Tourism Collapse and Economic Impact

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Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about something that is wildly under-discussed in the news right now, which is that Cuba is about to collapse. And when I say about to collapse, you may think that I am exaggerating. They have literally at this point, 14 to 19 days of oil left.

They have had no tanker arrivals since January 9th. The, the tankers that were being sent from Venezuela have been cut off and their last lifeline, which was Mexico, has also been cut off. Why than that? Trump negotiations. So, NAFT is about to, is about to be renegotiated and oh Trump put a lot of pressure on Mexico to cut off.

Also, it’s costing Mexico a lot. They spent 3 billion basically in free oil for Venezuela. Over the past just few years I think. Since Why started this person’s administration? Well, Cuba was giving them their slave [00:01:00] doctors for people who don’t know Google. Oh yeah. UBA basically enslaves their, their doctors and was giving them to Mexico as like an exchange.

But they did the Venezuela was an also interesting situation ‘cause we’re seeing more and more, venezuela had given Cuba in terms of like loans that Cuba would never pay back, very obviously and stuff like that. $18 billion. And if we look at the elite guard that was killed during the raid, we know that 32 of them, so almost all of the people who died were actually Cubans.

So it appeared that Cuba basically controlled like the. The, the, the accusations that Cuba had basically subjugated Venezuela and was just extracting resources from it were accurate. They basically controlled the entire elite guard of the country and most of the major military petitions. Oh. And this is being systemically reversed right now.

Mm-hmm. And I note here that another thing you’re not seeing if you’re watching mainstream news right now is that Venezuela has actually made pretty. Big changes. Not only have they stopped sending [00:02:00] money and oil to Cuba but they have started releasing hundreds. I think now we’re at 300, but it shows no signs of slowing down political prisoners.

So we are actually seeing change in Venezuela. It’s just

Simone Collins: alright,

Malcolm Collins: Trump can. Dunk on it too much. Mm-hmm. Or it would look bad for the woman who’s in power now. Right. You know, we have to be very nice about all of our political wins that we’re making in Venezuela and very graceful about it because Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You don’t want too many people asking. Did she cooperate with you guys to get rid of Maduro?

Simone Collins: Yeah, like sad. You wanna look a little matchy matchy? That would not be good.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know, you don’t wanna look too matchy. Matchy. So she constantly complains. But in terms of what we actually wanna see happen in Venezuela, that’s what we’re seeing right now.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And I note here that how bad things have gotten in Cuba is, is not a, like this is happening completely out of nowhere scenario. So,

Simone Collins: well I have to ask. Do they not have oil reserves? We have oil reserves.

By the way, if you’re [00:03:00] wondering if Cuba has oil deposit somewhere, , they do. But, , in 20 12, 3 deep water, more than 300 meters of water exploration wells were drilled by Italian platform Scarborough nine. , And, , none of the three found commercial quality of oil or gas, which jeopardized Cuba’s hopes to find hydrocarbons to boost its economy.

So basically they, they technically have some around the island, , but , none of the commercial explorations have ever found a way to reach them in a cash positive manner.

Malcolm Collins: Cuba is a little island. Simone? No. Cuba

Simone Collins: doesn’t have one. Can have some kind of, I don’t know, tank.

This is my out of touch. I I have to ask the out of touch questions that everyone else is asking. ‘cause I’m not the only out of touch person here.

Malcolm Collins: No, they’re completely out. So their economy last year, 20% was the tourism industry. And this is despite the fact that tourism has been crashing for them.

So things have been getting much, much worse for them.

Simone Collins: Oh, so the world. Top destination for male sex workers is going out of faith. Oh, [00:04:00] this is because the younger people aren’t having sex anymore.

Malcolm Collins: That’s a,

Simone Collins: so what kind of woman wants to go to Cuba anymore?

Malcolm Collins: There’s been a combinations of factors that hit their tourism industry.

One was Trump reinstated distinctions that Obama had lifted. Two

Simone Collins: was, now we actually know this, when, when we ran our travel agency, we used to have a decent amount of traffic to Cuba. Yeah. And then after a while flights got kind of weird. And it was harder to get people there. The visa situation got very complicated and then we started having banking problems like, oh, do you do any business with Cuba?

And then like we, we got shut out of various things. Like we as a travel agency were strongly disincentivized from. Facilitating travel to Cuba, even if we’re talking like a student trip. At one point we helped to facilitate a student trip, like a tour to Cuba for, you know, cultural reasons and stuff.

So I can totally see why tourism is down, not just because of sanctions and stuff, but because the very operators and companies [00:05:00] facilitating that travel were really. There were a lot of friction was added to the process. Well,

Malcolm Collins: it’s not just that. There was basically to give a bit of history of what happened is Obama opened everything.

And much like when apartheid in it in South Africa, a bunch of people went in thinking, oh my God, look at this opportunity. Look at these green fields.

Simone Collins: Oh, but you go, and the only thing that’s. Cool is the male sex workers and everything else is crappy.

Malcolm Collins: We’ll get to that. But, so a lot of travel started happening to Cuba and a lot of people said, oh, we’ll invest in it.

So it was all subsidized and sort of over the top of what the economy could actually handle. Oh, even before the new sanctions came in, many of the travel providers that we were operating with that had been set up during that boom period were already about to go bankrupt or had already gone bankrupt before Trump sanctions.

It’s just not that many people actually wanted to go to Cuba. Is, is what we really learned. And really the only reason people reliably went to Cuba, which as Simone said, was male sex workers. That was the core thing. So it was mostly older, like [00:06:00] middle-aged women and gay men. That’s, that’s who was going for male Cuban sex workers.

Simone Collins: This one is down in my head.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And but to give you an idea of how bad things have been in Cuba since 2021, did you know that around 10%, this is only since 2021, we’re talking five years, 10% of the Cuban population has immigrated out of the country.

Simone Collins: Okay. So they haven’t made it impossible to escape.

