Chris Buskirk on the Art of the Possible 01:07:14

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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Sam will be with us momentarily. We are honored today to have a friend and a great leader in the conservative movement, Chris Buskirk. He is the editor and publisher of the journal American Greatness and the author of a new book, America and the Art of the Possible, Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay. Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Chuck. All right. First, most important question. Are you Team Harry and Meghan or Prince William and Kate?

That's an easy one. I mean, this is a joke question, right? Like, you don't think I recently suffered a head injury, right? Nobody, no sane person can possibly be Harry and Meghan. He sold 1.5 million books that first week.

Right, because people like the car crash. Yeah. You've seen the clips out of the book. It's written like a parody. Well, I was... Can I just say one thing here? Here's the one silver lining here with Harry. He's not blood related to anybody in the House of Windsor.

Really? You've seen the pictures side by side of him and Diana's... Chris has gone down the rabbit hole on the genetics of Prince Harry. It's great. Which don't involve Charles at all. All right, Jeremy, go ahead and play this clip. This is from Pretty Woman, and I think it really discusses what I want to talk about in the book. Go ahead. This is Richard Gere talking to his aide. You know what I used to love when I was a kid? What? Blocks. Building blocks. Recreations.

So I left Monopoly in Voidwarf Park. What's the point? We don't build anything, Phil. We don't make anything. We make money, Edward. We worked for a year on this deal. It's what you said you wanted. I'm handing it to you. Morse's jugular is exposed. It's time for the kill. Let's go.

So when I was reading your book, that popped out to me because I think that's a real theme. And I'm reading from your book, and you wrote, big projects create their own gravitational field and draw people to them. But we need more visionary, charismatic, and energetic leadership. And then this is a quote we actually posted on our social media, got a lot of hits. We have been training managers rather than builders for a long time.

And it has led to a culture of risk aversion, of asking, how do I cover my ass, rather than how do we get this done? That must change.

I think, how do we do that, Chris? I mean, this is the purpose of your book. So your book's descriptive, and then the end's prescriptive. But how do we do that? How does an individual person listening to the show today, how did they help get this going forward? You just do it. So Nike? Yeah, Nike. Literally, you just have to do things. That's why I started the book. You say the first half of the book is...

Uh, descriptive. There's sort of, I kind of run through these different problems. And then the second half of the book is prescriptive. In other words, here's things we should, can and should do. Um,

But before, when I was thinking through what I wanted the book to be, I realized that the complaints in a way are easy. The criticism's easy. At least that's what I thought at first because what I realized that what I needed to do in writing the book is say something about how to make it better or at least how to start to make it better, that that had to be very concrete. And that meant that the description of what I saw as problems had to be very concrete too. Yes. Yeah.

I was talking to a friend yesterday. I said on the right word there's a tendency, which I'm highly sympathetic to. I think it's mostly right to say there's a spiritual crisis, and that's true. The problem is that typically you say that and it's like, yeah, okay. And then everybody's like, oh, no, there's nothing we can do about it or whatever. It's not concrete. It's very up at 100,000 feet. And so what I try to do is describe that.

the problems in a very concrete way because we say, well, what can you do? You have to identify your problems in a very definitive way so that you could have a solution that's also equally definitive. In other words, that's actionable. So you can say, well, here's the issue and here's how I think maybe we can solve that problem. And so that's...

That's really where a lot of the solutions that I propose in the back half of the book come from. But I guess I would say this as a general principle when it comes to solutions. There's like a personal version. There's a national version. So there's things that people can just do in their own lives. And generally, I would say a lot of Americans have a good idea of what those things are. Like I think this is quite an extreme.

a very competent nation, the place where people, where it becomes murky for people and they see, they feel like they don't have agency or they don't know what to do is when it comes to, what do you do about the country? Right. You know, people know that if they want to get ahead or they want their kids to get ahead, there's, you know, it's,

fairly straightforward. It's not always easy. In fact, it's rarely, if ever, easy. But at least there's kind of a rubric that people understand. But then it gets confusing when we say, well, but how do we make that work in general? And so that's why I was, what I tried to do is describe solutions that were big enough to be meaningful and audacious and kind of at the

just at the size where people go, that's a little crazy, that's a little too big, but still actionable. Not so big...

That is just literally impossible. So as I've done some interviews about the book, I see people ask a version of this question. It's kind of like my answer as well. It's sort of like how to eat an elephant one bite at a time. Right. And those are the sorts of solutions that I've tried to propose in the book. So one thing you talk about in the book is that there's this rising gap between a small group of winners, coastal elites, those in the top 10. I didn't say it's 1%. Let's just say it's top 20%.

I think that's more accurate in a lot of ways. And then there's a large group, I don't want to call them losers, but they're falling behind. These are the people struggling to pay rent. These are the people that eggs going $7 for a dozen matters. If someone came to you and just said, Chris...

what can I do to improve my situation? What would you tell them? If we're talking about just literally the individual version of the family version, I think those things are pretty well known, but though they're changing. Like the solution... But are they real? I mean, so you mentioned spirituality. I think you and I agree what it is. But I don't think most people out there would know how to define spirituality, right? It's sort of the old family guy thing where Peter's in the elevator with God and he says, so do people...

who say they're not religious but they're spiritual do they go to heaven or hell you know and god just says they go straight to hell because and the purpose was because they really they're just saying it right right so what what do we mean by that so what would be a spiritual reawakening for this country because obviously if there was uh there'd be less broken homes there'd be i mean you can go on and on on for days the you know the ramifications and the benefits of that

Yeah. I mean, spirituality is typically, um, is typically sort of a euphemism for, I think there's something beyond me, but I don't know what it is and I'm not doing anything about it, but I, but I, maybe I kind of sort of want to, or at least I want people to think I am. I mean, if somebody is like, is actually has that inclination, which, you know, I think that human nature is such that everybody has that inclination and people who say they don't are spending a lot of time and effort covering it up. Um,

and trying to bury it deep, deep down so it doesn't come out again because they're afraid of what it might mean. But, you know, get involved in a church and be a part of that church.

