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Alex Epstein

@AlexEpstein • 221,623 subscribers

Philosopher and energy expert https://t.co/3C8ZHMib9K https://t.co/TFX9BS9SDW https://t.co/y6g2aYdZ7T https://t.co/QuURw2LXo5

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Even BlackRock CEO Larry Fink now admits that “transitioning” to solar and wind will cause a global power shortage—after spending years pressuring companies to do exactly that. The "transition" he advanced has already sabotaged our power supply and raised our electricity bills.

Even BlackRock CEO Larry Fink now admits that “transitioning” to solar and wind will cause a global power shortage—after spending years pressuring companies to do exactly that. The "transition" he advanced has already sabotaged our power supply and raised our electricity bills.

1,097,744 görüntüleme

"Mr. Epstein, can we compete with China in the development and utilization of AI with renewable power only?" "With renewable power only, we can't compete with Ghana."

"Mr. Epstein, can we compete with China in the development and utilization of AI with renewable power only?" "With renewable power only, we can't compete with Ghana."

89,910 görüntüleme

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When I agreed to testify about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I didn't expect the hearing's lead Democrat, Cori Bush, to make a prepared statement falsely accusing me of having "espoused White Supremacist views"! Fortunately, I got the chance to respond. Here's how it went.

When I agreed to testify about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I didn't expect the hearing's lead Democrat, Cori Bush, to make a prepared statement falsely accusing me of having "espoused White Supremacist views"! Fortunately, I got the chance to respond. Here's how it went.

5,084,976 görüntüleme • 3 yıl önce

"In the next 18 months, the system allocates a few billion dollars to unmanned systems that are very specifically meant to deter China....if China tries a military invasion of Taiwan, then their assets will be sunk and shot out of the air." Must-watch 4 mins of Ethan Thornton. Ethan Thornton is not yet a household name, but in VC and defense tech circles he's known as the next phenomenon in defense tech. He dropped out of MIT as a freshman to start Mach Industries on the conviction that America needed to innovate much more rapidly in unmanned systems. He quickly raised $85 million, and Mach has in just a few years developed a fascinating suite of weapons, built a factory, signed contracts with the DOD, etc. I've gotten to know Ethan well over the last year, and he reminds me a lot of Palmer Luckey—whom I am also a huge fan of—in his combination of brilliance, wide-ranging knowledge, and patriotism. (Though they have totally different personalities.) I decided to interview Ethan on my podcast, Power Hour—which I record only when I think I have a supremely important person to interview—because I think he has absolutely vital insights about the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and how to deter it. Even though I am not a national security expert, I do consider myself an expert at identifying good, sincere thinkers, and I want those who follow my work (especially political leaders) to be aware of Ethan's recommendations on how to deter China. I'll publish the full interview later today. But for now, please watch this four-minute highlight to appreciate both the threat of China taking over Taiwan and how we might prevent it.

"In the next 18 months, the system allocates a few billion dollars to unmanned systems that are very specifically meant to deter China....if China tries a military invasion of Taiwan, then their assets will be sunk and shot out of the air." Must-watch 4 mins of Ethan Thornton. Ethan Thornton is not yet a household name, but in VC and defense tech circles he's known as the next phenomenon in defense tech. He dropped out of MIT as a freshman to start Mach Industries on the conviction that America needed to innovate much more rapidly in unmanned systems. He quickly raised $85 million, and Mach has in just a few years developed a fascinating suite of weapons, built a factory, signed contracts with the DOD, etc. I've gotten to know Ethan well over the last year, and he reminds me a lot of Palmer Luckey—whom I am also a huge fan of—in his combination of brilliance, wide-ranging knowledge, and patriotism. (Though they have totally different personalities.) I decided to interview Ethan on my podcast, Power Hour—which I record only when I think I have a supremely important person to interview—because I think he has absolutely vital insights about the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and how to deter it. Even though I am not a national security expert, I do consider myself an expert at identifying good, sincere thinkers, and I want those who follow my work (especially political leaders) to be aware of Ethan's recommendations on how to deter China. I'll publish the full interview later today. But for now, please watch this four-minute highlight to appreciate both the threat of China taking over Taiwan and how we might prevent it.