I thought it was mostly a get on a raft and hope for the best kind of situation. So it’s not

Malcolm Collins: well, having 10% of your population leave. And keep in mind the population that leaves has almost been entirely under 40. So what is their working population? Cuba has a worse TFR than the United States.

They’re around 1.5 to 1.3 from what I’ve seen in various studies. They are extremely effed on that point. But you were saying like, do they have reserves of oil? The reason I was emphasizing the importance of their tourism industry is that even with the urist industry being like their lifeline right now, sure.

The hotels regularly go with blackouts. Yeah. So no [00:07:00] power. They go, we

Simone Collins: had issues with that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Without running water. Mm-hmm. They go without, so, so even like their key industry, and you’ve gotta understand if you’re like, what does it mean to run out of oil in a matter of days at this point? What this means is you have.

No factories operate almost all of Cuba’s energy is made with gas. Mm-hmm. So you have no light, no electricity. Your farming equipment doesn’t work.

Simone Collins: So, wait, they, they’re electrical grid you think is based on,

Malcolm Collins: it is based like 70% oil gas? Yeah.

Simone Collins: No. Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the reason they built it that way is ‘cause they were getting free gas from Venezuela.

Simone Collins: That helps.

Malcolm Collins: So they, they have no electricity, no farming equipment, no way to get from one place to another like this. God.

Simone Collins: And those old cars aren’t exactly fuel efficient. Oh, no. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The scale of the badness is very, very, very bad.

Simone Collins: This is not good. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And so we’ve

Simone Collins: gotta No, no. [00:08:00] And then let’s say that this happens and then a bunch of people.

In, in pretty dire straits actually hop on more rafts and float over to Miami, and then ICE just takes them, I don’t know, flies them to Somalia. This is not gonna be good. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It is, it is not, well, it could be good depending on the outcome. So I really think we have never seen a president so well positioned to end this.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And we see that from the way that he’s done. Bo is he gonna

Simone Collins: port to Rico,

Malcolm Collins: With Greenland, which has been really, really impressive. No. As well as the, what he did was Venezuela and the subsequent deal afterwards. So, what, what, I’ll get to this. So what we, is

Simone Collins: he gonna be throwing toilet paper rolls at them next?

Malcolm Collins: Did he throw toilet paper rolls at

Simone Collins: somebody in Puerto Rico? Don’t you remember when he was like Puerto Rico and then he kept saying it and then like, I mean, I don’t know. The way he pronounces this country is just kinda gets me jina and Port Rico. He gets a little flamboyant with that one. But [00:09:00] yeah, during one of the hurricane recovery processes, he.

He went to Puerto Rico and he he threw, I think, I believe, paper towels at the audience. And, and people were like, roll of them. Don’t worry. I mean, and I, I would be thrilled to have someone throw a roll of paper towels at me. They’re, we need them. But yeah, like people that got caught up in the media because people are very angry about him, you know, not, not actually helping people.

And. You know, Trump was like, I don’t know, they seem pretty happy about getting paper towels. So it was That

Malcolm Collins: is hilarious. And

Simone Collins: very Trump, but you’re saying, yeah, we, this could be like another. Another Puerto Rico for the United States. Like we treat it the same way.

Malcolm Collins: No, unlikely. But what we could do, and I think that this is why it will go so well, is we have seen through Trump’s engagement with Venezuela.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Typically what you have when you had, you know, leftists or the old sort of neocons in a, in a argue, you know, trying to build American power in a region. They’d go to a country like Venezuela that had [00:10:00] been heavily, you know, blockhead by America and everything like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And they would say, Hey guys we need you to start holding democratic elections and release your political prisoners and we’re gonna start holding like, rural trials for everyone who broke.

You know, major whatevers. Right. Okay. Yeah. Or we would try to do a coup in the country, right? Like we would fund a bunch of militants with the CIA or something like this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Those two strategies it turned out were really bad. Trump tried something totally new which is not like anyone has ever thought to do in a country like Venezuela or for that matter.

Which is Trump basically just went in and was like okay, who’s willing to negotiate? What do you, what, what do we really want? We really want your oil. So, you know, what do you care about? Right? Like it’s, and the

Simone Collins: deal,

Malcolm Collins: why don’t, why don’t you release some token number of prisoners?

You know, they’re like, do we need to hold fair elections? Whatever. You know, like, you

Simone Collins: do

Malcolm Collins: you Yes. Stop sending money to oil to, to Cuba. And they’re like, you know what? We’ve been really pissed about this [00:11:00] Cuba arrangement for a while as well. Yeah, we’ll work on that. So, so with Cuba, the interesting thing is, and this is something I really wanna take some time to talk about here, what, what.

He might be offering Cuba could be significantly different than what other presidential administrations have attempted to offer Cuba. Right.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: He could be going in there being like, oh yeah, keep your regime, whatever. Right? Like, we’ll just change a few things here and there. And it’s important to understand that Cuba is significantly more centralized than Venezuela.

I mean, that’s how Cuba essentially took over Venezuela to begin with. They are essentially coup proof at this point given how centralized the power structure is. And considering that in Venezuela, they had memories of democracy in Venezuela, right? Yes. Like they knew how much communists had screwed them over.

Mm-hmm. In Cuba, there isn’t this same memory of, of this either. Right. And I think another thing that we need to touch on here before I go further. Now also keeping is not as [00:12:00] corrupt. Like it is corrupt, but it’s not nearly as corrupt. They care much more about the longevity of the regime than personal enrichment, even people in positions of power.

Finally they have a, a real military, which, which Venezuela didn’t really have. They

Simone Collins: do. Or is it just like Russians hanging out?

Malcolm Collins: No, no. Cuba has like Cuban military, I mean, Mexican Venezuela is military with a Cuban

Simone Collins: military. Yeah. I, I didn’t know Army. So they, they have like a, a sizable army. What’s their specialty?

Navy Air Force. What’s the situation there?

