Stephen Richer on the Maricopa County Election 58:52

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. In studio with us today, as always, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. We got like four and a half sentences out of her last week. That was really exciting. It was a record. She's the power behind the scenes. On the line with us today, a guy who frankly has had about as rough a year in politics as anyone I have ever witnessed.

And what's really strange about that is he wasn't actually in the office when all of the controversy that he has taken the heat for theoretically occurred. Well, imagine telling your parents to I'm going to run for quarter. OK. You know, I mean, dog catcher sounds more exciting. Right. And then all of a sudden you you you step into this hornet's nest and like I wasn't even in charge of the damn thing. Yeah. I actually told this guy I told people, you know, get behind this guy for the recorder seat so we could make elections boring again. Yeah.

Stephen Richer, Maricopa County recorder. I don't think we accomplished the boring part of this. No, no, not at all. But, you know, maybe in the future years, hopefully we can start turning the corner and getting back in that direction. I like boring elections, I got to tell you. I mean, not in the outcome, but let's at least the process is right. Like, no, absolutely. Exciting candidates, boring processes. Yes, exactly. We're talking.

So tell us, Steve, how did you get in? What made you decide to run? What encouraged you to run for the seat? Tell us about you. Yeah, well, thanks very much for having me on. I'm a listener to the show, as I was mentioning. I've enjoyed some of the past episodes with Lacey and with Lieutenant Governor Duncan. Recommend those to anyone who's listening on podcasts.

About me. I'm from Sandy, Utah, which is actually pretty close, I understand, to where you have a home, Chuck. Yeah, we're probably about seven miles away from each other. Yeah. Which is casserole range in Utah. Casserole range. Casserole range. Lived in New Orleans, lived in Mexico, lived in Chicago twice, lived in D.C. twice.

Met my wife at the University of Chicago Law School. Actually, our first year there, we met at the law school's Halloween party. Oh, wow. Yeah, University of Chicago Law School Halloween party. Pretty happening place. I bet. I bet.

So I've worked as a computer programmer, as a policy person in the libertarian and conservative worlds. I worked at American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Washington Legal Foundation. I worked in a hodgepodge of different businesses, and I worked as a lawyer first at the Washington, D.C.-based firm Steptoe & Johnson, and then at the Phoenix-based firm Lewis Rocha.

So you're basically a liberal, what you described yourself there. So you have this great career, this tremendous background. Why did you decide to run for county court? Now, I know as a Republican, we all moaned and groaned about Fontes. We thought he was a train wreck. He always seemed to ignore court orders. Why did you decide to run? Well, I was one of the people moaning and groaning. And then the office, at least to me, really lined up with those –

three different facets of my background is because at the end of the day, this is an office that, yeah, it's political in that you're elected and the subject matter that it oversees is political, but it's also legal in that you're just supposed to be reading the law as

written by the state legislature and following it. But really at the end of the day, it's a, it's a business. It's just, it's no different than the motor vehicle division where it should just be nuts and bolts. You service customers and we have 4.6 million customers here in Maricopa County. So that was really appealing to me. I,

I knew the prior recorder, prior to Adrian Fontes, Helen Purcell's friend, somebody I respected, somebody I'd talked to about this office. And she encouraged me to think about it. And then I had a lot of problems with my predecessor and I had the political itch and I was aware that people were unhappy with him. And I thought just by doing a few simple things differently, I could maybe take the office in a better direction.

You know, Fontas is one of those office holders who I think we have forgotten about in all this last controversy, because the fact of the matter is he was a pretty horrific recorder from everything I saw. He made the job political, which you have so very really gone out of your way not to do. And then you got caught up in it being political by the right. But I think it has just been incredibly unfair the way you've been treated throughout this thing.

Because, you know, going through this and I said the same thing, I came out and said, I think we are being cyberpunked by these cyber ninjas. It took a little heat for that, but I don't think I was wrong. And the further this goes, the more right I think that was. You have stood up for what I see as being a strong belief that the system is not being hacked. It's not being gamed.

under your leadership. And I still see no evidence that it was, but there's a lot of accusations out there. Well, and some of that's built upon my predecessor's record. And so if you, and these were the reasons I ran. So if you look at the August, 2018 election,

You know, that was a poor performance from a managerial standpoint in that 62 polling places failed to open on time on election day. That's over 10% of polling locations. The local media went berserk. It disrupted and potentially disenfranchised a whole bunch of voters. And then when there was a post-election assessment of it, they said, quote, "Vontaze was nowhere to be found." And so that's just not the type of managerial leadership I want to imbue.

And I'm the type of person who's here every day, working long hours. I actually spent the whole night here this last night because we had some stuff that we had to work on. And so that was one element that I wanted to bring to it. And another element was what I thought would have been the simplest thing, which is comply with the law.

You know, I don't actually have a state legislative bone in my body. That process is arcane and seems maddening, in fact, to me. So I was really just intent upon taking the law.

and simply following the law and hopefully forecasting anything that we were going to do so to avoid any controversy. Because I had learned from the lessons of my predecessor, and if you go back to the March presidential preference election in 2020, this is a rare element of Arizona politics where there was bipartisan consensus that he was attempting to do something that was statutorily impermissible.

And this is that he was trying to send out ballots to people who are not on the permanent early voting list, which is not allowed by law in a presidential preference election. And so the board of supervisors said, no, no, no, don't do that. The county attorney, Alistair Adele, said, no, no, no, don't do that. And then Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said, you know, Adrian, that violates state statute.