Think about, to your original question, what does the individual do? It's kind of like if you get married, stay married. Make sure that you find that person and stick with it. The commitments you make in life, regardless of what they are in the personal life, to your spouse or to your kids or whatever, make sure that those are commitments you take seriously and work on those. That in and of itself makes a huge difference in people's lives. Or even...

If they don't, that you as parents are still co-parenting. You're working together. Because realizing once you create offspring, this is a... It's not about you. It's about... It's a lifelong thing, right? And we all know couples who have divorced, and there's sundry reasons for them. But...

One turns out to be sort of absent and it's it's a real shame and it really is affecting this generation in a lot of ways. It affects the kids for sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, like you. I mean, you know, lots of people as you get older who are who have divorced. I see some it's rare, but I do see some folks who are divorced who who really work at doing a good job with their kids and.

And I think that they – in fact, they have said to me it's like they work really hard at it. If they do well, it's still suboptimal version had they been able to stay married. Every divorced person I know will say that. It's not like anybody is a defender of divorce per se. People say sometimes it's necessary or that type of thing. But nobody thinks that's your first best choice. Everybody knows that the first best choice is to get married and stay married. And that goes, I think, to having certain –

a certain way of looking at the world as an individual, and this plays through with how you live your life personally, your private life with your family, but also how you honor, say, business commitments or work commitments, whether you own a business or employer or whatever. Always think that you are always, number one, sort of high integrity. Keep those commitments. Tell people the truth. It's like all these very basic things, but actually they're

It's hard to execute on those things, I think, throughout a whole lifetime. It's a discipline that you have to do every single day. And it has roots in spirituality. When you believe something higher and better than yourself, you look at the world differently. True. And you don't become so self-interested.

There's a point that I make at a different place in the book, and this is – I think this is really important and that people don't appreciate about what we're trying to do currently in America. And that is – it's something that we need to recognize and just deal with it head on because it's the only way we get to a solution. And that is that there is no –

example in human history of a large nation, an imperial type nation like the United States is, that did not have some type of a unifying religion.

It just doesn't exist in human history. It was either like sort of a national cult in the ancient times. It was a state religion. Or there's another version that has occurred where you don't have an official state religion, but you kind of have a super dominant religion. You know, it's the super majority of people observe it and it has some type of official or semi-official deference from the state and from the culture. The United States... The United States...

started off like that. We did not, I mean, obviously some of the states had, there were established churches in the early, in the colonies in the early states. By 1830, that was gone. But you still had this sort of, you still had a Christian supermajority in the country. And Christianity was sort of the default cultural setting of the country. Where we are today is that

Christianity is a minority religion, though it's a plurality religion. It's the single largest religion in this country. There's still a certain amount of deference. But what we're now trying to do is undertake a country that has, you know, officially it's multicultural, it's multi-religion.

That's fine, but it's hard. And that's what we have to recognize is that what we're trying to do is unique in human history, and that's really, really hard. And that is the purpose of the Constitution. That's supposed to be the unifying vision for the country, which seems to be under attack right now. We have a minute left. We're with Christopher Buskirk, America. He wrote the book America and the Art of the Possible. Christopher, before we take a break, where can they find you and order the book?

The book is available to, well, two easy places. One is a little website you may have heard of, Amazon.com. The other place, and I know some people don't like to buy from Amazon, so the publisher, Encounter Books, EncounterBooks.com, they sell it, and their fulfillment's really fast. So either place. Great. Fantastic. With Christopher Buskirk, we'll be right back after this break. This is Breaking Battlegrounds.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Today in studio, Christopher Butzkirk, the author of America and the Art of the Possible. You can buy this book on Amazon.com. You can probably also buy it from amgreatness.com, which he's the editor and publisher of. Folks, how's your stock portfolio doing? Are you being able to save money for the future? Are you being able to save money for the future?

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That's invest, the letter Y, then refy.com or call 888-YREFY24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. All right, Christopher, as you were writing this book, we all go, anything we write, we have an initial theme, a vision for a book. As you went through this process, did you have any thoughts?

Did something change the direction of the book at all? Did something you learned say, okay, I need to make this alteration to it?

I learned – yeah, well, a bunch of stuff actually. So if you have like nine more segments, we can go through all the things I learned while I was writing the book. Well, I'll tell you – I'll talk about one thing that I learned in the course of writing it which I found interesting and did sort of – it caused me to – it wasn't like a fundamental adjustment but it was definitely adjustment to the way I thought about some of the things in the book. And that is –

And that is that what I have found is that wealth in the country has actually been concentrating at the top for about 50 years. Like it's just been moving up. And I go through some examples in the book. I used to talk about – it's actually a funny aside on this. A friend of mine – actually, one of the people at the publisher sent me a screenshot. The book right now is the number one seller on Amazon in the income inequality section.

Really? Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, well, no, it's great, but it's hilarious because, A, I didn't know there was an income inequality section. I certainly didn't think I'd be the number one seller in what is effectively like a left-wing sector. Welcome to 2023. No, totally. But what I found is that...

