argument and dissent. And they are laughing their asses off. Laughing their ass off and making funny memes. Like some of their memes are really hilarious. But but to them, this is the greatest ROI they've ever seen. They didn't even invest like return on investment. Oh, okay. Like, like, they, you're such an entrepreneur. YouTube man. I don't have a man hanger. I have a normal freaking house. So like they invested not even that much money. Like, but they've found like this underbelly they can just freaking slice into. And so they've spent best estimates, like low tens of millions of dollars. And it's caused us how much damage? How much harm? A real impact. Like, you know, I mean, you couldn't even put a dollar figure on it. So you have to just say, like, look, I get the tech companies are going to try, but they're not going to be able to pull it off. So just like go on and just say to like the world and say, Hey, this is to Russia, but anyone else, same thing. Like if you tamper with our democracy, we're going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. And if we're not quite sure, we're still going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Like, I don't need like 100% certainty on this. I need like, you know, like a legal standard. I need like 80, 85%. And the American people would be like about time because you know, if we can't trust ourselves or each other or what we're seeing, and this is before deep fakes and the rest of it starts hitting like, like, if you're actually going to believe in democracy, then you have to start protecting our information as fast as possible. And you also in my mind have to start, and this is a local issue, but I'm in New Hampshire and Iowa talking about this stuff, their local newspapers are all dying. It's like thousands of local papers just winking out of existence, because they used to rely on classified ads, there are no classified ads anymore, it's all Craigslist, and so they all die. And if you believe in democracy, how the heck can anyone vote on anything if they have no idea what's going on there? So so there are a lot of interrelated issues. And one thing I'm saying is like, look, we had a happy time where local newspapers were supported by classified ads, it's over now. But we're still a democracy, you still need some information to vote. So we need to try and find new ways for you to get quality information. Like that's throwing our hands up and being like, guess the Russians are gonna, you know, like, like, just misinform us with bots, and I guess all the local newspapers are going to die. Like you said, like, these are problems. And we have to start solving them. If you still believe that democracy is the best form of government, and that's what we're going to carry forward with, which you obviously have to believe, like you have to go with that as your model. And so it's all interrelated. But we have to start thinking much, much bigger about what we can get done, because things are slipping away, things are trending in a terrible, terrible direction. Well, Andrew, good luck to you. You're a good man. I wish you well. Thank you for being here. I think your message is excellent. And I hope you really make an impact.