332,119 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce

If the eligibility window for IRA subsidies does not totally close during President Trump's term, then Congress has entirely failed. They will have perpetuated the Green New Scam instead of fulfilling their promise to terminate it.

If the eligibility window for IRA subsidies does not totally close during President Trump's term, then Congress has entirely failed. They will have perpetuated the Green New Scam instead of fulfilling their promise to terminate it.

673,046 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

I just spent an hour responding to the hundreds of people who tried to refute my argument that solar+batteries is an economically catastrophic way to try to provide reliable power. Which is why no company using lots of power, certainly not any of Elon's, actually tries to do it.

I just spent an hour responding to the hundreds of people who tried to refute my argument that solar+batteries is an economically catastrophic way to try to provide reliable power. Which is why no company using lots of power, certainly not any of Elon's, actually tries to do it.

208,622 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce

How to quickly deter China from invading Taiwan — my interview with Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries Ethan is one of the brightest, most thoughtful people I've ever met. I believe his ideas on defending the US, including our interests in Taiwan, are urgently needed. Summary 👇 The US would likely lose a military conflict with China in Taiwan and other crucial areas in the Pacific—even though we spend far more money than China does. • We face a vastly underrated economic threat (not to mention human rights) if we cannot deter China from seizing Taiwan. • China has published plans to have military readiness for a Taiwan invasion by 2027. • We depend on Taiwan for almost all high-performance semi-conductors, which are at the base of all modern industry. • Taiwan had made clear as a deterrent that it’s prepared to destroy its semiconductor facilities in the event of an invasion, but China’s increasing semiconductor manufacturing makes the threat worse for the US than China. • It’s now an open secret that the US loses most or all of its wargames in a conflict with China over Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea. • How our Navy loses to China: If we can get our ships to the Pacific, we’ll quickly run out of ammo, but the more likely scenario is that our ships—including aircraft carriers—mostly don’t get there thanks to unmanned systems and hypersonics. • How our Air Force loses to China: The Air Force has limited planes and even more limited munitions, but the increasingly bigger problem is the planes won’t take off thanks to China’s hypersonic missiles and other unmanned systems that can destroy available runways in the Pacific. • How our Army loses to China: The Army is still planning to rely on tanks, rifles, and the fighting styles of the 2010s, even though Ukraine has shown ground wars depend on drones and other mobile, decentralized, difficult-to-target assets. Example: Ukraine is actually refusing to bring gifted M1 Abrams tanks to the front line as they would be quickly destroyed by drones. • The US’s failure to have an unequivocally superior military to China is not a funding issue, given that the US spends some 3 times on defense what China does. It’s an issue of how money is spent. US weapons procurement has been fundamentally stagnant for 30 years while war has rapidly evolved based on unmanned systems. • The US’s extreme military vulnerability to China is due to us mostly spending money on the wrong things given how war has evolved. We’re still basically procuring the same weapons we were 30 years ago. • The most important evolution in warfighting is unmanned systems, which are powerful but cheap and thus scalable and decentralizable. • Large numbers of unmanned weapons distributed widely make large, expensive, centralized assets increasingly vulnerable (non-survivable). • Large numbers of unmanned weapons distributed widely are hard to counter since just some of them need to survive in order to inflict huge damage. • Yet our trillion-dollar defense budget is largely spent on manned systems that are very unlikely to survive a real conflict. • Even insofar as the US is procuring unmanned systems, its rate of evolution is way too slow. Unmanned systems evolve like consumer electronics, yet we have long procurement cycles (more than 5 times slower than China’s). To address the China threat we need to take advantage of our innovativeness to create stockpile of superior, strategic unmanned weapons systems that will deter them. • We cannot win a protracted war against China, given their superiority in manufacturing, and we don’t want such a war. But we can and want to deter them from attacking Taiwan, which controls the high-performance semiconductors our economy depends on. • Our big advantage is over China that we are better at innovating than China due to our political system and culture. They can make things at much larger scales, but we are much better at inventing new things. • The US’s superior innovation ability means that we can make superior weapons with huge cost-performance asymmetry compared to China’s. • These weapons need to be Strategic: can cripple China’s ability to wage war. (Ethan elaborates) • Given the time it takes to make weapons systems and the speed at which wars now start and end, we need to create a large stockpile of unmanned weapons systems—think tends of thousands—to deter China. If government procures weapons using standards of cost-effectiveness this can be done very cheaply. Government weapons spending must move as quickly as possible toward the standards of cost-effectiveness, scalability, and survivability. • Big picture, US weapons spending and procurement needs explicit standards to decide what to invest in. • Fundamentally the standard of weapons procurement must be cost-effectiveness: How much does it cost to have a given amount of effect in the expected environment? • Part of cost-effectiveness is scalability: We need to be able to produce sufficient units now and in an ongoing conflict. • Part of cost-effectiveness is survivability: Our weapons systems need to be able to by pass or handle enemy interference, which most legacy systems can’t. • If government can start allocating even $10 billion by these standards we can afford to build the stockpile superior unmanned weapons systems that will deter China from invading Taiwan.