Is that, in fact, it is true. So the amount of money that it takes in real inflationary adjusted dollars to be rich by a certain, like, you know, if you sort of have these markers of what it means to be rich, that number keeps going up.

And so people who would have been considered very wealthy in the 80s, they're maybe barely wealthy now if they have the same amount of inflation-adjusted dollars. 100 grand used to mean something. Well, if you take 100 grand in 1985, for instance, and you take the inflation-adjusted amount into 2023, it's way less money.

And so I use the example of like Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, who was the wealthiest person in the country throughout most of the, maybe all of the 80s, but most of the 80s for sure. And into the 90s, if you like inflation adjust his wealth, now Walmart stock obviously has gone up, but he was worth,

But if you take like his 1985, 1990 net worth, you just say what's that amount in 2023 dollars? He's still quite wealthy but he's not even in the top hundred wealthiest people in the country. And what's happened is that that sort of trickled down the whole sort of income and wealth spectrum in the country. And this is why you see –

I guess let me – there's a couple of different tracks here. But I guess what I wanted to say is that on the right, we tend to be very resistant to that theory or the idea that there is wealth concentration going on that's unprecedented in this country. But it's actually true. And we don't want to admit to that because the solutions that are often offered in politics are basically like socialism or communism, which is like, I don't know, kill the rich and take their money.

And that's obviously wrong. It's bad. It also makes the problem way worse. Like any socialist communist regime, like the wealth concentration in those regimes is actually more extreme than it is in a situation like we have today. Right.

But the reason it has been happening in this country is because we have not innovated. Like we don't have basic tech innovation. There's a whole section, as you know, in the book about this. And so, you know, we went through this, you know, basically about two and a half centuries of unprecedented tech innovation. It's like worldwide, but it's very highly concentrated in Northern Europe and the United States over the past couple hundred years since the Industrial Revolution started.

And those innovations are the things that, you know, they increase productivity, which will, meaning what? It means you get more output per unit of input, you know, electricity, a combustion engine, the chemical revolution of the early 20th century. All of these things were like big leaps forward where you were able to put, for an hour of work, you'd get out, you know, one widget, and then you'd get out five widgets, and then you'd get out 10 widgets. And what

What happened is that starting in the late 60s and very early 70s, the tech innovation really, really slowed down. The one exception to that is in information technology, and that's been very real advanced. So that's where all the productivity gains basically have come from over the past 50 years. And what happens, though, is when you go from a period where you are getting – during the period where you're getting more output for unit of input because of tech innovation –

There's more wealth that's being created, and it is broadly distributed because it's just basically flowing in. And when it's stopped, that's when people all of a sudden get – and this was the point that was being made in the clip. We don't make anything anymore. And we financially engineer everything. That's when people don't know what they're supposed to do, but they're still very smart, ambitious people, and they're like –

Shoot, I don't know how to get 10 widgets instead of one widget per unit of input, but I do know how I can figure out how to wring a profit out of this deal by using interesting finance or whatever. And that's kind of the process that the country has been in for the past 50 years. It's like hyper-financialization. And this has played out in a few societies in the modern era, right?

And it always is the same thing, is that wealth then concentrates up because the pie isn't growing as quickly as it had been in the past. And so if you either have access or you have some sort of cultural or social position or you're just really smart and ambitious and you figure out how to game the system and how to work the system and make money, then you do fine.

The problem is that everybody else really doesn't. And so you see people, if you have a college degree, you're not in as good a position economically as you were 50 years ago. If you only have a high school education, on average, way worse than you were 50 years ago. And if you don't have...

Um, uh, if you don't, if you didn't finish high school, which there's like 20% or 15% of Americans didn't like, like you are just like in free fall. Yeah. There's no, there's no hope. We have one minute left here. Um, just briefly, um,

Do you have hope for America? Are you looking forward optimistically to the future? And then let us know again where folks can find your book and American Greatness. Yeah, I do. I mean, the book is, like I said, the book spends half the book talking about the problems, but then the other half is the solutions. I'm actually very hopeful about what is possible. And as I look around the country, I really do see opportunities.

a lot of doers. Like we have a very, there are a lot of people in this country who are super competent and very motivated. And so, yeah, I am quite hopeful about what we could do. If you want to find the book, amazon.com, encounterbooks.com. Buy it. Buy a hundred of them. Read them is good, but mostly just buy them. Buy them, read it, get involved in your community, make a difference. The book's not there just for you to look at and collect dust, folks. Christopher Buskirk, thanks a million for coming on Breaking Battlegrounds. Thanks.

You deserve a home that's beautiful and stylish. At Overstock, you don't have to choose between low prices and quality. Find new on-trend home goods that reflect your taste and don't compromise on value. You can be proud of your home and design a space where you feel like you, all under budget. Plus, you get free shipping on everything in the continental United States. Overstock is where quality furniture and decor cost less.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest, a favorite of the show, Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock.com, an actual e-commerce company that's been in business two decades and has also done 10 consecutive quarters of profit, which you do not hear a lot in the world of tech. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Chuck. It's great to be out with you again. Well, appreciate you. We're going to play a clip real quick here of a campaign you're doing with brand ambassadors, and then we'll talk about that. Go ahead, Jeremy. Hi, I'm interior designer Vanessa DeLeon, and I'm going to be answering some questions. Accent wall or wallpaper? Accent wallpaper. Colors or neutrals? Color. Chrome or brass? Brass and chrome.

Matching bedroom set or a mixed bedroom set? Mixed match bedroom set, but cohesive flow. Headboard or no headboard? Headboard. Solid or print mixing? Solid and print mixing. Wood or concrete? Concrete. Blackout curtains or Roman shades? Roman shades. Sconces or table lamps? Sconces. Sectional or sofa? Sofa. Welcome to my set that I designed with Overstock.