If you want the full answer here, , Cuba’s strongest branch is its Army, , where it has around 113 main battle tanks, T 55 to 62 models and relies on a dense network of anti-air systems, radar satellites, and surface to air missiles. , Cuba’s Navy is relatively weak. They only have around 19 vessels including patrol, craft, mine, scrapers, and a few intelligence shifts.

Um, and then for their Air Force, , was at its peak in the 1990s when they boasted [00:13:00] 230 fixed wing aircraft. Today it operates around 31 to 34 active aircraft, mostly aging, , mig, 21 or 23 fighters.

Simone Collins: Okay, so it, it, yeah, but I, I mean, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: It’s, but the point being is it’s not like a fragmented force like Venezuela’s was another, like Venezuela, as I said, their military was basically controlled by Cubans.

Cuban’s military is basically controlled by the guys who own about 30 to 40% of a Cuban economy. So the people who least want regime change. Also control the military. Which is, I mean, if you’re trying to structure an economy not to undergo a coup or anything, that makes a lot of sense. But it also potentially gives Trump alternate people to negotiate wiz within the country depending on what they want.

Another thing I was gonna note before, well actually one really interesting thing about this that we’ll get to in a second, but I want to just note here, is Cuba has been a really important part of fueling. Leftist ideological causes was in the United States [00:14:00] for about the last 50 years. Not through funding, but through training programs.

Simone Collins: Training. What? So they’re not, they’re not like Russian troll bot farms. They’re not like c CCP

Malcolm Collins: campaigns. No. It’s, it’s really fascinating. So it’s through two sectors. One is. Is sort of covert training programs that they’ve been operating for a long time. Oh, okay. And if, and you see this in Antifa circles, one of the things that’s known when people come out of Antifa circles, and the guy who we had, who was working in Antifa, who came on our show, talked about this is that there is something of, a status symbol was in Antifa communities.

That being Cuban trained like that means you are elite. That means that means you’re legit and no one will question you.

Simone Collins: So the Navy Seals of. Antifa are Cuban trained anti,

Malcolm Collins: anti well Cuban trained in their ideology. Yeah. And it’s not just them, it’s also the political group, the socialist political organization we have in the United States that like Mond was affiliated with.

They have been heavily

Simone Collins: Democratic [00:15:00] Socialists of

Malcolm Collins: America. Yeah, they were. Heavily influenced or even potentially set out by the Cubans.

Simone Collins: Woo.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. And Cuba also offers for like college students. And we see a lot of like leftist ideologues, even mainstream was in democratic politics who do this program where you go to Cuba for I don’t know how long, like a few months.

And you get political training and learn how great first, right? For comedy? Yes. Wow. Okay. Taking down Cuba is, I think a lot of people do not realize how. Critical and intelligent. Trump’s handling of the Venezuela situation was. Mm. Because basically it’s knocking down like a, their course one, it knocked down the perception that Russia or China could protect you.

Yeah, yeah. And with Cuba, we have been knocking out all of their potential allies one by one. And I think a lot of the rest of the world didn’t see that this was happening, you know? Iran is off the table as someone who can help them now. Yeah, Russia is off the table as someone who can help them.

Venezuela is off the table as someone who can help them, and North Korea is off the table as [00:16:00] someone who can help them. They have no one they can go to. And China, I guess they could try to go to China, but I haven’t seen any signs that that’s going to happen for them. I mean, China’s in a difficult position as it is right now.

So, Cuba just doesn’t really have any friends left. And they are incredibly isolated. The other thing I wanted to note that I think is really clever about Trump in terms of how he’s built his administration which is just so it’s actually really sweet and heartening to see is, marco Rubio is the one who’s handling Cuba right now.

He’s handling all of the Cuba situation, all the Venezuela situation. And what I’ve repeatedly see with Trump in terms of how he handles enemies or competitors for presidential positions is he promises them and gets them a position that they would prefer to being president. Oh the, the, the, you know, what did Kennedy want?

More than anything. It was, it was to run the, the food, it was to run the, the medical [00:17:00] associations of the United States. It was to fix all of our food and drug stuff and all of the medical stuff. And that is the position that Trump put him in. Everybody, you, you could have told me if you looked at.

Kennedy’s campaign ads. Does, is this man running to be head of medical establishments in the United States or is he running to be head of the, the country? No, he wants to fix all the medical stuff. You look at, you know, what, what Rubio really wanted more than anything. And, and anyone could tell you if you asked Rubio, would you rather free Cuba or be president, he’d say, I’d rather free Cuba hands down.

That’s just like life’s work, right? It’s the number one biggest gift anyone could ever give him. It’s to be in this position. And so he’s treating it really, really seriously. Right? Like, I think way was, was was much more honesty than you could normally. Appreciate from a, a lackey who’s out there doing something right.

I mean, no people should know. I personally don’t really like Marco Rubio. I think he’s. Boring and like old school politics, which is also good that, you know, Trump didn’t put him in a position to be the next [00:18:00] presidential candidate. I think he’s really done as a rising star in Republican politics. And he put Vance in that position who’s a great as well.

Like Vance wanted to be VP more than anything. Vance is the one who actually wants to be president one day and has been the, pulling the strings on that for a long time. He’s done some really great speeches recently. Mind you around, well, we’ll get on that in another video. This, this is around the, the have you, have you been following the stuff on like voter id,

Simone Collins: Just broadly that the, that they want the Trump administration is fighting for, I think universal voter id.

Right.

Malcolm Collins: Which they should.

It’s,

Simone Collins: yeah, for context in the United States. In many places you do not have to have a state issued photo ID in order to vote. You can just say. My name is Malcolm Collins and I’m here to vote, and this is my address.

Malcolm Collins: And these places, if you, I I, I can put a map, I’ll put two maps on the screen here.

One is of whether places go Democrat or Republican in state elections.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And whether or [00:19:00] not they require a voter id. And what you see is almost every state that requires a voter ID goes Republican in almost every state that doesn’t go to Democrat.

