The Chuck ToddCast
Full Episode - America Is Unraveling Under Trump + Deepfakes, Bunkers, and Billionaires: Inside The AI Arms Race
26 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the 'Great Unraveling' in America?
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Chapter 2: What events in Minneapolis raise concerns about federal accountability?
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Chapter 3: How is the relationship between the U.S. and Canada described?
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I am going on Advil and caffeine. Those of you that are in the sort of, I guess, the eastern half of the country slash southeastern half, right? It's sort of about a third of the country under this massive winter weather storm, so... I've got some good old-fashioned back pain I'm looking forward to. Good thing I'm going to hit the back doctor at some point this week. Good time for it, right?
Good times. Nothing like doing all that snow shoveling here in Washington. What does that mean? Well...
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Chapter 4: What questions arise about the future of AI and its impact?
Look, there's obviously a ton going on. I did something I rarely do, did a quick... For those of you that do subscribe to the YouTube channel, and if you don't, please do, because when we do breaking news updates, we're more likely to do them on the YouTube channel before it makes it onto the audio channel. I am definitely more pro long form, as many of you know, but sometimes moments call for...
Some important reaction and sort of trying to ā I went up with a video sort of when we knew a lot, but when we didn't know anything, everything. And the important questions that needed to be asked of the government in their ā in the ways they were trying to explain what happened in the death of Alex Preti in Minneapolis, which is obviously going to ā
Take up a lion's share of this monologue, but let me go through a bit of my table of contents for this episode. It's going to be more than Minneapolis that I'm focused on. I think this has been a month that I'm calling it the great unraveling. And I'm going to get to that in a minute because we're we've I know we've had many moments similar to this in the Trump era.
But when you really take the totality of the last 30 days and everything that has happened internationally, domestically, we are at a tipping point. And I don't think, as many of you know, I'm no alarmist. In fact, I'm always looking to not sound an alarm, to look for ways to not alarm. issue a sky is falling type proclamation.
There are many people that have been preaching sky is falling for years now. Maybe some of them are saying, I told you so, but I still don't believe in when you pull the fire alarm, you've got to be very, very proverbial. That is very, very judicious. But we're at a moment. And I think anybody who doesn't see this doesn't want to see this. That's about the only way I can put it.
So we'll get to that. My guest today is... a gentleman by the name of Adam Balalo. He is a documentary filmmaker. He has done quite a few. He did one that some of you may have seen called Telemarketers. Well, it got him an opportunity to do essentially, who is Sam Altman? was essentially the goal of his documentary. Well, let's just say Sam Altman never wanted to sit down for an interview.
So it turned into what the film is called, Deep Faking Sam Altman. So look, the film itself is fascinating. It has an homage to Roger and me. For those of you that are fans of the Michael Moore genre, you can feel it in this sort of his quest. About a third of the documentary is his quest to try to secure a sit down with Sam Altman.
But the larger conversation we have and the larger point he attempts to make with the film is sort of where is this going? Who's in charge? What's the motivation? Where is this headed? Can You know, can you trust the same tech companies that gave us social media without regulation to give us artificial intelligence without regulation? And what does that look like? So that's our conversation.
My podcast time machine. It is Monday. So, you know, I'm going to go into the time machine. I'm just going to give you two words. Bloody Sunday. That's all I'm going to give you because. It may invoke a few images in your head. And that's exactly what I hope it does. We will get to that. And of course, I will take some questions. But we're going to begin.
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Chapter 5: What does Adam Bhala Lough believe about the future of AI and its impact on society?
He was sort of the ethical that he would. And I think even, you know, and he wasn't, it didn't seem like Wozniak's motivation was financial.
No, I mean, I think it wouldn't have been the same. And I also, I don't think it would have been as successful because just from what I've read, Woz was just too nice of a guy.
Right.
Chapter 6: How does the documentary 'Deepfaking Sam Altman' address the fears surrounding AI?
So, which of course is these dilemmas when we deal with these supposed, you know, are we supposed to accept that the only successful disruptors to develop technologies that are amazing are have to be assholes.
I don't think we have to accept it. I think that we, for some reason as a society, not only do we let it happen, but we perpetuate that. We prop that up. I don't think they have to be. I don't. I really don't. I think nice guys can get ahead. But as a society, this is what I think we're taught even growing up.
Especially the great CEOs, you know, they're they're they're ruthless and you have to be ruthless to succeed. And then I want to say, have you met the CEO of Costco? You know, he's a pretty successful dude and his employees love him because he pays her employees pretty well. And he's you know, he's different than the average average bottom line CEO.
Yeah, no, it's a narrative that we buy into and that we teach our kids. And I was, believe me, I was taught that. And it took me a while and it took me, It took me following, shadowing certain directors that were really genuinely good, nice people like Jim Jarmusch to realize you don't have to be an asshole director.