Well, I'm going to tell you immediately, Kip, my producer, is in the studio, and she was actually playing along with them and agreed probably on about a third of them. So, Kip, you have some problems with the brand ambassador there. So, Jonathan, Overstock.com was known as being an online liquidator. That was the image, at least. And you have made this transition to exclusive home furnishings and furniture online retailer. Wow.

How long was the process to make that switch? Who thought of it? Was it just based on studying, looking at numbers, what people are buying? How does that come about when you just make this reversal?

You know, 23 years ago, we started as an online liquidator. We'd been in business about three years when we morphed to a general retailer and we sold everything from apparel to jewelry and watches to home and beauty products. About two years ago, we...

we decided that we would switch to be home-centric, meaning home furnishings and furniture only. That was about 80% of our business at the time. We saw that the customers that were coming to us for home products came more frequently, converted at a higher rate, and had an average order volume. And so to focus our brand on what our customers wanted, we

We made that decision, and it was really a long-term decision because we knew we would be foregoing for a time 20% of our revenues, which were coming from these other products. And it took us six quarters to kind of exit out of the non-home products. Not sure it happened at the best time. The economy is tough right now, but we are very confident that long-term this is a good thing

for Overstock. And now the trick is using these brand ambassadors, the campaign like you just played, to educate our customers who know our name well, for them to associate our name with home all the time. And that's what we're going through right now. So one of your targets is called Henry's. These are high earners, not rich yet. Can you explain to our audience who that demographic is?

Well, it tends to be a younger demographic. They're buying their first home or making their first move up. They're often professionals or sometimes they're dual-income families. And they are doing better income-wise than 70% of U.S. households, but they're not ultra-affluent yet. And so they're still...

a bargain still means something to them. And what Overstock is best at is providing what we call smart value, meaning if you're willing to spend $300 on a couch, we're going to give you the best couch out there for $300. And if you want to spend $3,000 on a couch, we're going to give you the best quality couch for $3,000. And that's really appealing to

to these Henry's, high earners, not rich yet demographic. We have a minute left in the segment. How has the overstock customer base of two decades plus reacted to this switch? Really well. Our average order volume has gone up. So when people come and buy, they're buying more than they've bought before. It's

We're now known for one thing, and that's home, and that's an easier thing to focus on and market. And how is the team members overstock? Have they been excited about this transition?

You know, it was tough to say goodbye to some of our suppliers in areas we left, but the team really likes to focus. You know, one thing that I know as a manager is the more you can give clarity of message, not just to your customer, but to your team, the more successful you're going to be in business.

Fantastic. We're with Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock.com. I asked you to, if you have something for your home, go visit it today, Overstock.com. You can get some of the red tag specials. This is Chuck Warren. Jonathan Johnson's our guest. We'll be right back after this break.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Today on this segment, our guest, Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock.com, one of the more successful e-commerce retailers in the United States. And folks, are you concerned about stock market volatility? Are you concerned about your retirement?

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Just log on to investyrefine.com. That's invest, the letter Y, then refy.com or call 888-Y-R-E-F-Y 24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you and prepare yourself for the future.

Jonathan, what surprised you about involving brand ambassadors in your marketing campaign? You guys have always had some very famous campaigns, including The O, which even Dirty Rock highlighted one episode. So it's not about The O right now, but how do you like working with these brand ambassadors?

We've partnered with six brand ambassadors who are high-profile, home-centric experts in interior design, home renovation, decorating, and remodeling. They show our customers and consumers how Overstock can make their dream homes come true at any budget.

through unique content on overstock.com through their social media channels. They've got over 20 million followers across social media platforms. When I personally met with these brand ambassadors, I was just tickled at how proficient

personable they are, how real they are. A long time ago in my career, I spent some time in Los Angeles and worked with people in the business, and they were big egos. These brand ambassadors are down-to-earth, real people, and we're a little bit late to the social media game, but we're catching up with these great brand ambassadors. That's fantastic. I want to switch gears here for a minute.

For the next couple years to 10 years, what is something the federal government can do that helps all businesses be more creative, make more profit, things of that nature? I mean, first thing I would say, what can the federal government do? It can stay within its constitutional bounds. I think the biggest thing that's facing business today are –

are departments in the executive branch taking on legislative authority to put extra regulation on businesses. You know, we've got the SEC that's putting out climate control rulings. It's probably beyond what its charter is. You know, laws should be left unresolved.

to Congress. Enforcing those laws should be left to the executive branch. And today we've got an executive branch that's kind of hyper-focused on advancing a legislative agenda through agency rulemaking that I think has just gone way too far. How much does Overstock have to spend annually just on compliance with the SEC and other federal agencies?

Oh, my goodness. You know, I mean, I don't have the number on the tip of my tongue, but it's a large number and it's a growing number as the number of rules that we have to follow and abide by. And we want to follow by every rule that, you know, applies to us. Plurifical.

proliferates through agency rulemaking or agency legislation rather than Congress. Part of it is that Congress has been lazy and just kind of given broad brush delegating authority. Congress should be doing its job and making laws or not making laws and saying what the laws are.

