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It's about financial inclusion, right? There's something like 80% of Americans feel that the current financial system is not working for them. And crypto is this great democratizing force in terms of access to financial services. Hello, hello, and welcome to the conversation. I'm Dasha Burns, and every week on this show, I talk to the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond. And this week, I sat down with Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase. Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. And Armstrong has become the top crypto lobbyist in Washington. With that, he's been vocal with his thoughts on how the government should approach regulation.
I think Americans should be able to earn more money on their money. Uh banks should have to compete on a level playing field. And if the American people feel like the banks are not paying high enough interest rates and stable coin rewards can offer them more, then maybe the banks should have to pay higher interest rates to compete. So, as the cryptocurrency regulation debate rages on with legislation like the Clarity Act, I pressed Armstrong on how he sees this fight in his industry playing out. And folks, it is a fight. The Clarity Act asks legislators to answer the question, should crypto and classical banking be regulated in the same way? and it represents the new battle in the world of finance. As crypto comes to Washington looking to
compete with the political power of traditional banking. But before we dig into the world of crypto, please take a moment to make sure you're subscribed wherever you're watching or listening. And now, Brian Armstrong joins the conversation. Brian Armstrong, thank you so much for joining the conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. I want to get right into it. uh because you are really shaking up this town here. You're at the center of this big fight happening in Washington that could determine the future of cryptocurrency in this country and really um the future of banking in a way. It's put you at odds with traditional banks like JP Morgan whose CEO JB Diamond recently called you quote full of I am quoting there.
It will be fought. This will not be no one's going to bow down to this guy, okay? with that company and but he's the only one and he's spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Washington in this thing. He said he's he's representing the whole he's full of How do you respond to him? Well, you know, I've got a lot of respect for Jamie Diamond, so it was kind of sad to hear that JP Morgan's a great company that he's put up incredible numbers there. I feel like I've learned a lot from him as a CEO. And ultimately, this isn't really about Jamie Diamond or me, even though people like to focus on that. It's just about how we get clear rules in America so that this industry can get built here
and benefit everyone. I think that would be good for American consumers. I think it'd be good for the banks. Uh there's a whole set of new provisions and benefits that banks get in there in this draft legislation. It would be great for crypto companies as well. Most importantly, it's good for America. So hopefully we can get past uh the absolutisms and just, you know, see if we can get this bill over the finish line. Yeah. And I hear your point on the policy piece. I think one of the reasons this has drawn so much attention is just because it's it's not very often that you hear one of the biggest CEOs in America you talk like that about
somebody else. I wonder why you think that you've sort of drawn so much personal animosity from Diamond especially as you say when you have so much respect for him. Yeah. You know honestly I'm like a little perplexed by that. Um I think in general when people communicate through the media nuance gets lost. Same thing with social media. Well, there's not a ton of nuance and full of I have to say. I agree. I mean, yeah, I think it's better just in general to get in a room and chat one-on-one with people. That usually solves it. Um, I've had opportunities to do that with Jamie and other people on his team who are great
in the past. And so, yeah, I don't know exactly what that's all about. Like, crypto, you have to remember, is the most bipartisan issue right now in DC in my view. and just there's a lot of people on both sides of the aisle, not to mention 50 million Americans who've used crypto. There's about three million advocates who've signed up to stand with crypto.org who, you know, wanted to elect pro crypto candidates. So, there's a big movement behind this of people who just want to see clear rules on the books. And we saw Senators Tillis and also Brooks. I thought they did a really great job of trying to bring both sides together, the bank lobby and the crypto lobby, and say, "Hey, you guys got to
work out a deal. A compromise means that both sides are going to leave feeling a bit unhappy." We didn't love aspects of it of where it landed. Um, you know, I imagined that they wouldn't either, but I thought we could both live with it. And so, uh, at this point, I think the banks got really a lot of what they asked for in that they said they didn't want any rewards paid on idle balances. You know, they got that. They wanted additional rulemaking. They wanted an anti- evasion um language. They wanted disclosures on stable coins, uh marketing restrictions. They really got all those things. So, I think at this point, I'm hoping that we can move forward and go with what the Senate Banking Committee drafted as a compromise.