How to quickly deter China from invading Taiwan — my interview with Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries Ethan is one of the brightest, most thoughtful people I've ever met. I believe his ideas on defending the US, including our interests in Taiwan, are urgently needed. Summary 👇 The US would likely lose a military conflict with China in Taiwan and other crucial areas in the Pacific—even though we spend far more money than China does. • We face a vastly underrated economic threat (not to mention human rights) if we cannot deter China from seizing Taiwan. • China has published plans to have military readiness for a Taiwan invasion by 2027. • We depend on Taiwan for almost all high-performance semi-conductors, which are at the base of all modern industry. • Taiwan had made clear as a deterrent that it’s prepared to destroy its semiconductor facilities in the event of an invasion, but China’s increasing semiconductor manufacturing makes the threat worse for the US than China. • It’s now an open secret that the US loses most or all of its wargames in a conflict with China over Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea. • How our Navy loses to China: If we can get our ships to the Pacific, we’ll quickly run out of ammo, but the more likely scenario is that our ships—including aircraft carriers—mostly don’t get there thanks to unmanned systems and hypersonics. • How our Air Force loses to China: The Air Force has limited planes and even more limited munitions, but the increasingly bigger problem is the planes won’t take off thanks to China’s hypersonic missiles and other unmanned systems that can destroy available runways in the Pacific. • How our Army loses to China: The Army is still planning to rely on tanks, rifles, and the fighting styles of the 2010s, even though Ukraine has shown ground wars depend on drones and other mobile, decentralized, difficult-to-target assets. Example: Ukraine is actually refusing to bring gifted M1 Abrams tanks to the front line as they would be quickly destroyed by drones. • The US’s failure to have an unequivocally superior military to China is not a funding issue, given that the US spends some 3 times on defense what China does. It’s an issue of how money is spent. US weapons procurement has been fundamentally stagnant for 30 years while war has rapidly evolved based on unmanned systems. • The US’s extreme military vulnerability to China is due to us mostly spending money on the wrong things given how war has evolved. We’re still basically procuring the same weapons we were 30 years ago. • The most important evolution in warfighting is unmanned systems, which are powerful but cheap and thus scalable and decentralizable. • Large numbers of unmanned weapons distributed widely make large, expensive, centralized assets increasingly vulnerable (non-survivable). • Large numbers of unmanned weapons distributed widely are hard to counter since just some of them need to survive in order to inflict huge damage. • Yet our trillion-dollar defense budget is largely spent on manned systems that are very unlikely to survive a real conflict. • Even insofar as the US is procuring unmanned systems, its rate of evolution is way too slow. Unmanned systems evolve like consumer electronics, yet we have long procurement cycles (more than 5 times slower than China’s). To address the China threat we need to take advantage of our innovativeness to create stockpile of superior, strategic unmanned weapons systems that will deter them. • We cannot win a protracted war against China, given their superiority in manufacturing, and we don’t want such a war. But we can and want to deter them from attacking Taiwan, which controls the high-performance semiconductors our economy depends on. • Our big advantage is over China that we are better at innovating than China due to our political system and culture. They can make things at much larger scales, but we are much better at inventing new things. • The US’s superior innovation ability means that we can make superior weapons with huge cost-performance asymmetry compared to China’s. • These weapons need to be Strategic: can cripple China’s ability to wage war. (Ethan elaborates) • Given the time it takes to make weapons systems and the speed at which wars now start and end, we need to create a large stockpile of unmanned weapons systems—think tends of thousands—to deter China. If government procures weapons using standards of cost-effectiveness this can be done very cheaply. Government weapons spending must move as quickly as possible toward the standards of cost-effectiveness, scalability, and survivability. • Big picture, US weapons spending and procurement needs explicit standards to decide what to invest in. • Fundamentally the standard of weapons procurement must be cost-effectiveness: How much does it cost to have a given amount of effect in the expected environment? • Part of cost-effectiveness is scalability: We need to be able to produce sufficient units now and in an ongoing conflict. • Part of cost-effectiveness is survivability: Our weapons systems need to be able to by pass or handle enemy interference, which most legacy systems can’t. • If government can start allocating even $10 billion by these standards we can afford to build the stockpile superior unmanned weapons systems that will deter China from invading Taiwan.