Well, by the way, I'm glad you just brought that up, right? Hollywood's riddled with stories about, you know, the asshole director that made the great movies versus, you know, and is that even tolerated behavior anymore?
It's not tolerated anymore. We really did away with it during the... Harvey, basically, Me Too and Harvey. Yeah, it was Harvey, basically. It was definitely tolerated. I witnessed a lot of it at the beginning, you know, because I've been doing this for 25 years. Like, I knew Brett Ratner, for instance. Like, I saw him do terrible, horrible people... horrible things to people.
But then on the flip side, you know, I worked with alongside people like Jim Jarmusch who couldn't couldn't have been the most complete opposite of a Brett Ratner. But we've largely like disposed of those people. The scary thing is I see them like starting to slowly creep back in. So I think we I think I think we need to, like, you know, keep keep keep keep on our toes.
I mean, this is where our political leaders may have offered a permission slip for bad behavior again.
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that's part of it. And unfortunately, like younger generations pick up on that and, you know, bad behavior starts to become in vogue again.
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Chapter 7: What are the ethical considerations in AI-generated content and deepfakes?
And I think it's for those reasons. Like I, I made the process extremely transparent. Yeah. So no spoilers. This isn't a spoiler, but like we show the guts of like the deep fake and how we make it.
Oh, exactly. It's the whole process, which I think was a healthy exercise. I've had people tell me I should make my own Chuck bot, large language model. And I'm like, why do I want to do that? I don't know. It's like upload my books and upload all that. And you're like, I don't know. My thinking's evolved over 35 years.
I don't want to always have what I thought 20 years ago be the baseline for what my bot thinks. Anyway, but I thought it was a healthy thing to let people know how this is done.
Yeah. And and to be transparent that like, you know, we're not what you're seeing is not supposed to manipulate you or trick you like because that is where I draw the line. I think there are ethics around this. And I think when you're trying to manipulate people and trick people through. deepfakes or through AI-generated video, that's just wrong. That is unethical.
And people ask me, well, what do you think people should do about it? Well, yeah, I think there should be some type of disclaimer on it in the same way that back in the 90s, there were parental advisory logos on rap music that I would buy. It's that simple.
But yeah, it's a huge problem, this idea that we won't be able to tell what's real and what's not and what's AI generated in the very near future.
I think sometimes when we're trying to figure out what to regulate, you almost have to go through the process of doing what you did, deep faking a well-known person to then understand what a pragmatic regulatory structure would look like. So you went through this process. You might've had some idea of what it would look like before, but now that you've done it, What are you thinking now?
Like, hey, and I say this, advise me, what are the questions I should be asking candidates running for office about AI regulation that you now understand in a way that you didn't when you started this film?
Yeah. I mean, I hope that candidates running for office at least have, because some of these, there are just so many dinosaurs who don't even know, like, can't even talk about this kind of stuff.
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Chapter 8: How does Chuck Todd relate current events to historical moments of social unrest?
But I would hope that they would be able to have a conversation and answer questions like, What are we going to do about AI-generated video in the future? How are we going to differentiate it? How are we going to make sure that our children and our grandparents aren't duped by this kind of stuff? How is that going to happen? How are you going to do this?
The problem is they have no idea what that even means, most of them.
Can I just tell you? I can't tell you how many times I go on social media. And I'll follow and somebody will say, well, we'll sort of forward a post and say, well, this is obvious AI slop. And I look at it with my 53 year old eyes and I'm like going, it is. I see I don't see two knees. I don't see six fingers. Right. I know that the rudimentary checklist.
But as we know, all this stuff gets better. You know, I think it's harder than ever to see the distinction, and yet it does seem as if people with younger eyes ā like you go through this in the film. Again, I apologize for the spoiler, but I remember at one point the first time you debut your deepfake after the whole ā
There's kind of a little bit of an escapade of trying to get the guy to the Caribbean and all that stuff. I think that's a fun part of the movie. I don't want to spoil that. It's kind of a little humorous part. But I remember, I think it was you or a colleague who said, oh, man, my 14-year-old would not believe that. That looks like a bad video game character. And I'm like...
OK, if you say so, like I didn't I felt like, oh, no, are my eyes too old to see this?
Yeah. Yeah, that was that that was me being a perfectionist director, I guess. But it did. You're right. Some people have seen the deep fake and this this is like kind of a spoiler. But like some people have seen the deep fake when it's finally created in the movie and thought like, what are you talking about, Adam? That was actually really good. And so, yeah, it is it is.
But that to me is even scarier because I feel like then I think about, you know, certain certain members of my family who maybe aren't as like on, you know, always on the Internet as as I am. Right. Being duped by by this, getting getting a call. I mean, the craziest things are going to happen. Right. Getting a FaceTime from me. like saying like, I'm in trouble. I need money. Like right now.
Have you come up with the code words with your family yet? I keep having people tell me I should, and I haven't yet.
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