He went ahead and tried to do it anyways. It took Attorney General Mark Brnovich running down with the temporary restraining order. And so I said, gosh, I said to myself, well, that's the bar. Then, you know, surely I can just by going along to get along, I can hopefully be an improvement in that respect. So tell us what the office does. Well, most people I don't think most people understand what the office actually does. I think you made a very good point. Your job is to follow the law.

that, you know, that you're given, right? You're not making law. You're there to implement it. You're doing it. It should not be a policy position. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think Chuck said it right. Nobody grows up saying, I want to be the County recorder. If so, you know, maybe, maybe nowadays, I don't know, but we're, we're an administrative nuts and bolts job. And,

it was like running for dog catcher, except for all of a sudden there was a rabies pandemic that broke out and all of a sudden dog catcher became sort of like, you know, he could appear on national television. So the recorder's office has three primary statutory functions. The first is the recording of public documents. That's where it gets its name from. We record over a million documents a year. This is usually things related to the real estate industry. So I strongly encourage you to either buy

or refinance your home in the next three years so you can get my name stamped on some documents that are recorded.

We maintain and oversee the voter registration database of about 2.6 million voters in Maricopa County. We are the second largest voting jurisdiction in the United States behind only Los Angeles County. And then the third, and this is now a shared function since 2019 with the Board of Supervisors, is, of course, the administration of elections in Maricopa County.

Well, that's fantastic. Well, let's quickly go here. I know as you've been in the middle of the tornado on this, let's talk about some of the claims that people who feel and, you know, and Sam, I've talked about this. We know a lot of people who feel the election was stolen or their irregularities. And there are people I would call on a minute's notice of the emergency, but they are they are they are determined to.

that this happened and i and sam and i were discussing this morning i think a big part of this too is because of such the low perception of the media and because the media has taken one line on this why would i why would i believe anything you say i mean right now kip sent us this morning kip you look at that it's like seven percent have have a strong approval of the media seven percent i mean you could almost find serial killers have seven percent

And so Congress has higher ratings. And so I think so. You know, so you're you're in the low teens, even you put somewhat approval on media all over. And so they're out writing saying, well, no, you're wrong. And as a conservative, well, look, you you want everything to be wrong. That's what they're functioning at. Right. That's what they're saying. And I think that's been a big impediment to this. If they're so full on board and saying I'm lying. Well, I know they lie all the time. And that's the problem. Would you agree that's been part of the problem?

I think that is the problem. We have moved to a post-truth society in large part because the traditional sources of fact and truth have eviscerated their own foundation by, you know, last 20 years or more.

of selling us stories that we weren't buying. And so it's no surprise that now when the New York Times is saying like, no guys, really, it wasn't stolen. They're like, well, you've cried wolf before. Well, it's sort of like this week we have two examples which keeps...

bringing this approval down. You had the Katie Couric episode where she did not put the full Ruth RBG interview about the protest because she was afraid that it would not be liked by the left by the left. And then you have Joe Rogan interviewing the medical expert from CNN and just tore into him.

And he was right. So. So now you have two major examples this week. And if you're a person who's dubious of any claims by the media, which goes towards election fraud, they're just saying you lie about everything. Why wouldn't you be lying about this?

I don't have the solution to that. I don't either. I've been trying to get on to programs such as these, such that I can speak directly to people. And hopefully, given that I'm from, you know, the Republican Party, the grassroots Republican Party world, the conservative world, hopefully I have a little more credibility than, you know, maybe the New York Times.

But then that's my hope. And I think it's going to be one of the great challenges, not just for elections, but really for all of society in the next 20 years. You know, if you think of something even like the response to COVID, sorting out fact from fiction has become a real challenge for a lot of people because of the same environment.

Yeah, I mean, the government is participating over and over in these deceptions. You have a media on both sides that is totally irresponsible. And to bring up the point, after the show Mindhunter, and if you haven't seen it, you've got to check that out, there is no doubt that serial killers are more popular than the mainstream media right now, folks. None. Broken Potholes, coming back in just a moment. It's the new year and time for the new you.

You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from GoDaddy.com today. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone on the line with us today. Boy, he's had a rough, rough go of it.

Stephen Richer, Maricopa County Recorder. Stephen, we were talking a little bit before the program. I want to go through some of the accusations that have been made that have come from this audit, what people are saying, and then what your response is to them. Because, again, I think it goes back to the media thing. I don't feel like I can trust the reporting that's coming out about this or anything else. So I think it's really hard for people to understand some of these issues.

If you if all you did was hear some of the Republican talking points, some of the people that are supporting this audit, you would say there's absolutely no question mass organized fraud occurred. I've had the view and Chuck, you and I've talked about this. It's not mass organized fraud. There's always some level of shenanigans on a very micro level in our elections. But for the most part, they're they're fair.

Well, it's a felony. So let's start with the Sharpie, the Sharpiescape. Tell us about Sharpies and what do people not understand about it? Okay.

Yeah, well, one of the frustrating things about this whole process is it's been a little bit like whack-a-mole and Sharpie Gate is a great example because that had been hit down. And then this past summer, the Cyber Ninjas brought it back up and it's like, oh, gosh, I thought that one, you know, we permanently punched down in the machine, but here it is again. So.