I do have to ask, I saw you uh posted an image of you and Diamond as the characters in Heated Rivalry. You do know that they were lovers in that show, right? Really? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Did somebody No, of course. I mean, um it's a what can I say? It's it's a beautiful love story. They fall in love at the end. So, is that what you're hoping for with you and Jamie? Like I said, got a lot of respect for him. Also, I do to your point about the actual policy, I want to dig more into um the point that Diamond and some of the banks are making here because there are a lot of questions about the
implications here. Basically, the traditional banks for those that haven't been following this closely, the legislation is called the Clarity Act. And traditional banks are concerned that this legislation could allow crypto companies like Coinbase to offer customers rewards that look and feel a lot like interest on a paid savings account without having to follow the same rules uh that banks do. I'm curious, what's your response to that? like why shouldn't crypto companies have to submit to the same rules as banks and be backed up by similar protections? Well, yeah. Okay. So, on the stable coin reward issue, in my view, like customers ideally would just be able to earn these rewards on any balance. Um, that's
actually what got passed into law by a bipartisan vote in Congress with the Genius Act uh just not that long ago. And I think that's a good thing. Why shouldn't Americans just be able to earn more money on their money? stable coins under Genius Act are backed by short-term US Treasury. It's like it's quite low risk. It's 100% reserves. Um and that's what the Congress kind of came to that as a decision. So going into the market structure legislation, I was sort of assuming that was a settled matter. Why would Congress reopen something that it had just passed into law 3 months ago? But the bank lobby kind of came back quite strongly and said actually we don't think that's a good thing. Um it was a little
unclear to me why they sort of made this argument about deposit flight even though there's been no evidence of any deposit flight as stable coins have grown. Actually the bank deposits have also grown. Maybe they have a conflict of interest on that. They're they're worried about something else. But that put that aside for a moment. The Senate Banking Committee sort of came to us and said, "All right, see if you can go meet their ask. find a way for you guys to solve this where idle balances cannot pay rewards, but we're not going to get rid of this entire concept of Americans being able to earn more rewards on their money. And so that's exactly what we did. We conceded uh that
point in our negotiation with them. We said, "All right, if you don't want rewards paid on idle balances, I think that's something we don't like it. We don't think it's good for America, but if it's if that's what gets this done, um maybe we can live with it." And for some of them, that wasn't enough. and all the other pieces that they got as well. So, yeah, that's where it landed. Um, ultimately the Senate came to this negotiated compromise and I think that's what we've got to stick with at this point. But at sort of the high level bird's eye view, you know, last year you said you want Coinbase to be a bank replacement for people.
Ultimately, we want to be a bank replacement for people. We want to be their primary financial account. We do want to become a super app and provide all types of financial services. We want to become people's primary financial account. Why should crypto firms get lighter rules than the banks do for offering similar services or how do you reconcile that? So, we're not asking for lighter rules actually. Um there when you build a financial services company, you can choose what kind of license you want to go get and that limits you on certain products that you can offer, right? So, for instance, if you want to get a bank license, you can do that. The thing that allows you to do is fractional
reserve lending. Um, and that's basically means that when you deposit funds at a bank, they don't have all of it there. They've lent it, they've lent it out to other people and they keep the margin for that. Um, they don't necessarily pass along a huge percent of it to you, typically zero in your checking account. Um, a couple basis points in your savings account. Um, and they keep the what's called net interest margin, right? And there's all kinds of regulation that comes with that because it's dangerous to do fractional reserve lending, at least in my view. I mean, you can occasionally you get like a run on the bank and these kinds of things. And so if you don't want to do that, you
can get other types of licenses. Like for instance, we have an OC trust charter, uh, which is another federal regulator, but we keep 100% of reserves. So that's that's a custodian license where we keep a 100% of the reserves. There's there's no such thing as fractional reserve lending there. Um, but you can still do payments. You can you can pay rewards to customers. You can allow customers to opt into certain products even around lending and things like that. We have other licenses we work with on the um on the trading side of our business as well at the federal level and at the state level. So the CFTC and the SEC regulate those. So we have dozens of financial service
regulators uh that we work with in the United States. We choose not to do fractional reserve lending, which is the part that would require a bank license. I don't think that's a necessary thing for us to do. So yeah, if banks wanted to get rid of their bank license and just um operate the way we wanted to, then that's something they could do as well. You know, I think one of the other factors here that's raised some eyebrows in Washington um is the power of the crypto lobby. Coinbase and other crypto companies have played a major role in shaping this legislation. you particularly have lobbied pretty
aggressively and Coinbase does stand to make a good amount of money on stable coin yields. How do you convince the public that they'll be properly protected by these regulations and it isn't just about benefits to Coinbase and your profit margins? Yeah. Well, that's exactly what we're advocating for here is just clear regulation and clear rules. I mean the biggest way that US customers have gotten harmed in the past say 5 10 years is that the lack of clarity in the US meant that many of these companies got built offshore US citizens were using those you know you think about FTX and others um and sometimes those would blow up and then US customers are really getting harmed right so we actually