I’m a little worried for this video ‘cause when I was searching this, this is way more band of a topic than I thought. You can watch what our video is this, , weekend for, Paid subscribers. We we’re gonna go over the topics we can’t talk about on YouTube, but this is really adjacent to one of them.

But all the, , you know, Deb debunking things on this, they say, well, it is true that Kamala won most of the states that didn’t require voter id. , She won some. That did require it, that we’re extremely blue states, which proves that this isn’t true. This is such a weird, I mean, obviously there’s still gonna be some states that she won.

Nobody’s saying that she literally only won everything. What.

Simone Collins: Yeah. When

Malcolm Collins: we

Simone Collins: went to this one conference they were handing out hats that said when I die, don’t let me vote Democrat.

That’s a

Malcolm Collins: real phenomenon that’s been reported on even, you know, when, when Elon was doing the sort of [00:20:00] breakdown of the roles for Medicaid and stuff like that, and he found all the dead people who were on the roles, he then checked to see. It, how many have voted? And a lot of them had voted, you know, this is a, this is a real thing that’s really happening.

I mean,

Simone Collins: and I didn’t realize that because when, when we got the hats, I was like, I don’t get it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Kennedy famously joked, like literally Kennedy joked when somebody was congratulating him on a presidential win. Something about like, oh, well you should think the whatever cemetery.

This joke was explicitly made by Kennedy, but in a coded language on a call he had was daily about how he won, , Illinois and Ohio. I.

Malcolm Collins: So like this has been a pretty open thing for a while.

And so I’m really glad that something, hopefully is being done. I’ve, I’ve heard that like the Republicans in the Senate are like being super pussies about this right now, and it’s really freaking me out that they could be that pathetic on this because, you know, we need to stop the cheat, right? Like, this cannot be allowed to continue especially at the scale that has been happening.

But it’s just

Simone Collins: wild. You, you have to have a, a driver’s license, a form of government [00:21:00] issued ID in order to drive a car. Yeah. Like if you can’t figure that out, should you really be allowed to vote? Really

Malcolm Collins: right there. There was a funny video clip I saw of somebody going around and repeating what leftist, so basically they went to a college campus and said, why, why do you need a.

Voter id. Right. And they were like, well, because then black people won’t be able to vote. And he is like, why don’t you think black people can get a voter id?

[00:22:00] [00:23:00] [00:24:00] [00:25:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so he took kind of insulting all of their quotes around that. Like, black people don’t know how to use the internet, or black people don’t know where DMVs are, whatcha doing.

And then he took [00:26:00] these and he went to a black community and started asking black people if through excuse.

Simone Collins: Would you like me to help you access the internet? Oh my God. Oh, this. If black Twitter wasn’t a thing,

Malcolm Collins: I, I, well, I mean the, the, the, the polls for this are overwhelming. It’s something like, even, like 76% of black people want this to be a law. Everybody wants this to be a law. It’s really just being used by people who want to cheat.

Like that’s, that’s sort of, I mean, we’re in a situation with the redistricting that’s gonna happen in 2030. The only way Democrats can stay relevant is if they cheat. And, and, and we’re increasingly seeing that in the tactics that they’re using. So, what I wanted to Yes. Go to here ‘cause I find this really interesting.

So, the Werner Moss Brigade, this is from 1969 to present. In 2024 to [00:27:00] 2025, Cuba hosted multiple contingents, including a queer trans brigade. Americans. Got two to four weeks of political education, Marxist linens, indoctrinations, meeting with Cuban intelligence officers, ICAP plus, MIN. NT labor Plus Solidarity work.

Many alumni later became organizers at the PSL the Answer Coalition and Students for Democratic Society, as well as Antifa adjacent groups, the People’s Front led by Milano. Los Santos, who lived in Cuba for years and has extremely close ties to the Cuban government. His group played a central role in the 2024 Columbia University occupation and many pro-Palestine radical actions.

And then the party for Socialism and Liberation, PSL the most pro Cuba Communist Party in the us. Many top Conrads have gone through CU government training programs. So, yes, Cuba has been directly coordinating with these groups. So now it’s time to [00:28:00] think, what, what is Trump going to do? Like, what is the actual plan and what could stop this plan from going through?

But before I get into that, Simone, what are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: I am very curious to hear what you’re going to propose in terms of here’s what the leaders of Cuba would prefer to being the leaders of Cuba. Not to say that they’re having a ton of fun right now anyway. I just, I just wanna know,

Malcolm Collins: so the important thing to note about the leaders of Cuba right now is they are all tremendous leaders.

Oh. The heads of the military, the heads of the state, it is a country being ruined by a boomer autocracy. Right. Like a age aged, I’m

Simone Collins: sorry. The whole world is being ruined by Boomer autocracies. So.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is a little different. They don’t really have outside voices because it’s not exactly a place where young [00:29:00] people can rise up in power very easily.

So there aren’t, like in the White House, it is very clear in terms of the way they’re making decisions. And even when we go, you know, ‘cause we’ve been to the White House to advise the, the people we’re meeting with are our age or. Younger, often. The Trump administration is a very young administration.

MAGA as a movement is a young movement, right? Like, the, the and the new, right? Especially like screams youth as a movement. When I, when I look at who the movement is, is a bunch of people who would’ve been. Like college effective altruists a generation ago, right? Like, it’s young autistic nerds, right?

And this means that they are on board with the latest technology, the latest ideas, the way the world actually works. Right now, the people who are running things in Cuba are the people who lives through the Cold War. They understand Cold War style politics, which is not what we’re dealing with right now.[00:30:00]

And we also have the the, the big problem with, so the, the current president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canal. Canal. I don’t know, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna put these foreign words in my mouth anyway. He is going to have a very hard time stepping back because the, the military controls significant economic sectors through conglomerates like ge.

ESA group de administration Imperial, which oversees tourism remittances in other revenue streams under the current Minister of Defense. Vo Lopez, Myra and which is a very clever way to put it. Remember how I was talking about what all of their cash cow industries were? They put all of those directly under the military and a, a run by a very old guy.