To understand Sharpie Gate, you have to know a little bit about how early voting in Arizona works. So we allow early voting 27 days before the election day, and you can vote early in a manner of ways. You can get that early voting

ballot that's in the mail and you can fill it out, you can put it in, you can sign it, seal it and put it back in the mail. You can go and you can drop it off at an early voting location or you can go to an early voting location, show your identification, get a ballot printed and then you'll still put it in that green envelope and you'll sign it, seal it and then put it into the secure box that's taken off by two bipartisan team members. The only day

that you feed your ballot straight into the tabulation machine is election day. So that's the important part here, is that election day is different than all other days. And the reason why that's important is because election workers had told voters prior to election day that they could use any black or blue ballot.

pen to fill out their ballots. But then on election day, those instructions changed. And there's some inherent confusion in that. And voters didn't understand why. And so they said, well, now I'm supposed to fill out my ballot with a Sharpie. And the reason for that is because you were feeding it straight into the tabulation machine. The Sharpies are actually the

fastest drying ink and they don't leave any residue. So it doesn't matter for the ballpoint pens because in days prior, because those are going into a green envelope. But if you're feeding it right into the tabulation machine, those ballpoint pens actually create a little residue that can gunk up the tabulation machine.

So that's confusing. And then to add to that, oh, no, the Sharpie bleeds through to the backside. Now, fortunately, the ballots are offset, such that any bleed through doesn't have any marks.

The Maricopa County Recorder's Office and Elections Department confirmed that no ballots had been, you know, mismarked because of that. The attorney general looked at it. He said there was nothing to it. But it's really something that once it got out there, it's been really hard to put away entirely because I admit that's inherently a little confusing.

Stephen, you know, I jumped on that when it first came out. And I will say this. And quickly, I figured out what was going on, the explanation you just gave. And I came out and said, hey, look, no, I was wrong. They're fine. But that one, I actually blame on Adrian Fontes. And the reason is really simple, because that changed on the election day.

for the big election, right? And you can't do that. I mean, I really think that anything for these general elections, it has to be tested well ahead of time. It has to be, the public has to be familiar with it ahead of time. If it's not there in the primary, I really have a hard time changing any of that when you come around to the general. Yeah. So I'll throw out a very conservative principle that is also true of,

which is be wary of sudden change. And you just can't introduce that into an election system and not expect to have questions, which is why there was also a lot of concern and consternation when a federal district court judge allowed the voter registration deadline to all of a sudden be expanded by 10 days. And it's just like,

that sends everything into disarray. And anytime you create last minute changes in such an important and fraught with tension election environment, it's going to have some negative ramifications. Let's talk about another question. Federal only voters.

Yeah, so federal-only voters are a curious creature of Arizona law. And that's because in Arizona, to register to vote a full ballot, you have to show documentation of citizenship.

Unfortunately, that's not also true of federal law. Federal law, you have to attest and affirm, and it is a felony if you lie on this statement, that you are a U.S. citizen, but that does not require certain proof of documentation of that citizenship.

So we have these competing laws. And what we came up with in Arizona is the federal only ballot, meaning that if you prove citizenship sufficient for a federal level, but not for a state level, then you can still vote by law.

a federal-only ballot. And that's, you know, if you have a problem with that, take it up with the U.S. Congress and the U.S. federal courts. I was going to say, that was a circuit court decision, wasn't it, that required that? A Supreme Court decision, actually. Okay. The 74,000 phantom voters. Well, so I want to close the loop, if I may. I want to close the loop on those federal-only voters. So for all the talk, there were only about 5,000

5,000 true federal only voters who voted in Maricopa County in the 2020 November general election. So again, something that causes confusion, 5,000 out of 2 million, 2.1 million votes cast though. You know, I just want people to keep it in perspective. Okay. Now talk about the 74,000 phantom voters. That's the one I hear about more than anything right now, more so than the machines or things of that nature.

Yeah. So this was an allegation that was developed in the Cyber Ninjas summer presentation to Senators Phan and Peterson. And it's one that they have responsibly in there to their credit, walked back. But unfortunately, they aired it just before President Trump came and spoke in Phoenix. And so he stood up on a stage on July 24th and he mentioned this. And then, of course, the cat's out of the bag.

But again, we get back to how does early voting work in Arizona? And so what they did was they took early voting ballots and they looked at just the number that were mailed out and then mailed back.

but they didn't account for people who might not have been on the mail voting list, but still went to an early voting location, not on election day, but in some of the 26 days prior to election and got a ballot, filled it out, put it in that green envelope. So that's on a sheet that's still counted as an early vote, but it is not

ballot that is mailed out and mailed back. So there was roughly 74,000 of those. And that was just unfortunate because it was a misunderstanding of Arizona voting rolls and Arizona election law. Yeah, I mean, I think this is actually a critical point. One of my issues with the audit, as it was, was that you were bringing in a firm that had not done and no one had done anything like this, but they had no real experience doing audits. They had no real experience with laying out the systems you would need.

And as a result, they were left with more questions than answers. Broken Potholes coming right back. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer. When we went to break, we were talking about some of the issues with the elections. We have a short segment here before we're moving on to our next guest. But Stephen, I wanted to specifically give you a chance to talk about accusations about machines being connected to the Internet or hacked.

in the role that Dominion, the company that produces those machines, had in this election and whether there was some question about whether they were programming the machines in a way to to generate an intended result. You know, Sam, and fortunately, this is a situation where we have our state legislature to thank for a good Arizona law, which is that all ballots cast in Arizona are on paper.

Meaning that if everything was hacked, if everything was manipulated, if malware was installed, you'd still be able to go back and you'd be able to check the physical ballots. And you'd be able to do a recount and see that if the count came out correctly or not. Now, as it happens, those things didn't happen. We had two independent, longstanding, certified elections technology companies come in in February to take a look at that. But

But more importantly is immediately after the election, the political parties offer volunteers to the county. And those volunteers sit in bipartisan groups of three and they hand count audit of

about 47,000 votes. And from those 47,000 votes that they counted in bipartisan groups of three, they found that the ballots matched 100% with what the tabulation machines read them. So we have that check to make sure that the machines didn't go haywire. Question for you, for these volunteers. How many volunteers were there that did this?