When we had you on last, we received a lot of comments, all very good, by the way, and they just loved that they felt like you're a really great business mentor. That's the feedback we got. How important are mentors in the corporate world, such as a big billion-dollar company like Overstock, or just starting your own business down the road? Boy, I think mentors are so important. And I've been thinking as we've

past the end of an old year and into a new year about people that have been mentors to me early in my career and those that are mentors to me now. It's great to have people

that have an interest in you, are willing to kind of brainstorm, answer questions. Maybe you've been there, done that before, that you can ask questions to. I always tell students coming out of school, don't be afraid to ask people to be a mentor because most people are flattered by that and they love giving advice. The thing that I think is important is

One step beyond mentor. It's one person that has someone who takes an interest in you and will give you advice. It's another to find someone who will be a sponsor and recommend you to potential clients or recommend you to...

potential employers or their contacts. And so mentors are the first step, but among your mentors, find out who can really go to bat for you, help you grow your business, help you expand your network, maybe help you find another job or another place, something more to do in your career. That's fantastic advice. All right, so leadership study.

Do you find the best source for reading and studying leadership techniques, management techniques? Is that by doing leadership seminars, reading leadership books, or is it basically biographies of people who have been successful, people who've had failures? What would you recommend to someone?

Well, Chuck, this is a great question coming from you because you know I'm a reader and you've been kind enough to give me a lot of great books over the years, including one you gave me for Christmas this year on one of my favorite people, President Reagan. The question is interesting. Is it better to study biographies or kind of business books? And I think the answer to that is yes. Both.

Both have a place. And I find studying biographies, and I've read a lot of books about Reagan, who I like, and Lincoln, who I love. These are political leaders. Yeah.

I love Shoe Dog, the book about Phil Knight at Nike. I read books that read bad blood about Elizabeth Holmes. That's an example of what not to do. I think that biographies are nice because you see it in action, you learn stories, and so much of business leadership is being able to tell a story and make an analogy. So I love biographies particularly

But then I also love kind of books that are on leadership because there's specific how-to lists that come in there that are a little bit easier to follow. And my favorite book on that front right now is a book called Turn the Ship Around. It's about tent-based leadership of how to empower your team and give them more leadership skills that they can use on their own. So I think each has its place.

I find more interesting the biography. Sometimes I find more quick, powerful to-dos for today in a leadership book. That's fantastic. We're with Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock.com. Visit Overstock.com for any of your home furnishing and indoor decor needs. You can get up to 20% off on various things for your kitchen, bedding, decor, home improvement, whatever. If you want your house to look better, visit Overstock.com. Jonathan, thank

You are, our previous guest was talking about a book. We were talking about the spirituality gives people a vision of something outside themselves. You serve as a lay ecclesiastical leader for your faith, and then you also run a multibillion-dollar company. How does being a leader, a lay person who you spend 30 hours plus a week serving people in your congregation make you a better CEO at Overstock.com?

Boy, that's a thoughtful question. And, you know, I think about the first year of the pandemic when everyone in our company went from working at our beautiful headquarters that was so collaborative to being stuck at home. And I felt like for that first year, as much as being a chief executive officer, I was kind of a chief consultant.

pastoral officer trying to make sure everyone felt comfortable giving work and giving kind of how do you get along with your family and tight quarters advice. And so there is a level of

of kind of a pastoral quality to being the CEO. And I think, you know, being over serving a congregation has helped nurture that. I think more importantly, having, you know, being active in my church, having a deep and abiding faith,

It gives me a higher purpose. And, you know, business has its ups and downs. And the downs are never as seriously bad as you think they are. And, frankly, the ups are not quite as exciting as, you know, or they're not quite as –

Mind-blowing as they may feel when you think about it, it's kind of a longer, faith-filled, eternal perspective. You know, as an ecclesiastic leader, I've sat next to a widow,

in her living room after her husband passed away, or I've, you know, knelt at the bedside of someone who was sick, or, you know, talked to husbands and wives that are struggling in their marriage. All those things are, frankly, as fun as it is to run overstock and to make a buck doing it, none of that is as important as helping people advance in their lives and deepen their faith. Fantastic.

So you have five sons. How have five sons molded you into a leader? Because I imagine five sons is like herding feral cats. How has that molded you as a leader, as a CEO?

Well, it's funny you use the cat analogy. My oldest son, my youngest son just barely moved out of the house and we're empty nesters. But my four oldest sons used to describe my youngest son as a cat, that he only really came home to eat. And otherwise he was always out with his friends or playing sports or doing stuff. But one of the things that I have loved about

about being a dad. And it's not just a dad of sons, but just a dad is talking to them about what I'm doing at work, giving them insight into what I'm doing, and then listening to how they react. You know, there was a time in my career where I was back in Washington and dealing with hard issues and we were doing some lobbying. And when I would explain that to my boys, they'd say,

Dad, I think you can explain it better this way. And what I learned is if I'm trying to explain something to a congressman or an agency head,

If I can get my junior high school son to understand it, then I can get a congressman or an agency head to understand it too. So I really found involving them in what I was doing at work deepened our relationship and helped me be a better business person. It's funny you say that. Jerry Seinfeld was interviewed and they asked how he prepared his employees.

or bits for shows, and he said he would go over it with his kids at dinner. He said he struck out more than he did not with them, but it actually helped him refine his message when he was doing things, and I think that's a wonderful example. And no one will be more honest critique than a child of a parent, or a teenage child of a parent. And proud to be that critique, that critic. We have a minute and 30 left here.

Are you optimistic about the economy going forward? Where are you on that? I think we're in for a tough slog. The Federal Reserve seems to be battling, taking a battle on business and keeps hiking interest rates. And, you know, I know it's battling inflation, but we've got low unemployment. So I think interest rates are going to keep going up. And that hurts us.

business. When consumers can't take out a loan or can't get a mortgage to move to their next home, it's hard. When businesses can't go to a bank and get money to raise, you know, to build their businesses, that's hard. So, you know, I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like we're, you know, in a recession and this valley of a recession is going to be with us for a while.