175,110 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce

“It's kind of obvious, if you have a warmer world with more CO2, it's a more tropical world with more life. It's a more green world in the life sense of green, and yet the green movement hates it because we caused it” With Dr Jordan B Peterson

“It's kind of obvious, if you have a warmer world with more CO2, it's a more tropical world with more life. It's a more green world in the life sense of green, and yet the green movement hates it because we caused it” With Dr Jordan B Peterson

1,163,878 görüntüleme • 3 yıl önce

Energy is an issue that should transcend political tribalism. Example: the popular generalist commentator Noah Smith 🐇, instead of engaging with my work, which he could learn a lot from and would likely agree with much of, uses an NYT paragraph to dismiss me as not “serious.”

Energy is an issue that should transcend political tribalism. Example: the popular generalist commentator Noah Smith 🐇, instead of engaging with my work, which he could learn a lot from and would likely agree with much of, uses an NYT paragraph to dismiss me as not “serious.”

196,649 görüntüleme • 11 ay önce

“the North Face ridiculously refused to make branded jackets for oil and gas companies. Even though oil and gas is literally the physical basis of their product.” With Adam Anderson

“the North Face ridiculously refused to make branded jackets for oil and gas companies. Even though oil and gas is literally the physical basis of their product.” With Adam Anderson

359,309 görüntüleme • 3 yıl önce

"this climate thing is a very rigid ideology..." -Joe Rogan "It's a religion....Alex Epstein, who wrote Fossil Future, comments about this....The climate pseudoreligion is based on a characterization of nature as...a hapless, defenseless, fragile virgin." -Dr Jordan B Peterson

"this climate thing is a very rigid ideology..." -Joe Rogan "It's a religion....Alex Epstein, who wrote Fossil Future, comments about this....The climate pseudoreligion is based on a characterization of nature as...a hapless, defenseless, fragile virgin." -Dr Jordan B Peterson

304,262 görüntüleme • 3 yıl önce

Lobbyists' worst nightmare: 4 minutes of Energy Secretary Chris Wright telling Congress why solar and wind subsidies must be terminated ASAP.

Lobbyists' worst nightmare: 4 minutes of Energy Secretary Chris Wright telling Congress why solar and wind subsidies must be terminated ASAP.