Lots like a hundred. So have you have any Republican volunteers who I assume 99 percent supported President Trump for reelection? Have any of them said, you know what, this was fraudulent? Has anybody come forward like that? That was a part of this hand count audit. Not to my knowledge, but it's a good point. Maybe I should go look up those names. I mean, that seems I mean, I mean, if you're there counting it and you're that person.

You know, the problem with conspiracies a lot of times, especially something like this, is people like to talk. Right. And so I'm interested in these volunteers that go in. I mean, I'm sure that person would get some coverage if it happened.

I guess they could rationalize it by saying, well, the board that the group of three I was on was doing it right. But I can't speak for the other group of three or something like that. Well, but Chuck, I will tell you, you make a great point in that people who are involved in this process, people who volunteer for elections and are part of the process, they are much less likely to be part of.

of some of the allegations and insinuations. Well, because they're on the ground. Let me ask you this. What are some voter integrity laws you think the state of Arizona needs to implement, the legislature and the governor need to sign? So this is the good part of all of this. There has been some good that will come out of all this. And one is just that it's...

It's brought a lot of attention to what used to just be a back office that ballots went in, votes came out.

We don't really care what happens. Just make sure you get it to us. But now, obviously, that is not the case. But that also means that we can bring some needed development to the process. And so one thing that I want to do that's been a source of contention is just do a thorough signature study so we can put that conversation to rest.

Is the signature, does it screen out bad signatures and does it let in good signatures or do we have false positives or false negatives? I think that's a great point. And one of the changes that your predecessor Fontas made right before this, I have never been on the pebble, but with this, with COVID and everything else and the hassle, I just didn't want to deal with trying to go and follow COVID protocols at the polls. So I signed up, I signed up online. I filled out my signature with a mouse.

Yeah, it never looks the same. It doesn't look anything like any signature I've ever seen. Yeah, when I do docu-serves, I mean, it's like a rabbit did it. It's horrible. It looks like a hoof. So I'm an empiricist. Give me data. You know, I'm open to hearing, is that good? Is that bad? And then let's figure out and let's come up with a form. What else should we put on the ballot, on that envelope, if we need something else? Because the reality is, is that 90% of Arizonans vote no.

early ballot. And so we need to come up with a way to make sure that people are confident about that process. Proposals to get rid of early balloting are stupid. They're going to be massively. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing, this is where Democrats don't help the situation at all. For example, Michelle Ugenti's bill to clean up the permanent early voter list, right? You support that. I support that. They act like we're taking everybody out in the street and just stripping them of all their rights. It's just it's ridiculous. So then our conservative allies

allies and friends and neighbors say, look, they just don't want this to be fair ever. They don't want to do anything. They just want everybody Tom, Dick and Harry vote and their dog and their parakeet.

No. Anyone who says that Arizona is making it hard to vote is not fairly comparing us with other states. We make it very easy to vote. As I mentioned, no excuse. Vote by mail. Twenty seven days of early voting. If you want to vote in person, if you want to vote in person on Election Day, we've got it all. We're we're the buffet line. We're the Caesars Palace buffet line. I love it. Stephen, thanks a million for joining us, buddy.

Rogan Pottles coming back next week. Oh, wait, coming back in just a moment. Yeah, come back in a moment. The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Go Rock!

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. I want to thank Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer for being on the line with us today. And next we have another fantastic guest, Ryan Loveless, reporter for The Washington Times, has a focus on covering advocacy groups in Washington, previously reported for American Lawyer Media, covered politics in the Supreme Court for The Washington Examiner. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today.

You had a couple of pieces recently that we both found tremendously interesting, and we appreciate your time coming on to talk about them. The first one is a war of weaponized influence, U.S. spending millions to hunt down foreign tweets and memes, which even just a couple of years ago would have sounded like bad science fiction. Well, it sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit, right? I mean, you know, that's what it sounds like. But yeah. So tell us about it. What are they doing? What's the purpose of it?

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. So the Department of Defense's research and development team at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is spending close to $60 million over the next four years on a program that is going to look for foreign influence online, on Twitter, on blogs, on news websites, other social media platforms.

And really the goal of this thing is to come up with some kind of early detection system that's going to be able to tell when there's a foreign actor trying to provoke some kind of problem in the United States, whether it's a violent protest, a riot, something like that that could go on. That's sort of a thing, but also abroad and everywhere else. And it's really something that's surprising because

We've seen some folks in the private sector start to dabble in looking at this, but this is really a whole new territory for the federal government to begin looking at this on social media. And like you say, it seems like something out of a sci-fi movie or a comedy sketch about government, but it's real.

That's really just kind of the world we live in. So much of what happens is happening in the Twitter sphere and on Facebook and on social media, or at least it's being ignited there that it's it's kind of not an area the government can ignore anymore. Right.

That's right. And, you know, we've heard a lot lately in Washington about these tech companies and about regulating these tech companies or some kind of new legislation and cracking down on these algorithms that recommend content to people that display things that, you know, Democrats deem misinformation, disinformation offensive and some others that, you know,

Republicans are often concerned about because it often ends up restricting their speech online. And what the government is talking about doing with this NCAST program, this Influence Campaign and Awareness and Sensemaking program, is creating algorithms to sort through all the content that's online to try to find how an audience is likely to respond to a foreign actor.