Jonathan Johnson, thank you so much for visiting us today. Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock.com. Everybody, I know your home needs a little TLC, so go on today, get savings up to 15% to 20%. Jonathan, thanks for visiting us at Breaking Battlegrounds. Thank you, Chuck. Welcome back to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. We are now welcome to have with us Brock Buer. He is the president of Volant Systems. It's an aviation consulting company, and we're here to talk today about...

the airline industry a little bit and all the fun we've had this week. And now everybody in America is aware of a system called Notice to Air Missions, which used to be called Notice to Airmen. But because it's 2022-23, we are now trying to make everything inclusive. So now it's called Notice to Air Missions. Brock, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, Chuck. How are you today? Good, good. So explain to our audience what happened this week. A

air traffic stalled and stopped for several hours. Sure. So first of all, I want to remind listeners that the United States has the most complex air traffic system in the world. We move the equivalent of, what is it, about 2.3 million passengers a day, 25,000 flights. That's the equivalent of moving twice the population of Salt Lake almost every day. So if you can imagine the magnitude of a system that big.

And this week, one of the tools and one of the technologies in place to assist with that, to kind of reduce risk and manage risk of the different maybe non-standard things that are out there or maybe things under repair is called the Notices to Air Missions. It used to be, as you mentioned, called Notices to Airmen.

It's essentially a system to disseminate information essential to personnel and concerned with flight operations. And it can be anything from, oh, there's a taxi light out on Taxiway Bravo in Salt Lake City.

to, oh, the whole runway shut down or the airports close, right, for an air show, things of that nature. And so it's a crucial information or a lot of it is crucial information. And some of it, of course, is just going to be noise because it's small. But every little detail goes into that system and is disseminated to different airlines. And they are required to be able to access that system

before they can haul passengers from point A to point B. So that's why it was such a big deal when it broke down because it was by regulatory requirement. It's needed to be able to fly, but from a risk perspective, it's what helps keep our air traffic system safe. I was on a flight recently and the passenger next to me, his father is a pilot and he does a lot of international flights and he's getting ready to retire.

And his dad, and, you know, again, this guy was three glasses of wine into our conversations. I don't know how true it was, but I'll ask you. His father was concerned because of the pilot shortage that we're getting a lot of young pilots who are getting heavier responsibilities now than they would have 20 years ago, but you had more veterans flying. They, you know, they had thousands and thousands of hours. And he was concerned that we're going to have a pilot error here.

because of the youth of the crews. And so, first of all, do you feel that's a possible concern? And two, how does something like this that happened this week affect those younger pilots who just don't have the hours, who just don't have the experience? Experience matters. Yeah, experience does matter. And you can compensate for...

shortfalls in experience with some very targeted training and some training programs. So the military does it all the time. With the U.S. Air Force and Navy and Marines, et cetera, they bring in pilots who are young, have very little experience, and they have a very robust and advanced training system. They train them up, and very quickly they're flying combat missions with 300 hours.

off carriers and doing things but those are first of all they start with good candidates second they have a very robust training program and it can be done and many airlines are following that same model most of the major airlines in the united states have started in-house what they call ab initio or from the beginning training programs that do just that they they they

they compensate for that lack of experience with improved training. So it is a real risk that we are facing in the United States that most of the airlines are starting to pay attention to and doing some things about. A system like this is actually...

a safeguard, so to speak, like bumpers on the lanes, right? This is to kind of help these pilots, even though they lack experience, if they'll follow the procedures put in place, they'll be able to remain safe and keep the public safe. So in some ways, the lack of experience, it hurts, but in other ways, it helps because if you just teach the pilots, okay, follow the structure that's in place, follow the systems that's in place, and you get them into those good habit patterns early,

they can actually be safer. Now I have a son who's, who's in the airline industry as well. And I would say he's a better pilot than me, but I'm a smarter pilot than he is because I've got more experience. And there's an old expression that says there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots. So, you know, we, we all learn from our mistakes. So there, there is right now, what my concern with this would not be that, that we, the pilot error in

in terms of flying the airplane, it's errors in judgment. And what we have seen is there's a riff in the cockpit, so to speak, between the younger generation and older generation. I like to call them old crows versus SNAP. SNAP stands for sensitive new age pilots. And these two groups are, there's a very kind of a divide. And there's a technology divide as well. The younger pilots are much, much better with technology.

and adapting to the change in technology than the older pilots. So what has to happen is those two groups and airlines need to facilitate this. Those two groups need to learn from each other, work together, pass on this methodologies of thinking in terms of managing risk for the young generation. And then the older pilots need to learn about technology more from the younger pilots. So it's not insurmountable, but it is something we need to recognize and pay attention to, absolutely.

What are the qualities? If someone's listening right now and said, you know what? I think I'd like to be a commercial air pilot. What are the qualities they need to be a good commercial pilot? Well, first is you've got to be incredibly good looking. I

Is a mustache required? Is a mustache required for a lot of them? See, I can say that because you don't have no viewership. This is just a listenership. So I can say you must be incredibly good looking. No, you know, steely eyed, nerves of steel, etc. I would say probably one of the best qualities is someone who pays attention to details, who has what we call good situational awareness. They simply have an awareness of their surroundings and they can kind of project perspectives.

what's gonna happen looking at the situation and can see that now I've had a lot of discussions. Is that something that you learn or is that something that you're born with? And I'd say the answer is yes.