Mind you, it’s very, and so what that means is the military has a structural reason to resist change in a way that the [00:31:00] military in say something like China, may not. Right. Like if all they have is the military right, they, they don’t personally lose money. All your generals don’t personally lose money if there is any sort of economic or systems change.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So the question becomes how do you make a deal for Cuba that keeps the rich people in Cuba rich, but also in the current administration. I am actually open to your thoughts on this Simon moment because I’m not entirely sure what the administration is planning or attempting. They could be trying to do a generational trade off thing, being like, you guys get this until X date and then you transfer it to the next generation.

Or you guys like, I’m, I’m, I’m genuinely not sure what it’s gonna look like. What are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: Possibly. I don’t know how nepotistic the leading party is or how much they care about setting up their personal family and descendants, [00:32:00] but I could possibly see incentivizing them to create an oligarchy in a post Cuban government world or a different administration to be like, well, by agreeing to step down after your term, like you’re the last one.

Yeah, we will help you set up a system in which your descendants disproportionately profit, but also will. Be materially better off because they’re not in power anymore.

Malcolm Collins: That’s, that’s, that’s gonna happen no matter what. Yeah, if you look right now, well, unless we do like a full regime overhaul, which I do not think Trump has any stomach for.

No. If you look at the descendants of Fidel Castro a lot of them are super rich people living in the US right now. Like, there’s a number of like young, like super, I think it was like hundreds of millions of dollars. Like teenage Instagram stars who are like Castro’s descendants. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Adorable.

Malcolm Collins: They, they looted that country that, you know, not an, not an an ethical government. Exactly. [00:33:00] I, I love, I had this girlfriend in college who was from Germany, and she was like a communist who absolutely believed that life was better in Cuba than the United States. And she’s like, oh, their medical sys. I was like, you’re aware that their doctors are basically slaves, right?

For people who don’t know how their doctor program works, and this is responsible for, I think another 20% of the Cuban economy. They send them to other countries and they work for three to four years. And they only get to keep around 10% of the salary that they make. And then they also don’t get paid until they come back.

And they have a constant military reminder on them at all times. So yes, it’s not an awesome life to be a Cuban doctor.

Simone Collins: I, I only learned that weirdly when, man, it was a great dental practice too. A Cuban dentist in Miami told me everything. Did you go to that dentist? Did I set you up with him?

He was right across from our office in the ADE building.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t, I don’t

Simone Collins: remember Durl. But yeah, he, he, like, he would serve you espresso and then just like chat with you while cleaning his teeth. It was a great dental [00:34:00] office and he was, he was from Cuba and he just walked me through the whole process like, oh my God, they, like everyone in his office was a recent Cuban immigrant and he’s just like, man, I’m glad to be outta there.

And like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: it’s bad. No, no, it’s crazy. The crazy thing though is he was a really good dentist. Like I feel like the medical professionals from Cuba and in general, the people who. Managed together. Cuba are very competent. Very

Malcolm Collins: cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. There, there’s a, I mean, obviously they’re a huge Cuban business community in the United States.

Mm-hmm. They’re a big faction of the Conservative party in the United States. They’ve been very loyal to the party. And they are. Very well accepted. I mean, Marco Rubio, right? Like could have been president, like by the conservative establishment. Mm-hmm. And this means that there is, we were talking with our super fans.

One of them who was Iranian was like, well, do you think that. If the current regime was toppled that the Iranian expats could ever come back and really reestablish something. And I [00:35:00] didn’t really feel they could. It’s, it’s, it is just too far. They, they’ve done too much damage already to the country infrastructure.

And they’ve built alternate communities in, in other places, and he thought they would, I mean, maybe they care more. I feel the same way about Cubans in the us. It’s an interesting thing ‘cause I think Cubans in the US would send money to Cuban to try to get it reset up, but I don’t think that they would rerate.

Simone Collins: I don’t know, man. I get the impression from the Cuban immigrants I’ve met that they’re like, I’m out of there. I’m not sending anything back. Like

Malcolm Collins: I don’t

Simone Collins: them knew. And, and, and then I say that knowing that a, a lot of other. People from other countries do send a lot of remittances back, including Venezuela, where the government was really screwed up and people had major problems with it.

They were still sending money back. In fact, our business made a lot of money from people literally flying with suitcases full of cash. ‘cause we were selling ‘em a plane tickets. It was insane. So, so like, I, I know, but like, there’s something about when people leave Cuba, they’re like, screw that place.

You’re, [00:36:00] it’s very different from

Malcolm Collins: like fleeing Venezuela. When they flee Venezuela. There’s always like a plan to go back eventually, or a plan to send money back.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, this is a temporary setback. Venezuela’s amazing. Like, we’re just gotta sit this out. That kind of thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, it’s more like they send money to their, their relatives back in Venezuela.

I actually don’t see that very much with the Cubans. I know they do not money back to the

Simone Collins: Cubans. No, it’s like, well, and I think it might come from a belief that it’s just. Going to be taken, I guess,

Malcolm Collins: or I don’t know. I, I don’t know. But it’s, it is a different culture. It’s a different culture, right. So, the, the point here being is I don’t know if, if I, I think what we’re gonna get is Cuba has no cards on the table right now.

Right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think within a matter of weeks you should expect to see something pretty big happen. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I,

Simone Collins: well, yeah, if they’re that low. On a, on a oil reserve that like, I mean, something’s gotta give, [00:37:00] right?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, yeah. I suspect it’s going to be I was gonna say, what.

Describe what’s it’s gonna look like. It’s going to look I think unusually pragmatic. It’s going to be a win for the Trump administration, whatever it is. And it’s going to long term set us up very well with Cuba.

Simone Collins: Well, one of the. How is, I guess, okay, so yeah, tourism. So you’re saying they’re both out of oil and money.