So instead of looking at it the way a marketer does and trying to sell you something based on a demographic trait, ethnicity, age, gender, that sort of a thing, or a personality trait, introverted, extroverted. You mean like every social media site tries to get me to go shop at DXL? I have no idea why.

Exactly. Exactly. And instead, what the government wants is they're looking at psychographic attributes. And so what that means is your belief system, your sacred values, your religion, your politics. And they're trying to figure out how are you likely to respond to something based on that? What kind of group do you belong to there? Because they think that's what matters. And that's what they're trying to figure out.

Ryan, what do you think could go wrong with this? I mean, I understand why they're doing it. It makes sense. I mean, you made it in your article. You talk about China pushing, you know, race and anti-Asian anger in the United States. They're trying to push it to make the community angry. But what could go wrong with this? I mean, we you know, many people just don't trust the government. So what can go wrong on this?

Exactly. And the distrust of the government is a big part of it. But I think in talking with folks, both who kind of work in this realm, in this industry, and also people that, you know, some reaction to my article, there are a lot of people that are concerned about who's actually going to be using this product. Right. Who in the federal government is going to be doing this and what do we trust them to do with it? And in asking DARPA, because DARPA is the Defense Department group responsible for building the tools, they're very quick to say, we don't decide how it gets used. Right.

And who's going to be using it? Well, the Defense Department could be using it. The State Department could be using it. The entire federal government, every federal agency that's concerned about countering foreign influence could be using it. Now, whoever's in charge of the federal government at the time that this actually comes into their hands in perhaps four years, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, it's not hard to imagine a situation where

I think Americans need to be concerned about how it's weaponized for their own political ends against their political enemies. Well, yeah. I mean, if you're if you're a problem, if you're a Democrat, you're worried the Republican administration is shooting down protest. Right. You know, as much as we heard about the George Floyd protests, 90 percent plus were peaceful. There weren't, you know, things like that nature. And then for conservatives right now, Biden cracking down on the anti-COVID vaccine crowd. Right. So what are they going to do with it? And I think that to me, I understand why they're doing it.

But it is a bit nerve wracking unless there's proper checks and balances. The history of our government in this area is not particularly great for civil liberties. No. Right. And I think they're aware of a lot of these concerns. And I think that's why so far, you know, at least the government has been willing to talk about this, put some of this out there so that there are some more, you know, transparent concerns.

I guess disclosures on the front end of this thing, as opposed to the back end of this thing. And especially in comparison to other countries, you know, China scrapes social media platforms in America and hoovers up Americans information all the time without telling people. US government has gone about talking about it a little bit differently.

The Census Bureau and its congressional budget request said it wants to start scraping local governments for taxation data. You know, they put these kinds of things out there so that Americans can conceivably read and decide and react. But at the same time, if you're not hyper vigilant, if you're not constantly paying attention, this isn't something you're going to see. That's insane. That's like that's like mailing you your warranty after you bought a washer.

No one's reading that. I mean, that's just so ridiculous. Let's go to another topic. We are not a fine print country anymore, are we? Well, no one's ever a fine print. There's no one's ever been a fine print company country, right? Let's talk about the ex-Air Force software officer warns China is winning the AI battle. Tell us about that. Yeah.

Yeah. So the Air Force's first chief software officer, a guy named Nicholas Chai-Long, he quit. He recently left the government and he said, you know, China is winning this thing. We're not doing enough. We're moving too slow and we need to be doing more and we need to be moving faster. I think he got a lot of attention because people had misconstrued what he said as we've already lost. And he actually isn't saying that. He's saying if we don't change now, we are going to lose.

in 15 to 20 years, which is a kind of important difference. But it really is something where, you know, what he's raising the alarm about is something that people haven't even begun to think about yet. Because a lot of people, when you bring up artificial intelligence, I think have, you know, some kind of image of a sci-fi movie. And they're not sure how it's going to exactly apply or why it matters to them and how it affects the government. And he's saying China,

is already on top of this because they control their commercial sector. They're forcing companies to do things, whereas we in the United States are walked out of some of the private sector from doing things and the government moves way too slow and doesn't understand what's going on. You know, what's funny about this article that just stood out to me is that the officer is 37 years old.

Now, 20 years ago, if you're paying national security, if someone's 37, you're just like, well, he's just some young guy. What does he know? But now he's like he's an old man in technology at 37, right? I mean, that's what's amazing about it. Well, you know, I want to bring up one thing because I work or have until very recently with the city of Phoenix government. And one of our issues, I always had big issues with our IT department, both their cyber defense capabilities and just generally their IT capabilities.

And a lot of it comes down to government pay caps. If you're the best of the best in terms of programming, in terms of computer science, you're not likely going to go take a 70, 80 grand entry job with the Department of Defense when you can go get paid three, four, five hundred thousand at a tech company. Well, and that's it seems like, Ryan, you can tell me wrong. I mean, the tech sector obviously has an aversion to working with the U.S. government.

I mean, look, every time Google does something, I mean, Netflix is about ready to have a walkout over Dave Chappelle, right? They're an entertainment company and you think the world's collapsing, right? Just today, I think Google and Amazon employees objected to a deal that they made with the Israelis. So what do we need to do, do you feel, studying this issue?

to get the quality people in these positions so we can catch up because you can't count on the private sector. We're all capitalists here in this room, but there's just certain things the private sector is not going to do unless it gets money or they have a lot of other issues they deal with, right? So is it the government and you say, look, you got to pay for these guys' college. You got to give them three, four, 500 grand a year and treat them what they are. To beat this competition, they should be treated as a high price, multimillion dollar plane or destroyer. I mean, how do we handle this?