didn't in our conversations with uh lawmakers we didn't really go advocate for lighter regulation or heavier regulation we just said, "Just tell us what the rules are." You know, like that's all we were really asking for. And um there's actually a lot of requirements in the draft bill that are not easy to comply with. They have a very high bar for regulation, but that's what creates trust in the ecosystem. And so we're totally fine with that. Um that's what allows us to be built within the US regulatory perimeter on shore protecting American consumers. One of the other fights happening on the Hill over this bill is on the ethics language. Democrats have said that they will not support legislation without a
provision that would prevent government officials from profiting off of crypto assets while in office. Do you support that provision? You know, we've tried to stay out of that issue because it's so fraught politically. I've really just tried to stay focused on the crypto aspects of it and I think that one's above my pay grade. I mean, do you think that any government official, president or anybody should be profiting from crypto while they're in office? Well, you know, it's a complicated question um for a number of reasons. You know, you don't want to
accidentally create any disincentives for people to engage in public office. Like if like I think a lot of people would believe that many parts of the financial system are getting tokenized now. Um and so, you know, if ownership of a token disqualifies you, that would be too far. That would be like owning having a bank account at some point, right? But if you're actively out there uh promoting it or something, I think there's a reasonable discussion to be had there. And I think we'll defer to the Senate on that. I hear what you're saying. I think, you know, the reason I'm I'm pushing on this is because the perception from some of the public is that one of the reasons President Trump, for example, is being
so friendly to the industry is because he's gaining from it. Do you worry that kind of thing undermines what you're doing and undermines the industry of people sort of see crypto as a grift for people in power? Well, I think President Trump astutely recognized in the last election that it was politically, you know, it was an opportunity for him because there were people who felt underserved by it. But fundamentally, crypto is a bipartisan issue. I mean, there's people on both sides of the aisle who are very excited about it for different reasons and it would not be getting such a strong bipartisan vote. for instance, in the House already or in these um this in the
Senate Banking Committee if it wasn't a bipartisan issue. Politico reports that you met with Trump in March just before he wrote on Truth Social that banks need to make a good deal with the crypto industry. Your COO also said uh that Coinbase donated to the White House ballroom to keep good relations with the White House. What is your relationship like with the president? How closely have you been working with him on this bill? Well, I know that he's interested in crypto. He's made no mistake about that. He's talked publicly about how he wants the US to be the crypto capital of the world. Um, obviously that aligns with our interest that he wants to get
legislation passed. In general, that's been very positive and you know, we try to work with whoever is in office um at any given moment. It doesn't matter what party they belong to. And so, we've taken a very bipartisan approach on this from the beginning. When was the last time you guys talked? Um, I don't [snorts] know. I mean, at least months, three, four months. I don't know. Something like that. You don't get the 2 AM phone calls that his cabinet secretaries do? Not at the moment. I mean, you're right. This president did recognize something in crypto, not sort of just on the policy front, but I think also on the cultural front.
I mean during the election there was sort of an entire community uh a coalition even that he picked up in 2024. What have you seen happen since then? Like do you think that the crypto culture has sort of a right-wing aspect to it or is there opportunity for Democrats to get in on that too? No, I genuinely think it's bipartisan. So when I talk to Democrat lawmakers, the part that they're excited about in crypto is that it's about financial inclusion, right? There's something like 80% of Americans feel that the current financial system is not working for them. It's like the fees are too high, there's delays, there's unequal access, and crypto is this great democratizing force in terms of access to financial
services. on the Republican side when I talk to them uh they like it for a variety of reasons including those that I mentioned but they talk to me about uh freedom guarantees national security uh how to ensure that the US dollar remains the reserve currency of the world in our competition with China they don't like seeing a lot of this industry go offshore that doesn't do anything to help America and our tax revenues and everything so there's a lot for both sides of the aisle to like about this and I have to say it's also a it's kind of a generational issue, right? Sometimes DC misses this or certain polls miss this, but crypto is a younger generation thing on average. I mean, it's for everyone, but I'd say the
largest adopters of it are, you know, in that uh kind of 15 to 35 age demographic. And a lot of times when I speak with lawmakers, they tell me things like, you know, I didn't really get crypto. I didn't know what this was all about, but my staffers all have your app or my kids or my nephew got me into crypto. They keep texting me and saying, "Thank you for voting for that uh this draft bill. Like, this is really cool what you're doing." So, you know, the younger generation is really um sometimes doing the advocacy work for us here. Yeah. I mean, I was going to ask you about this because it's a younger generation's thing. Congress not particularly known for their youth.