‘cause tourism is weigh down and that was, they’re out of

Malcolm Collins: oil. Well and, and

Simone Collins: I was, Trump would love to extort them for oil money. Especially if it was just from the, the Venezuelan tankers that he seized and was like, we’re gonna sell that oil. I guess I’m gonna keep it. I, I don’t know. I mean, what, I guess the, the major thorn in the side that Cuba has been, and if we were to look at the strategic document released by the US government, on our international policy, our military policy basically was, we do not want.

The Americas, [00:38:00] anyone in the Americas to be a strategic threat. And Cuba is like the outpost of Russia and China left aside from Venezuela, right? I mean, who else, aside from Cuba and Venezuela or strongholds of Russian and China, Chinese interests. I mean, I guess you could say Peru has a ton of Chinese business, so maybe it’s a risk, but I I don’t really see as No, no, no.

Keep in

Malcolm Collins: mind the Peruvian Chinese population immigrated to Peru. Either pre CCP or as refugees from the CCP.

Simone Collins: Yeah, the mining industry in, in. Peru, like exists for China.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It exists to sell to China. So China has huge economic

level,

Simone Collins: but China like doesn’t, I guess there’s not like a, there’s not a big belt there.

I don’t even know if there is a Belt and Road initiative actually.

Malcolm Collins: But there isn’t any ethnic love of China any more than like. A country with a big F and go group would have a love of China. Like they, they, they, they, they don’t, they don’t have a, a yearning to return to the ccp. I was actually decided to ask it because I was [00:39:00] wondering like, why isn’t China helping them right now?

Simone Collins: That’s a good question. Well, China has its own problem though. So I guess if I were to sum it up though, the United States, per its stated strategic interests. Does not want Cuba to be a stronghold of Russian or Chinese interests. So the most important thing is for whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So China has offered some humanitarian aid, 80 million in emergency financial aid for electrical equipment and urgent needs with 60,000 to 90,000 tons of rights, donations and food supplies in January, 2026.

Oh. Beijing has also written off some Cuban debt and provided some funds and assistance, but it doesn’t. Not appear. Yeah. They, they are offering what Cuba needs, which is oil.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Well, come on. I mean, China is an, an importer of energy. They need it for themselves, although they’re really making good progress.

Malcolm Collins: Well, they could pay for it from somewhere, I mean, pay for some [00:40:00] other, I know Cuba has. Supposedly, like if you read their internal documents, they expected that something could happen with Venezuela and it all could be cut off.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so they planned for lump some like African oil shipment roots. Okay.

From like Algeria. Mm-hmm. And that China could play a role in that. The problem is, is that Cuba just doesn’t really have anything to play other than a geopolitical enemy.

Simone Collins: That’s, that’s significant though. You know, it’s, I think it’s the one big thorn left in our geopolitical side in the Americas.

Unless we wanna count Canada as a, a foreign asset now, which it practically is.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So this is why China’s not giving oil. Trump has been threatening and this is also what got Mexico to back off a 30% tariff on any country that gives Cuba oil.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And just nobody cares about Cuba that much.

Right. Like. They, they’ve, they’re completely out on their own at this point. It’s, it’s geopolitically a big deal because if the United States captures [00:41:00] the all allegiance of Cuba, as much as we have Venezuela, which has been astounding, their level of cooperation,

Simone Collins: yeah.

So far

Malcolm Collins: we have no more geopolitical enemies.

Anywhere threatening to us especially if we’re able to get Greenland as well. Like America, the United States basically will own the Americas. Without it, it will have been one of the, the most stunning political coups in victories. Like any human has pulled off in history. Yeah. What this administration of the Trump administration has pulled off huge.

If they can neutralize Venezuela and Cuba as threats and then better yet expand our position in Greenland for people who don’t understand why Greenland is so important. It is. And a lot of people are like, well, you can already build military bases anywhere you want in Greenland. So why do you care about Greenland?

Because I, I point out that like milit missile pathways that are coming from China or Russia go over Greenland. Mm-hmm. Right? Like if, and if you have good installations in Greenland, you can stop them there. And [00:42:00] people are like, well, you could just build more. And it’s like, yeah, except Greenland has an independence movement right now, and Europe has shown themselves to be complete pussies to independence movements.

And as soon as we get an. Independent Greenland. Greenland is not self-sustaining. They basically live off of money for

. They basically live off of, of money from their host country right now.

Specifically, Greenland requires around $700 million a year in subsidies to function, which is why it would make sense for Denmark to want to offload it as well.

Malcolm Collins: And they, that means that they will all of a sudden be desperate for anyone who will give them money.

Mm-hmm. And if you look at the people of Denmark, the problem is, is basically nobody lives there. Like no, like basically nobody lives there geopolitically. It is an irrelevant number in

Simone Collins: Greenland. A lot of people live in Denmark.

Malcolm Collins: No, in Greenland. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, nobody lives in Greenland. And so, if.

You from a, from a geopolitical standpoint, it’s like the size of a town, right? And but the people who do live there are super urban monoculture, brain cooked, and [00:43:00] if they got their independence, they would be hesitant to form alliances with the United States. Very true. It would be. Very likely to form one.

It was China or Russia. Oh. What, what the Trump administration is doing right now, especially China, because I’ve noticed urban monoculture people do not care about China’s atrocities at all. It’s basically like,

Simone Collins: what atrocities,

Malcolm Collins: what atrocities. And so, Trump is absolutely, we do need to, to pressure this deal.

And it sounds like he’s got something. I, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like yet, but it sounds like he’s got something.

But if, if he gets those. To ex, that would mean that America not only like anyone who would have any reason to attack us, has to cross oceans. Right? But we’ve got on lock the entire.

Not just our continent, but every continent that a bridges us, that is anywhere close to us.

Simone Collins: It’s a general idea. Yep.

Malcolm Collins: It, it would be as safe as you could be as a country because nobody’s attacking us through [00:44:00] Mexico. Nobody’s attacking us through Canada. We’re energy independent, food independent.

Simone Collins: Well

Malcolm Collins: have a diversified economy.