It's a really difficult problem. And, you know, in covering this, this is something that in talking with different agencies of the federal government, they're pursuing different approaches to doing this. Because like you say, the difference between an employee doing something as a contractor versus doing it in-house, the government in some of these tax fears, some of these high up agencies in town is literally half a million dollars. And who are you going to find that's so patriotic that they're willing to forego a half a million dollar paycheck when, you know, they're 37 or in their 30s? Now,

There are a number of different agencies doing a few different things. One of which, which has been really interesting is CIA just started CIA Labs, whereby their employees can patent their different inventions that they come up with while they're working in government so that when they leave the government and go to the tech sector, they can then take their innovation and it's not classified in spy, spook technology that can't get picked up by an IBM and Apple or someone and then make money for them so that they can go innovate work in government

You know, there are a couple of other agencies that are combining on this commercial enterprise initiative that DARPA was working on, where they again try to partner some government scientist or researcher with an outside company and say, we're going to help you transition out of government, but please work for us first sort of a thing. So there are efforts of talent retention and innovation of trying to get people to come into government with the promise of,

when you leave here, you can come back and when you leave here, you can make money. And it's really just started in the last few years during the Trump administration, now continued into the Biden administration. But it's a huge challenge. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, Nicholas Chai-Lan, the first chief software officer, was raising concerns and others are

is because now that so much of the innovation is happening in the private sector, the private sector companies that are averse to working with the US government that don't wanna work with the US government are saying, well, this is our intellectual property. So we're not going to share it with you. So innovation that's happening in America is happening in the private sector and then it becomes a bidding war between China, other countries and the United States for the stuff that's happening here

for people that are making it in the United States. Well, and from a national security perspective, I don't think most people understand that there is no such thing as a private sector in China. I mean, there's private industry, but when it comes to their national... Well, and so we had this problem that you have a lot of these techies in Silicon Valley who just despise the U.S. military. They don't know why. They read some...

some student newspaper column once and got all angry about it. Vietnam. Yeah, we have to, it seems like, we have to grow up and say we're competing with Silicon Valley. So we need to pay accordingly, and we have more money than they do. So we need to pay accordingly, and until we get serious about that...

We're not going to be able to focus like a laser on this and overcome it. And I have no doubt that the United States really want to focus on this issue and pay the town that's out there that there would be no gap on this issue quickly.

Would you agree that it's amazing, you know, when you talk about the Silicon Valley company's appetite for working with the government and for working with America, period. I mean, look at the case of LinkedIn this week. LinkedIn has just recently announced they're closing down their version in China. And over the course of the last several months, many a few different journalists have gotten messages from LinkedIn saying, if you post on our platform, we're not going to show it in China.

because China doesn't want us to. Legal requirements, regulations. So they were actively censoring American journalists. Now the way they get around that problem is just closing it down entirely and saying, we're going to have a job board in jobs in China. But as an American, you're not going to be able to reach those people. And I think people aren't familiar with, like you say, the whole plan of Chinese military-civil fusion, where they direct and control the companies that operate there and the problems that America has in trying to compete against that.

Who is a member of Congress that gets this problem with China? I mean, they really have the expertise and you could talk to them and they understand it and they're not cross-eyed crazy.

Well, I think there are a few. You know, I think Senator Rubio is someone on the Intel Committee that understands the problem of China. He's someone that at least sounds the alarm about a lot of these different issues. I recall during the recent Senate debate over this massive spending bill to counter China and new tech innovation, which ended up, it was called the Endless Frontier Act for folks that might go look at it, but it ended up calling the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. It stalled in the House. But Senator Rubio is someone saying,

well, hold on a minute, we're not going to spend all this taxpayer money without protecting it, are we? Because it's vulnerable to Chinese research. And so I think he's someone who usually is on the front end of a lot of the concerns that end up becoming problems later on. He's someone, you know, there are a few Democrats that are concerned about this, too.

Senator, excuse me, Representative Langevin, Jim Langevin is someone that talks about this from the cyber perspective that he is kind of on the front of this. But there's also some folks to watch out for and pay attention to as well. I would note, you know, California Congressman Ted Lieu has recently been out there talking publicly, working with a group called the Committee of 100, trying to undermine investigations in the Chinese influence in the U.S. And I think that's something to pay attention to.

That's fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Ryan, are you OK to stay with us after the break? We have one more segment. It's podcast only. We'd love to keep you on and continue this conversation a little bit more.

Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. So, folks, thank you for tuning in today. This is the final segment you're going to hear on air, but you can always catch Broken Potholes. We air Saturday, 3 p.m. on 960 The Patriot here in Phoenix. We are on Substack, Spotify, Apple, all the podcast spots. And we always have one extra little segment for our podcast listeners, often a really good one. So please turn in. Broken Potholes coming back next week. Turn my head.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. This is our podcast-only segment. We are continuing conversation with Ryan Loveless, reporter for The Washington Times. And as we went to break, Chuck, you had a question. So you wrote an article recently on October 12th that, quote, pretty alarming. Biden administration ignored Pentagon concerns of Chinese drone purchase. My question is,

I want to hear more about that story. And after Afghanistan, is Biden listen to anybody in the Pentagon? Because he apparently had warnings to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. Now they're ignoring this. What do you think is going on that they're not listening to the people whose job is to keep us safe from foreign influence?

It's really amazing and it's hard to figure out. You know, one of the things that I wondered was, is this government incompetence, as some people suggested to me with, you know, the Biden administration going ahead and purchasing these drones from a company called DJI, which was blacklisted by the Trump administration, blacklisted by the federal government. And then Biden's own Pentagon came out in July and said, we're not working with them. Our position hasn't changed because the federal government's leadership has changed. We're not working with them. And then the FBI and Secret Service went about acquiring this technology anyway.