100,808 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

If solar and wind were cheaper than fossil fuels, “then you wouldn't need to ban the competition and you wouldn't need subsidies. So obviously it's an inferior thing and they're just issuing press releases with lies. If you're actually better, then compete with fossil fuels” With Rita Panahi

If solar and wind were cheaper than fossil fuels, “then you wouldn't need to ban the competition and you wouldn't need subsidies. So obviously it's an inferior thing and they're just issuing press releases with lies. If you're actually better, then compete with fossil fuels” With Rita Panahi

137,345 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

“If we follow net-zero policies, nobody likes to say this but it's true, climate danger will drastically increase from today because today we're artificially protected from climate by fossil fuels.” With YAF

“If we follow net-zero policies, nobody likes to say this but it's true, climate danger will drastically increase from today because today we're artificially protected from climate by fossil fuels.” With YAF

205,122 görüntüleme • 3 yıl önce

“Their answer is call me a climate change denier, try to smear me. But they can't answer the argument of, ‘look at the full context benefits and side effects of what's good for human flourishing.’” With Dr Jordan B Peterson

“Their answer is call me a climate change denier, try to smear me. But they can't answer the argument of, ‘look at the full context benefits and side effects of what's good for human flourishing.’” With Dr Jordan B Peterson

173,502 görüntüleme • 3 yıl önce

Palmer Luckey on how opponents of fossil fuels get it wrong: "overstating the negative impact and then understating or even ignoring the positive impact—when really these things need to be taken as a balance." Great discussion between Palmer Luckey and The Real Mike Rowe.

Palmer Luckey on how opponents of fossil fuels get it wrong: "overstating the negative impact and then understating or even ignoring the positive impact—when really these things need to be taken as a balance." Great discussion between Palmer Luckey and The Real Mike Rowe.

31,782 görüntüleme • 4 ay önce

Winning at AI means abandoning climate catastrophism and net-zero targets.

Winning at AI means abandoning climate catastrophism and net-zero targets.

55,797 görüntüleme • 10 ay önce

Want to understand what's going on with rising oil prices and Iran? I gave a full breakdown on TBPN. The basics: • There is absolutely no substitute for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, whether through rapid victory or through a well-protected convoy. • There are other ways of unlocking oil that can make a difference, most notably tapping spare capacity or emergency reserves. • Collaborating more with Canada and scrapping the Jones Act can also make a difference, and these are things we should be doing anyway. • We should absolutely not ban oil exports (the single worst idea out there), have our government manipulate oil futures, or pretend that Venezuela is any kind of near-term solution. Thanks to John Coogan and Jordi Hays for inviting me, you guys are always fun and interesting to talk to.

Want to understand what's going on with rising oil prices and Iran? I gave a full breakdown on TBPN. The basics: • There is absolutely no substitute for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, whether through rapid victory or through a well-protected convoy. • There are other ways of unlocking oil that can make a difference, most notably tapping spare capacity or emergency reserves. • Collaborating more with Canada and scrapping the Jones Act can also make a difference, and these are things we should be doing anyway. • We should absolutely not ban oil exports (the single worst idea out there), have our government manipulate oil futures, or pretend that Venezuela is any kind of near-term solution. Thanks to John Coogan and Jordi Hays for inviting me, you guys are always fun and interesting to talk to.

21,918 görüntüleme • 3 ay önce

It's important to have nuanced conversations about tariffs. Thanks to Donald Trump Jr. for the opportunity to share my view: there are real problems with our industrial capacity, but the solution is industrial freedom, freer trade, and non-tariff punitive actions against China.

It's important to have nuanced conversations about tariffs. Thanks to Donald Trump Jr. for the opportunity to share my view: there are real problems with our industrial capacity, but the solution is industrial freedom, freer trade, and non-tariff punitive actions against China.

67,605 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce

Want to learn how to unleash abundant, affordable, reliable electricity? Want to see a dozen “renewables” and “climate crisis” myths demolished? Want to see rude politicians put in their place? Watch my full testimony and Q & A today.

Want to learn how to unleash abundant, affordable, reliable electricity? Want to see a dozen “renewables” and “climate crisis” myths demolished? Want to see rude politicians put in their place? Watch my full testimony and Q & A today.

71,685 görüntüleme • 1 yıl önce