Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 24, 2026
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Episodes Episode #1531 Segments
NewsReaction Media & Fake News

Back to episode — Episode 1531 Scott Adams - Now!

Context —

the antlers? And I got the best answer to that from Grover Norquist. You all might recognize that name. All of the news junkies know that name, Grover Norquist. So he's most famous for being against extra taxes. Yeah, he's the low-tax guy. So we follow each other on Twitter and Grover saw that story. And in answer to the question why the antlers were removed instead of the tire, Grover tweets, the…

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ecorded yesterday are all fine. And in fact the show before Tucker's was fine. Like it has a little lead-in. It records like a minute before the show starts and that has audio. As soon as Tucker starts, the audio goes off. And I thought to myself, oh darn, it's my device. So I went to a different device. Same thing. The app is called Stream and it's part of the Xfinity, the cable company where I live. So it's the cable company's app. So here's the weird part. There's nothing I've wanted to see more than that episode because it agreed with me, right? So yesterday, you know, I heard that Tucker had something that doubted that there was a weapon. Now most of you know I think I'm the only public figure who said on day one of that whole embassy Havana syndrome thing that it's mass hysteria and there's no weapon. So the fact that there would be a major segment on a major news channel, even an opinion show, was really, really interesting to me because I have skin in the game.

Why is it that the only thing I can't play, no, I looked for it on YouTube and I looked for the clips and it doesn't exist. Now here's the interesting thing. Part of the story, and I don't know if Tucker talked about this, but part of the story, whether Tucker talked about it or not, is that the media has been reporting this is true, that there's some kind of weapon, maybe probably allegedly. And NBC and CNN, NBC has been part of that reporting. And as you know, if you follow Glenn Greenwald especially, NBC is often accused of being the CIA's captured network, meaning that NBC News basically reports what the CIA wants them to report. Now I'm not saying that's true. I'm saying that's the allegation. And you see people like Glenn Greenwald back up the allegation quite well. So I'm saying it's an allegation with a lot of evidence. That's all I know.

So you've got NBC still trying to sell this thing as maybe some kind of a Russian weapon, which sounds exactly like something the CIA would want you to believe if they want to put pressure on Russia and they need the public to back them. And I'm asking you this: What are the odds that that one thing that the CIA doesn't want you to see, allegedly, right, we don't, we can't confirm that, but what are the odds that the one thing that the CIA doesn't want you to see also is the one thing that can't be seen? It's not anywhere else. Can somebody find a clip of that, just that segment of the professor talking about the Havana syndrome, and tweet it at me? Because I wonder if it exists. I wonder if it's already been scrubbed from the internet. Is that a coincidence? Because you have to ask yourself, is the one thing that, you know, the CIA doesn't want you to see, when I say you know it, let's say you're highly confident, we can't know anything in today's world, so certainly any absolute confidence of anything is ridiculous in 2021, but it feels like it. Just a coincidence that that's the one thing I can't watch. I know, probably a coincidence. Let me say clearly, probably a coincidence. But the fact that I have to even ask the question is very disturbing, isn't it? Like why do I even have to doubt that that happened naturally, just a technical problem? I don't know. I hate that I have to ask the question.

How many of you think Taiwan is at real risk of China attacking militarily? In the comments, in the comments, how many of you think there's a real risk of a military attack? And let's say in the next two years. Next two years, risk of a military attack. I'm seeing some yeses and some low, low percentages like five percent. Okay. Yeah, so somebody here pedantically is saying yes, there's a risk. Okay, technically, technically there's a risk, right? So I would say that's a given that there's a risk. It's just so small.

So CNN had an opinion piece on this I thought was pretty good. I forget who wrote it, but the point of it is that there's not really any indication that China is too serious about a military attack. And I saw a map of the incursions which was very interesting because I'd never seen it before. It was some context about all these military planes that China is putting into Taiwan's airspace. Now when you heard that, what did your mind give you as a picture? When you heard that Chinese warplanes, lots of them, were suddenly penetrating Taiwan airspace, what did your brain give you as a picture for that? Like what was the little visual that you got? You gave it to yourself because you didn't see a visual, but what did it look like? Did it look like planes flying directly over Taiwan? Probably not, because you're sophisticated viewers of the news and you said to yourself, no, no, not over the land. They were over the airspace, meaning that over the ocean around Taiwan that China claims as their own, right?

I saw a picture of that incursion. Let me show you what it looked like. Now my picture is not to scale and it's not the same dimensions, but I'll give you the idea. Imagine if you will that this napkin is the space that Taiwan claims for their airspace. Let's say Taiwan is right in the middle and occupies maybe, I don't know, 20% of the space, but it's in the middle here, maybe even 10%. Where do you think all the Chinese incursions were? They're all on this corner right here. That's it. Maybe a little bit more. That's it. It was in this weird little corner which Taiwan, when it draws its airspace around itself, it declares its own airspace. So I don't think it's an international standard. It's just Taiwan saying, hey, this is our space. And China just flies directly out and they cross this little corner of the ocean that Taiwan claims as their airspace. How many of the flights were in all of this other area? None. None. They were all just this little corner. All China did was clip this corner, but they did a lot, you know, hundreds of times, but just this little corner. That's it. If they had flown here, like just outside this little corner, we wouldn't be talking about it. But because they clipped the corner, we're talking about it.

Now what gives Taiwan the right to this little piece right here, the only piece that was violated? What gives Taiwan that right? Nothing. Nothing. Taiwan just claimed the right. They just said, hey, this is ours. And I looked at, you know, my example is bad because it's symmetrical, but the actual airspace is more, I don't know, it's more like weird shaped, something like this. So the corner that China is clipping off is sort of the extended corner. It's the one that looks a little furthest from the island itself. Am I wrong that if you had seen that picture from the start and known that the violation is the most trivial violation that they could get away with? China is violating their airspace, of course, but in the most trivial way a

Context —

ccording to the picture. And I had never seen the picture until today. Yeah, it's still provocative, etc. But the people who seem to be smart on this topic don't think there's any real risk. It looks like it may be for internal politics because there's some big Chinese meeting coming up. So it's probably just for internal reasons. So I think you can stop worrying about that one right away. Well,…

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