Um, do you think that most lawmakers you talk to have a full understanding of what crypto is and how it works? Well, the ones on the committees certainly do at this point. I think they've been steeped in it and they've been putting in a ton of hard work. I mean, there's folks like um Senator Tim Scott and Cynthia Lumis and I'd say Kirsten Jill Librand and um you know, Senator Cortez Masto. They've been spending a lot of time along with their staff um getting deep in the weeds of this legislation and making sure they understand it. So, uh does every member of the Senate have a deep understanding? Not yet, but that's why they have committees because they have just so much work on their plate. On that on the lobbying front, I mean,
do you think that crypto has become either equal to or maybe even surpass the lobbying influence of traditional banks? You know, I try not to keep score. I think the thing that I look at here is just so you're not in heated rivalry maybe with myself. I'm always trying to be the best version of myself. U but yeah, I mean you have to look at the grassroots movement behind this, right? That's bigger than I think most people realize. There's there's something like three million Americans who've raised their hand now and said they want to elect pro crypto candidates. I believe they sent about a million contacts to legislators on just this one particular issue
recently. Um, and so the financial system isn't working for a lot of them. They want to see something new here get adopted that can benefit everyone. You set me up perfectly for the next part of the conversation, which is politics and the midterms and 2028. This year we've already seen some interesting trends when it comes to um to tech and crypto and AI. You know, tech backed candidates across California just recently struck out in the primaries this week, including former tech entrepreneur Matt Mayan's bid for LA mayor. Mayhem was largely supported by Silicon Valley. You actually went to high school with Mayan. My
producers tell me the votes still being counted right now, but he's likely to finish in the single digits. Do you think there's anything you can take from that loss? Like what lessons might you be able to take there? Yeah, I mean I think the votes are still being counted, but I'm a fan of Matt Mayan. I think he's a sensible candidate. Not just because I went to high school with him, although I did get I guess it gives you some game film on who that person actually is. Um but yeah, I thought he was a good candidate. Um but yeah, the people ultimately are going to vote in different ways. So I think everyone's watching to see which way California is going to go.
It feels like crypto has become mainstream in Washington faster than it has in Main Street. A recent political poll found that most Americans have never bought crypto, don't plan to, and trust banks more than crypto firms, and don't want Congress to prioritize crypto over other issues like housing. And it also comes after, you know, you mentioned it before 2022, the FDX collapse. Do you think the industry has failed to make a compelling case to the average American about why they should care about crypto and what can you do about that? No, I don't think so. I mean, it's still early with crypto. You have to remember we've been operating in an environment for years now where there was active
hostility in some cases like with Gary Gendler, regulation by enforcement, one might say. Um, and now, you know, we're just on the cusp of hopefully getting some clear rules on the books to go build this industry. So, it's still very early days and despite that, you know, there's about 50 million Americans who have used crypto at some point. By the way, crypto goes through ups and downs and people, you know, at various points are super excited about it and other times they're not as excited about it. That's okay. Actually, I think crypto is well beyond what most people think of it now. Like a lot of people think about trading Bitcoin and Ethereum and memecoins and stuff like crypto is
actually updating all aspects of the financial system. So stable coin payments for instance have been growing like wildfire over the last few years and it's just a faster cheaper way to move money for the entire economy. It reduces friction etc. Other asset classes are coming on chain like um tokenized equities and commodities and real world assets. all the things people are talking about now like these IPOs that are coming up that are really massive. People are trading perpetual futures of on those the AI boom is leading to all kinds of like uh you know trades that people are making um around energy and chips and the straight of hormuz and oil and so every asset class is coming on chain from a trading point