Simone Collins: Mexico has a bit of a big gang problem. But I mean,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, but the gangs have no interest in like directly attacking the United States. And if they did the, it would give the United States a, a, an opportunity to fight back or a,

Simone Collins: I don’t know. I mean, I, that, that, it’s a very tough problem.

I mean, because what we’re looking at is a very grassroots gorilla insurgency essentially, that’s just running many parts of Mexico, functionally speaking. Yeah. Yeah, but it actually helps actually, we the, for the same reasons why we couldn’t durably take many Middle Eastern countries. We couldn’t durably take Mexico.

Oh, we could durably take Mexico. It’s extreme hard. I mean, maybe once you’ve like drone swarms or like, I don’t know, oh my gosh. We could just do a kingsman based like. Attack, you know, the, the, the second one where they had a drug laced or something that just selectively killed everyone who [00:45:00] consumed that drug.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Go, go for that strategy. Go for that. No, the, the, the problem. So, so we, we absolutely could Durably take Mexico. Yeah. What, what you’re not considering is the, the extremely low logistics cost of attempting to take Mexico because it is. Just on our southern border with roads going directly into it, rail lines going directly into it.

Simone Collins: Oh, it’s just a daytime commute.

Malcolm Collins: Multiple giant.

Simone Collins: You’ll be home in time for dinner.

Malcolm Collins: Gulfs in what? Like the Gulf of America, right. Is just like right there. Ar around most of Mexico’s land. The big problem is the the, the mountainous regions which make it you know. It makes it easier for gorillas to hide out and everything like that.

Mm-hmm. But then the other thing that you’ve gotta keep in mind, it’s, keep in mind how many of our armed forces just are Latin American, right? Like we have a lot of Latin American. There is not a cultural divide there. And if you did the military operations right, you would just have them led by Latin Americans and make it very much like a.

From a PR strategy. [00:46:00] Like did you know that the, the ICE officers who shot whatever woman were two gay Mexican ice officers?

Simone Collins: Renee. Good. Really?

So I wasn’t able to find evidence on the l, the gay connection, but I was able to find that the ones who shot the guy recently, , were two Hispanic officers.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. People were saying it’s, it’s wild that everyone who has died during this. On the, on, on the Democrat side , the, the deaths have been from a white shooter who shot undocumented immigrants by accident.

And on our side it has been multiple cases of like Hispanic shooters shooting white women or, or, or men. Which is ironic.

Simone Collins: There was, there was recently a court hearing where non-white people reported in, in court about their mistreatment. So it’s not only white people who are being impacted, but Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: well, the non-white

Simone Collins: people, it’s the white people.

Were were being deranged and, and blowing whistles and stuff. Actually, yeah. I mean, all the [00:47:00] instances that I saw reported in this court hearing were of people like. Trying to get to appointments or just driving. I think they weren’t actively trying to, oh, one woman was. But yeah, it was mostly people.

There’s been

a

Malcolm Collins: viral video recently of a black ice officer being called a house inward.

Simone Collins: Oh. After being like, are you a man? Are you a man? Yeah. You saw this? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Did that, did that person answer the question? Because it did. They didn’t sound No.

Malcolm Collins: Somebody was like. How dare you ask a woman if she’s a woman.

Why would you ask her that?

Simone Collins: He seemed genuinely confused though.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like, ‘

Simone Collins: cause this person was wearing a mask and they had long hair, but they sounded like a man. So you could understand how, if you weren’t from.

Malcolm Collins: Their culture

Simone Collins: and you’re just like, yeah, he’d be very confused. The

Malcolm Collins: funny thing is, is he didn’t even seem like an angry ice officer.

He

Simone Collins: just seemed like

Malcolm Collins: confused, normal black guy.

Simone Collins: Like yeah. He was just like, yeah, that like maybe hadn’t been exposed to super woke people, and so he is just like, you know, this. [00:48:00] Masked woman approaches. I mean, a person with long hair behind a mask, and then like, they talk and they sound like a man and he’s just like, are you a man?

And then they start going off on it,

Malcolm Collins: you know, that homicides of the United States went down 25% last year since, since ICE started.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Like it’s having a big effect. This was from a, a JD Vance speech, which I was really surprised to know. Mm.

So we just gotta keep winning, keep winning, keep it up.

I gotta make my video game, GGTA, Indianapolis, I, I would so wanna play that.

Simone Collins: My gosh. No, I don’t want, well, I mean, to make it realistic, you’d have to have the incessant whistling and I don’t know if people want to, there has to be an option to just turn it off.

Malcolm Collins: You tell me you

Simone Collins: have to turn,

Malcolm Collins: you brought a whistle to the Oscars, like

Simone Collins: No.

With the Grammys. Yeah. They were, they were their performative. I support the current thing whistle as one day I

Malcolm Collins: support the current thing. No, I, I want people to remember you know, when we’re talking about all of this remember who our biggest enemies are. They are domestic. They want to, you know, steal this [00:49:00] country indefinitely.

That is the plan, right? Like as soon as elections are compromised, it’s, and, and, and, and they get into power. That’s, that’s really bad. Going forwards, especially if they don’t think that they can win fair elections, which is going to become very hard post the 2230 redistricting. And if you look at voting patterns among younger individuals and, and in current trend shifts, it’s, it’s, it’s not good for them.

It is especially, you know, birth rates. So, you know, I think that they’re sort of like, we’ve, we’ve gotta do something at this point. So, so keep this in mind, and I think that, you know, when we’re working with something like Cuba. We don’t need the people in charge of Cuba to suffer. We just want a deal that puts them in our debt rather than China’s debt.

That’s really the gist of it.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They

can

Simone Collins: even

Malcolm Collins: keep pretending to be socialists. We don’t care, you know, whatever.

Simone Collins: What would be really cool is if. Somehow a bunch of a [00:50:00] one. They would never be incentivized to do this though. But a bunch of based American Cubans just went back to the country, flooded it, and had a better administration elected.