It's hard to know whether it was simply a government procurement lawyer, which is a possibility just not knowing the security concerns and not paying attention to what the Pentagon's warning was, or whether it was something else, whether there was some reason why the Secret Service or FBI wanted to continue using this type of technology.

despite concerns about cybersecurity, about the video feeds on these drones that are being used by these top government agencies that are responsible for protecting the highest level officials in our government. It's remarkable. So what has changed from the Trump administration to the Biden administration regarding these issues we've talked about today? What has changed? Have you seen a dramatic shift? Is the shift because of spite or just a different view of the world? What is it?

Well, there's definitely been a shift. And I think, you know, trying to attribute what is responsible for that shift and talking with lawmakers and talking with other China hawks, China watchers, those folks particularly say, especially from the conservative perspective, that Biden is weak on China and that they think that all of this is wrapped up in that.

I think along with that concern, with that potential, there is also the Biden administration is pursuing a completely different approach from the Trump administration in terms of how it views so many of these issues, whereby we've seen them relaxing restrictions on China, where we've seen them making and going to great lengths to say, we're not, you know, like,

bigoted against China, xenophobic. We're not that sort of a thing. And I think that front end concern often causes federal government employees to respond in a way that causes them to react differently. And I'm particularly thinking of a National Science Foundation employee recently trying to testify about how they're overwhelmed by the investigations that they have in the Chinese influence and saying, we're really not bigoted. It's really a problem. And, you know, I don't think that's something that we heard during the Trump administration because they just wanted those people to do their jobs.

That's amazing. Chuck and I are both both China hawks, you know, if you will. And I definitely see the angle that they're trying to pursue a different relationship with China. I guess my question is, do you see any indication that the Chinese feel the same way at all? Because I don't. And I think they view us as a geopolitical adversary and we have to view them the same way.

I don't see them changing at all. And I actually see them as potentially looking at this moment as an opportunity to take advantage. There's different elements of

influence campaigns they're attempting to run against the United States that I think they're trying to do now because they think there's an opening now to do this. One example of this, there's a group called the Committee of 100 that's a Chinese American business group here in the United States. And this group in particular has been out there publicly advocating for an end to the China initiative, which was enacted by the Trump administration, particularly the Justice Department.

to go looking at Chinese influence. And this group is here going, okay, now that we've got the Biden administration in, maybe we can get them to kill this thing and stop looking for Chinese spies in the government. And I mentioned before, Congressman Ted Lieu is someone that's really looking into this. Congressman Ted Lieu has said he's got a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland, where he's going to be talking with him and pressuring him to drop it. He's advocated people call the Justice Department and tell them to drop it. I think that kind of

effort coming from China, which we've also seen them try to, you know, in other ways on social media, try to whip people up against racial injustice and things is something that wasn't happening so much before, both because of technological advances, but also because of who's in charge. Yep. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Absolutely crazy. Quickly, as we wrap up here, tell us, how did you get into this profession?

Yeah, I've been, you know, I've been a reporter in Washington now for several years. And my beat really for The Washington Times is political advocacy. And so much of that now becomes, you know, online influence because in one respect, COVID pushed everybody online. And in another, you know, the tech issue has become so big throughout the run up to the last election. But, you know, I've been

Had the pleasure of reporting for a number of different organizations from starting out as an intern here in town for Weekly Standard, which no longer exists. I've worked with National Review, Washington Examiner, and a number of different beats covering everything from the court and law, the Supreme Court, to politics, to tech.

And it really had the benefit of having kind of like a 360 view of this thing and all the different federal branches, which is, you know, I think really, you know, helped me better understand this and really exposed a lot of things to me that I never could have imagined when I first got into this. That's a wonderful perspective. Every time I hear A.G. Garland, though.

And you don't have to comment on this, but you're a reporter. I think my lucky stars are Mitch McConnell blocking him on the Supreme Court. Yeah, no kidding. I think he's a travesty. I just, I mean, he's worse. Were they thought he was a moderate? I don't think they understand what the word moderate is. Well, I mean, there's no question at all that he is as blatantly partisan as any AG in history. That's my perspective. But anyway, well, Ryan, we appreciate you. Will you come back on sometime? Absolutely. We'd love to have you. Have a great day. Have a great weekend.

You too. Go Washington football team. Appreciate it. Unless they're playing the Patriots or the Cardinals. Come on, Brian. Thank you so much for being on with us. Yeah, thank you, Chuck. Fantastic interviews today. I mean, I think both of those were really, really good. Do we have a sun? We have a sunshine moment. Oh, we're going to wrap up with some good news. Wrap up with good news. We've gone from election mayhem.

To China's domination of AI. Yeah, this was... To sunshine. We need sunshine in this episode. Wrap it up. You are my sunshine. Thank you for having me back. This is everyone's favorite moment of the week, I bet.

It's mine. I know. But Chuck missed last week when we were feeding the elephants. So this week, we're going to go to feeding children. But Kip and I have become bonded over elephants. Yeah, they're just the cutest little things. No, look, it's hard not to love a baby elephant.