of view and then stable coin payments is the next big use case and then we're seeing others like you know prediction markets and borrowing and lending uh grow really nicely. So, this is going to ultimately update all aspects of the financial system. In any given moment, people might be up or down on Bitcoin, but that's just a small part of the overall picture. Well, and politics plays a huge role. I've been fascinated to see what a big player Coinbase has become in the political space. I want to talk about Fairshake because that's been a huge tool for you guys. Coinbase has poured
millions into fair shake, which is a cryptobacked super PAC that's become one of the most influential outside spending groups in politics and it's expected to play pretty heavily in the midterms. Are there any races that you really have your eye on? Well, first of all, I mean, we were proud to support Fair Shake and they are their own independent organization. I genuinely don't have any knowledge of what they're backing or not at this point. Um, but they are going out there to try to support pro- crypto candidates on both sides of the aisle. So they don't care what party you belong to. They just want to look for pro crypto candidates. And I think that's a good thing to have out there. And the thing
you have to remember too is that there's a lot of money that gets spent in Washington. But none of that would really make any difference if there wasn't underlying support from the American people. And so that just speaks to this large grassroots movement that I mentioned earlier and the bipartisan support that exists there politically in Congress. I mean, it's pretty remarkable. Uh the super PAC had more than 193 million cash on hand at the start of 2026 to influence this cycle. I mean, you can do a lot with that kind of cash. You know, I'm curious in 2024, one of the targets for Fairshake was uh Senate
Banking Chair Shared Brown because of a skepticism of the crypto industry. Do you expect that Fairshake will spend against him again this year? Yeah, I actually don't know uh what they're going to do on that, but you're right. I mean that was a great example where he was chair of the Senate Banking Committee uh for years and years like we were and others were going to DC saying can we work on some legislation? Um honestly like he refused to take a meeting with me. I think five times I flew to DC tried to meet with him could never get a meeting with him. We even at one point we actually flew out like five
or six crypto entrepreneurs from his home state of Ohio during an election year and he still wouldn't meet with them. I don't know if it was his staff or him or what, but he didn't want to engage with crypto at all. I do think that played a big role in costing him the election and Senator Bernie Marino came in. We have a new, you know, Tim Scott as chair of the Senate Banking Committee has just made in progress um in months that shared Brown didn't make in many, many years. So, I don't know what Chair Brown's current position or thinking is on crypto. Um maybe he's spent more time to get educated on it at this point. So, we'll have to see what happens in the upcoming midterms. I
mean, you spent a lot of time o on the Hill. Are there folks that you think should be unseated or any candidates around the country that you're eyeing that you're like, I think that would be a problem for us. Well, I mean, I obviously in some of these Senate committees that voted I do see sometimes uh people making statements that are pretty anti-crypto, right? Elizabeth Warren comes to mind, but I don't think that they're targeting I haven't heard anybody say they're targeting her seat or that she's vulnerable. Um, so I have I don't know like there might be other candidates that they've made some political analysis of that they might be more or less vulnerable.
It always feels like it's too early to talk about 28, but you know the buzz has already started. So the crypto industry really did benefit a ton from this second Trump administration so far. Are there Democrats that you think you could work with if they win in 2028? Well, yeah, as a public company CEO, I'm going to work with whoever gets elected. I mean, that's just part of the job. And, you know, we've made lots of donations to both sides. We've spent time with both sides. So, I don't know exactly who will be the nominees on either side. I think it's premature to look at that. And just to give you an example, I think I've developed really good relationships with say like Senator Also Brooks on Senate Banking. I thought
she was instrumental in landing the legislation in a good place. And I think Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is just she's brilliant. I mean, she's like a former securities lawyer and very knowledgeable about this crypto issue. She wasn't even on the Senate Banking Committee, but she just made incredible efforts to try to help everyone land it in a good spot. So, there's lots of people I feel like I have good relationships with on both sides. Yeah. to that bipartisan point. I mean, are there Democratic candidates that either you or you hope that Fair Shake will sort of donate to support to raise up either in this cycle or potentially as a 28 contender?