There are certain cultures where lack their culture seems to lack situational awareness or people that's not as much aware. And then there are others that seem to have a little more. And there are people that have a little more and a little less. But it is also something that can be taught. That's probably number one. Number two would be just be able to have some discipline, discipline, habits and habit patterns.

And number three, just, you know, hand-eye coordination and working within spaces, you know, moving objects. You take, for example, one of the challenges that a lot of international carriers have had is they're making a leap from bicycle to airplane. And so you have a student that comes to the United States to learn how to fly, and the most advanced machine they've operated is maybe a moped.

And then suddenly you're putting them into an airplane. And so that's a big leap. And it takes a while to build all those fundamental things in motion type skills for them to move that direction. But those are some of the skills that primarily make up a good commercial pilot. And the third, I would say, you've got to have a lot of money because the training is really expensive. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So I want to go back quickly here to the central database of notice to air missions. It's a 30-year-old system.

Why is that? Why are we using a 30 year old? I mean, we're cloning sheep now. Why are we using a 30 year old system? Because the sheep are running the program. I'm not sure. Well, a lot of it, as you know, particularly from a from a governmental perspective, this is a bureaucracy funded by the U.S. government. And so.

What happens is, you know, the political football begins to happen where an agency or someone running the agency is a political appointee of the party that just lost power, just gained power. And so they begin to play political football with an agency like the FAA or some of the funding of an agency like the FAA. And so part of that's a reason for it. I would say also sometimes the FAA is...

They don't hold themselves as accountable to the same standard they hold the air carriers. For example, if you wanted to certify an aircraft to fly with passengers, you would have to prove that certain systems have triple redundancy or the FAA would say you cannot fly that aircraft.

However, I don't, it does not appear at first blush and I could be completely wrong on this but it doesn't appear at first blush that the FAA has held themselves to that same standard with their internal systems because they would have had, if this system was that crucial, they would have had some triple redundancy within their own systems. So, and I'd say third perhaps Chuck is that

Oftentimes, again, since this is a bureaucracy and a political connected organization, they don't always select the most qualified people to head up the organizations because of the politics of the situation. And I think we as voters sometimes should demand that if you're going to appoint someone to run the FAA or some organization that has to do with technology, that they have some experience with that technology before they get into that position. Yeah.

Well, that's too much common sense. I don't know why you think Washington's ever going to do that. It would just seem something like this central database that people say –

You know, this is pretty important. It's not a political issue. Planes flying on time, planes not wrecking. You know, these are all important things that most all Americans want. Matter of fact, I doubt there's even 1% who don't want to see air traffic going smoothly. And you just think sometimes the powers to be would just simply say, you know, there's some fundamentals that we just all agree on. Let's just make sure it happens. And let's not wait 30 years to update a system.

True. I agree with you. It does. It makes too much sense. But as you know, when it comes to Washington and the politics of the situation, those bureaucracies, even though they may have good intentions, the best plan, the best qualified people, they may not get the funding they need to do what they need to do in the timing they need to do it. And then so we're left with a 30-year-old system. And I don't know, by the way, for your listeners, I don't know if any of your listeners have tried to pull up an example of a NOTAM system.

There's a complete language that you have to learn. I don't know if you've delved into that, but that can be sometimes humorous. It is. It's a second language because of the bandwidth of the early machines. And they tried to standardize it so they could send messages in short, short bytes of data. And so that's still part of the system, even today.

Robert Sumwalt, former NTSB investigator, head of the NTSB, he in 2018 said, we need to completely overhaul this and get rid of it and put together something that makes more sense. What year was that? Current tools. What year is that? 2018. I believe it was 2018 that he said that. Almost five years ago. One of the things I read about this that just had me laughing, there's like just seven people on this. For some reason, I just think there should be a couple of room full of people working on this system. They're like,

Yeah, we turned it off, sort of like they pulled the plug out and plugged it back in for it to reboot. I mean, it basically sounded like what they did, and there's seven people there just probably biting their nails. That's probably about right. Again, you've got to expect the same level of redundancy from our internal systems as we do on the aircraft. That's probably one of the key takeaways. Probably another reason, though, too, we've become –

more because our system is so complex we become more and more technology dependent um and we don't know sometimes how to be resilient when that central system goes down because we become too centrally controlled as opposed to decentral decentralized execution and i think that's a principle perhaps that we're ignoring in some of these meltdowns that we're seeing is that uh

So frontline employees aren't empowered enough with the tools to do the job, even if it's at a reduced rate or reduced capacity. So that would be another principle I would kind of look at as a build into the future, new systems for sure. Great advice. Brock, I have one last question here before we end our interview. You served in the military. You were a pilot. That's where you learned it, right? Yep. Would you recommend young men and women get involved and become military pilots?

I still would. It was a great opportunity to serve. It was a great opportunity to serve.

It was a fantastic opportunity to have some fun. I know that sounds, maybe it doesn't sound like fun to some of you, but I really, really enjoyed my flying up through the A-10 and T-37. I enjoyed instructing. Just a word of advice to anybody who goes down that road is that you've got to understand that for your commitment time, they own you. And, you know, you could be shipped off to a foreign place to do some things you didn't really thought you signed up to do, but you did.

So just got to understand that going into it. But I had the time of my life and I really enjoyed the people I worked with. And there's a lot of great opportunity. And at the same time, again, you're helping to contribute to the freedom of our nation, which is a nice byproduct. Thanks, my friend. Well, we appreciate you, Brock Brewer. Thanks for coming on, explaining a little bit about the cluster this week. And get home safely, my friend. All right. Have a good one, guys. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Folks, this is Breaking Battlegrounds. We hope you have a fantastic week and we'll be back next week. Thanks a million.