If you don't like a baby elephant, you're probably a serial killer. Yeah, no, that's fair. Is that fair to say? I agree. Yeah, you're the type of person who doesn't talk to your dog. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Or tell him you're coming home. Continue. Well, this week, Utah Jazz, Rudy Gobert,

Has a foundation called, did I pronounce his last name right? Gobert. Gobert. He's French. Okay. So I was reading it and I was like, how do you pronounce it? Because I had Goddard stuck in my head from fantasy football. It's Gobert. Gobert. Okay. Rudy Gobert. Gobert.

has a foundation called Rudy's Kids and he teamed up with Smith's Food to help eliminate food insecurity in a Salt Lake City where 86% of students live below the poverty line. So in specific, there's a school with 655 students enrolled. 70% of them are Latino, 20% Pacific Islander or black, and 33% of them are English learners. And like I said before, 86% of those are English

Sorry, below living below poverty line and 30 of them are homeless. And so Rudy said that this just struck him because as a kid, he also was food insecure, was food insecure, insecure, insecure. And so he remembers his mom going to food pantries and just people looking out for his family all the time. So this really struck him and said it was a very easy decision to get involved when they reached out to him.

And so the pantry opened on Thursday and this has been in the works for about a year now because COVID really set them behind. So this is finally open and he's been there and he's loved being able to communicate with the kids and be with them in person. And he's also donated backpacks to the school. But he said this is so important because at such a young age when they're fighting COVID,

they typically don't focus on school and they start having behavioral problems. And so he really wants to get involved now in kids' lives. So that's what the whole foundation is about, is speaking to them now before it's too late. It's hard to learn when you don't know if you're getting a meal or if you go hungry. Oh, no, look, if you're hungry sitting in school, you aren't learning a thing. All you're doing is paying attention to the growling in your belly. Yeah, and he said a couple of kids went up to him and asked if they could have a second meal because...

They were hungry still. And so he just has really heartfelt stories. And so it's awesome. So wait, I got to ask, though, before we go too much further, how old are these children? They're elementary school. OK, that's good, because if they were any younger, you'd have to be very careful. Rudy's so tall he may step on them without ever noticing.

Yeah, he's towering over all the kids in the photos. That's a great story. The one thing I do appreciate with the Utah Jazz, those players really do get engaged like that. It's not to say other teams don't, but they all seem to pick an issue and get very involved. Especially this Jazz team right now, I think, really seems to be engaged in their community in a way that very few NBA teams ever are. Yeah, very much so. Embedded in it, in a way. Very much so.

One thing I want to touch on really quick, you brought up the food pantry thing, folks. If you are out there, I've got a lot of experience dealing with food pantries. One of the sort of bad things that happens is that they get a fair lot of produce and oftentimes they can't give it all away. A lot of it goes to waste. I have a food pantry near my house. I will routinely stop there and I will pay them.

I will offer them a donation for I'll come in and say, hey, if you have extra greens or extra vegetables or whatever you're trying to get rid of, they'll tell you, yeah, and I'll trade that for some of my money. And I'll buy those there because then they can go buy things that people do want. It speaks to a need to help people with some cooking classes and whatever. But.

But that's a way to get some good veggies at a reasonable price. I think with our grocery stores being backed up a little bit, I think the food pantries are going to be hurting in the next couple of months. Oh, absolutely. No, I mean, it's a trickle down. It truly is. Yeah, patients are great. Well, that's wonderful. Thank you for that sunshine moment and someone doing something good with their time instead of complaining. It's nice to hear. It's always nice to hear. A great show today. Some issues to really think about. Regarding Steven, I just feel bad for him. I mean...

He didn't manage the election. It wasn't his. I feel terrible for him on that front. And look, I think the blame that's come on him is simply because he hasn't embraced all the theories about what happened with this election. At the end of the day, folks, A, he wasn't the one there. And B, this audit was such a muddle that you cannot say that anybody had their mind changed by it. And that makes it a failure.

Right? I don't know one person who had their mind changed by the outcome of that audit. No. No, I don't. If you thought there was fraud, you still believe there's fraud. If you didn't, you don't. And we didn't really come up with good process improvements out of it because, as you heard, they really didn't know what they were doing up front. I think they improved their processes as they went. We've had people on the program who said there was absolutely fraud. We'd like to give everyone their space to talk about this stuff, but...

This mistrust in the media and our inability to agree on facts and what happened, it's becoming maybe the biggest problem in this country right now. Well, we want to close here as our time is out. But a perfect example, I have a reporter from a national publication keeps trying to get me to talk about this issue. And I said, why don't I put you in touch with Patrick Byrne? Patrick Byrne's a long old friend.

We have our disagreements on this issue. And we've had Patrick on the show. And Patrick's never been anything but honest with me. He's not doing this for money. The man, he's worth hundreds of millions. He doesn't need to be doing it. He really believes this happened. So I said, look, I can set this up. You can go down. You can spend two or three hours. No interest.

It's like if you really want to talk to the people who are doing it, who are helping fund it, don't you think you should really sit down with them? It's not a 10-minute conversation. Go sit down, find out why and what they're saying. You know, in one area I disagree with Stephen a little bit is on the use of the machines with the software. And my reasoning is really simple. If you go into a room of 100 Americans, you ask, who can code? Who in this room can code? You're going to be lucky if one, two, three people can raise their hand.

As long as you use machines and software, those are the only people in that room who in that crowd who can say with any certitude at all whether a machine was hacked or not. Right. Right. And to me, that fundamentally means we shouldn't be using them. Exactly. Well, appreciate the show, guys. And Kip. Yeah. Jamie. Jamie.

We always forget Jamie. She did great last week. Someday we're going to have to drag Jamie onto the microphone and just make her spend an hour talking to everybody. Exactly. This is Broken Potholes, folks. We appreciate you. You can find us on 960 The Patriot and also on brokenpotholes.vote and all your favorite podcast stations. Appreciate you. Have a great weekend.

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