That would be really great. But I don’t know. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. But like, you know, people who had family history in the country who cared about it. But I just haven’t met a Cuban who. Would want to go back, so that’s too bad. But anyway, yeah, I, I

Malcolm Collins: talked to myself. I guess we could build like a large military base in uba and then I was like, oh yeah, Guantanamo.

Like we already have a large military base in

Simone Collins: Cuba. It could be larger. That’s the thing.

Malcolm Collins: It

Simone Collins: could be larger.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’ll always be bigger.

Simone Collins: And Trump is all about real estate development too. I mean, you know, before we make the new Gaza, maybe we could make the new Q, but

Malcolm Collins: when we talk about the grift

Simone Collins: running,

Malcolm Collins: and I’m like, you don’t hate these people enough.

One of the stats I heard recently that shocked me is in California, the average homeless person costs a state [00:51:00] $175,000 a year. So keep in mind how big this grift is. It’s not just Minnesota. They, they’ve been fighting throughout la hospice fraud. Th this fraud is all over the United States, and we need something like like, doge, but at a multi-state level.

I think at this point is where we need to go next.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: Accountability. I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: All right. And be keeping an eye on the news. Let’s see what happens with Cuba.

Simone Collins: I will be watching with bated breath. Glad you highlighted this because you know it’s not related to to ICE and Minnesota and therefore.

No’s.

Malcolm Collins: It’s why you guys need to subscribe. It’s like, I, we have fans and they go, oh gosh, Malcolm everyone’s talking about Iran’s revolution right now. Like, why haven’t you done a video on that? And it’s like, because I didn’t wait till the algo to pick it up to start talking about it. Yeah, right. I, I did that video like two months ago, guys.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Everyone’s talking about Epstein and Ice now. There’s other things going on.

Malcolm Collins: All right, love you.

Simone Collins: Love you too.

Malcolm Collins: [00:52:00] And we will do the weekend episodes.

Simone Collins: Yeah, look at that. It’s just so much better. It’s just

Malcolm Collins: so much better.

Simone Collins: I cannot stop replaying Epstein Pizza Party.

Malcolm Collins: You like

Simone Collins: it? The problem is that Octavian. Because he is working right next to me, he’s like starting to just repeat the, sorry the chorus. And I’m like, hearing it come from a kid, I’m like, no, actually not for you.

Malcolm Collins: Epstein Pizza party.

Simone Collins: Like

Malcolm Collins: I’ll about played at the end of this video for a fans like get to hear the first Epstein Pizza, the party song. We’re gonna play it on ai right. Oh, oh, we’ll, we’ll have that video go live tomorrow.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Okay. Yeah. Hold on. He just like gets really mad about eating and I don’t know why because then he drinks,

Malcolm Collins: oh, look at doing that drift thing you’re talking about.

But it just seems too complicated to be worth it. It’s the effects will be practically unnoticeable and I do not think his eyebrows is actually doing what you think he’s doing. I think he’s [00:53:00] doing it in the prompts.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: It would be very hard to do, like structurally, you, you really need to structure every shot assuming that you’re going to do that which is really hard to do because the AI doesn’t know how to give you extra stuff.

Simone Collins: If I took time to try to make clips for you this evening, which you maybe consider using,

Malcolm Collins: it would take you way too much time. You, you’ve gotta understand you’re doing this with like a hundred clips.

Simone Collins: How many clips are in there? Really?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, probably. I I think it’s probably at least 25 or 30 maybe.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

25 or 30. But

Malcolm Collins: because, well, you are thinking that they’re all individual where many of them are made over multiple AI takes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But you can get grok to make ten second split like clips

Malcolm Collins: as understanding, right. We don’t have those. That’s not what I made. ‘cause I didn’t expect that you would try to keep them all together because you’ve got to basically ungroup them and I don’t even know how to do that.

Simone Collins: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Malcolm Collins: Many of the clips that look like one clip are multiple clips that we’ve gotta

Simone Collins: find a way

Malcolm Collins: to,

Simone Collins: right. But you [00:54:00] can make a single ten Second Rock clip.

Malcolm Collins: Right. So you would replace every animation in the song,

Simone Collins: potentially if they’re really good, because we’re only just learning how to do this.

And what I’m realizing is that what’s. Sky Brows is doing. I mean, not like we’re ever gonna get to that level, but

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I can see what he’s doing that makes it so different from what we’re doing. The core thing is, is he’s much more diligent about always using Midjourney for the original image and always using a prompt image that gives us style ideas so

Simone Collins: that he can do a

Malcolm Collins: more

Simone Collins: consistent style.

Consistent style, yeah. Yeah. Plus in his video prompts, I think it’s more along the lines of like. Panning and like the camera as it were, is moving the non-existent camera. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: He’s describing how the camera is moving, which we haven’t been doing, but he

Simone Collins: can. I just, I wanna see what it’s like to do that. I, I, I personally just [00:55:00] want to get better at it and learn so

Malcolm Collins: Well, we can do it with a different song.

Simone Collins: I like this song. Maybe I can do it forever. Everest to Nowhere. That’s the other song that just gets so stuck in, in my head. People like Everest. Everest. I

Malcolm Collins: can make

Simone Collins: another really catchy

Malcolm Collins: song. Just let me know and we’ll, we’ll do it. Okay.

Simone Collins: All the people crying, we don’t care. Oh, and I just love that our kids know about Everest being that really tall mountain where rich people go to die.

That’s how it is.

Malcolm Collins: Sky Brown’s recent Amelia video is really good, by the way.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, sky Brown videos in general are super fun. I love them.

Malcolm Collins: He made one that I don’t even understand how he made it. I don’t know. Did you see his Nvidia one?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So he made it about team America and did everything in a Team America style and even did the song and the style of the Team America song.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s, that seems doable with a lot of finagling, but.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I would require a lot of angling.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Respect, respect for Sky Eyebrows.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I, I don’t like [00:56:00] that song very, I don’t like the, the way that video came out, but it was just really impressive that he did it. Anyway, I’ll get started here.

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