Hello, everybody. This is producer Jeremy of the Breaking Battlegrounds radio show. And Chuck and Sam wanted me to set up this clip about semiconductors, how they're built, and how the United States can stay ahead of China. Here you go. This is the A100 chip from the U.S. giant NVIDIA. It's one of the world's most advanced computing processors, which helps develop artificial intelligence that's used in everything from self-driving cars to making drugs and even building weapons.

And this is one of its newest competitors, made by a Chinese startup. Industry analysts who track the speed of chips say this model is even faster than the A100 based on initial tests. It produced performances that were significantly more competitive than previous AI chips coming from China. Here's how the design and capabilities of these two chips compare as the race for dominance in tech is ramping up.

The U.S. has been a pioneer in the semiconductor industry for over 70 years. The U.S. essentially gave birth to the semiconductor industry and the semiconductor economy. Wayne Lam is the director of research with tech consulting firm CCS Insight. For over a decade, he has been researching American chip technology. The U.S. was an ideal place because it started much of the research and core sciences.

In the late 1940s, American scientists invented the first transistor, the fundamental technology behind all chips. Early versions of chips fit inside computers that helped calculate projectiles and get NASA space programs off the ground. But the industry really took off in the 1960s with the rising demand for consumer goods like televisions and corporate computers.

That boom also drove chip companies to spring up across Asia, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company now leading the industry, making more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips. Still today, the U.S. is home to some of the world's leading chip designers, and they help power everything from our smartphones to laptops and data centers.

China, on the other hand, has long been trailing the U.S., and for several decades it has actually relied on American companies as well as chip makers in Taiwan and Japan. In 2021, China imported more than $430 billion worth of chips, exceeding that of oil.

So Chinese President Xi Jinping has made it a top priority to change that. It's absolutely important on a strategic basis. Gregory Allen is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. He's been following Beijing's AI and semiconductor policies for about seven years.

What they essentially wanted in the semiconductor industry was for more of the chips that were used in China to be made in China. So to become more self-reliant, Beijing promised to provide about $180 billion in state funding to support its domestic chip industry. The goal is to design chips that can be as fast as the American ones, like this AI chip from Nvidia. And this model released in August by Biren is the latest demonstration of China's progress.

Like its American rival, the B-Ren chip is also a graphics processing unit or GPU, and both are designed to help computers perform complex tasks faster. So what makes a chip powerful? To improve their performance, both companies are using the same type of transistor. It's the fundamental unit that basically controls the flow of electronic signals, and that allows the chips to store data or run calculations.

But unlike the first transistor invented in the 1940s, the ones today are so small that they are measured in nanometers, which is a fraction of the width of a human hair. Seven nanometer transistors are now the base for both NVIDIA and Biren's high-end chips. So the smaller the transistor, the more transistors you can pack into the same surface area of a silicon.

The American chip is designed with more than 54 billion transistors over a plate of about 800 mm2, whereas the BR100 is slightly bigger, with about 77 billion transistors packed into about 1,000 mm2. While there are many factors that determine a chip's performance, industry experts say having a higher number of transistors can help increase the Chinese processor's speed.

But Beeren says its chip can perform more than 1,000 trillion operations per second at its peak. Write it out, that's 15 zeros. That's about three times the stated speed of Nvidia's A100. But whether Beeren will be able to dominate the market will require more than designing chips. Producing them is also a huge challenge.

because it requires precise manufacturing to squeeze these billions of transistors onto a tiny surface. Semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most technologically complicated thing that the human species does. One of the most complex processes is called lithography, which blasts UV light through photo masks and prints patterns on silicon wafers, adding layers to form the transistors. You need to be precise.

Some of the layers in these semiconductor transistors are only one atom thick. So NVIDIA and BIREN both look to another company for manufacturing. You may have guessed that's the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world's largest contract chip producer. But BIREN's reliance on TSMC is becoming a hurdle on its way to rivaling NVIDIA. It has been sort of a cautionary tale for the Chinese semiconductor industry.

A couple of months after the Chinese startup released its chip, the Biden administration imposed new export restrictions. The rules barred cutting-edge semiconductors made with American technologies from being sold to China. And because TSMC uses equipment from U.S. companies, Biren is at risk of losing the Taiwanese chipmaker as a supplier. This dramatically reduces Biren's prospects for its future as a leading chip designer. Biren didn't respond to a request for comment.

TSMC says it complies with all laws and regulations, but declined to comment on specific customers. China also depends on a handful of American companies that dominate the industry for advanced manufacturing equipment. With the American government blocking China from buying these machines, it becomes even harder for Beijing to build its own high-end chip-making factories. That development is, uh, a Herculean effort, to say the least. So it would require

considerable investment in capital and time to make that happen. China isn't alone in facing challenges in trying to become more self-sufficient. While the U.S. leads in design and research, it has also long relied on outside manufacturers like TSMC and Samsung in South Korea.

And the vulnerability of that dependence became an issue during the pandemic when a chip shortage hit companies large and small, prompting President Biden to promise that more semiconductors would be produced in the U.S. This is infrastructure. So look, we need to build the infrastructure of today, not repair the one of yesterday. So he signed the CHIPS Act, allocating more than $52 billion in federal aid for semiconductor research and manufacturing.

TSMC later announced that it would invest $40 billion to build two factories in Arizona. These investments are helping us build and strengthen the supply chain here in America. And only months after the release of China's BR-100, Nvidia announced that it will release a super-fast new chip, which would in turn beat Beeren's. The long and expensive race to develop chips that will drive the future of AI is entering a new phase.

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