Um, I haven't had that conversation yet with my policy team, but I think, yeah, as it gets closer and we see who the likely candidates are, I would certainly make some donation decisions based on how pro crypto they were. I think that makes sense for me as the CEO of Coinbase. Before I let you go, I do have to ask you about AI because you're you're really bullish about using it at Coinbase. This week, President Trump signed an executive order asking some AI companies to submit their new models to a voluntary government review 30 days before releasing the products to the public. It was delayed after a bunch of back and forth in the White House and some push back from the industry, but
ultimately he did sign. Do you support the that executive order? Do you think that's a good thing? I haven't read that exact executive order, so I don't want to comment on it specifically, but I would just say about AI in general. I mean, there's certainly national security issues that many people have talked about. I don't need to go into that. It makes sense to me why the government would have to have an insight into what's happening and think about export controls and all kinds of things. I also think it's dangerous to think about having to register every model with the government or something like that. I mean, that would just slow down innovation. And a lot of these companies
are building on the frontier in a way that um you know you don't want to have the government picking uh winners and losers. We've seen examples of that in the past where um you know too much regulation can really slow down an industry like when the nuclear regulatory commission got created. I think there was almost zero nuclear power plants created ever after that. Right? So if we're not careful sometimes these things can kill startups and future innovation. whom you know what's really leading to American strength is being a leader on the technology and financial services front and that's just to bring it back to the clarity act that's exactly what we're trying to do here to get that built in America uh
which benefits Americans and America in many different ways big picture though without I know you haven't seen the text of the EO but it's a voluntary review of AI models uh do you think that's a good idea I don't know enough to comment again without having seen the text I And if it's voluntary, that sounds better than mandatory. But the devil's in the details, right? You said something about AI on another podcast recently that I've really been thinking about. I'm okay with the idea of like AI superseding humanity in a way. Like we should try to merge with that and evolve ourselves, but we should also be proud
to be like the birth of that if it really goes that far. Can you explain what you mean by that? Your producer did their homework. I like it. And um yeah, so I mean I think maybe this is like one of my more contrarian ideas, but I think that we all as human beings are going through a little bit of uh coming to terms with or going through the stages of grief or cope or whatever you want to call it. Um by looking at, you know, first it was uh Deep Blue playing chess and then it was Alph Go and then it was self-driving cars and now we're seeing, you know, it be able to write better code than most people or even solve these math and physics proofs. And so I think we're starting to wonder, you know, is there anything that
AI is not going to surpass us on? I might be in the minority, but I think it doesn't seem to be an end to that. It's sort of a question. I don't know if that'll be in one year or 10 years or 50 years, but it seems unlikely to me that AI won't continue to evolve beyond in most of the things. So, you know, one way to think of that is to be threatened by it. Um, another way to think of it is to say, all right, well, how can that make the world better, right? And we all rely on various people in different places, various intelligent beings in various places around the world running things. And there's lots of science fiction that's been written about this like the culture series.
There's uh there's a whole concept of how do you uh merge with AI like brain machine interfaces and things like that. But there's also in many ways we're already merged with AI. People don't think about that. But you know, how often are you inter interfacing with your phone today? How much does your phone know about you? What music you like? What shows you want to watch on YouTube? you know, how you might type this next email to put a maybe point on it is our brains are already somewhat being uploaded to the cloud over time. And it just makes us more efficient. It's it's a little bit like how we create a g global connectivity and get more work done. And I'm not worried about forgetting things anymore
because I can write it down in my to-do app or something like that. So that's a simple example, but in the future, we're just going to get increased connectivity with that. And I think it will mostly be a very positive thing for society. So that was what I was trying to provoke the thought for folks. Yeah. I mean, put your science fiction hat on for a second. Like when you talk about that merge, like 10, 20, 50 years from now, like what in your mind's eye when you think about that does that look like? Yeah. I mean, I think it probably happens gradually, not suddenly. So, um, you know, just imagine for a moment that, uh, you were able to get some sort of brain machine interface that allowed you to look up things on Google or, um,
send a message to someone. Okay, that might start to feel quite normal over time. And, okay, now imagine that just by thinking, you could also control a humanoid robot body. Okay. Um, that's interesting. thing. I wouldn't use it all the time, but maybe there's some instance where that's a useful thing to do. Okay. And imagine you now could control 10 or a hundred robot bodies and they're all in different places around the world or maybe even on different planets or whatever exploring the solar system. And at some point, you know, your human body gets old and dies, which by the way, we're also working on longevity drugs, so maybe that won't happen. But if one out of your hundred
bodies uh went away, you'd still feel like you, right? It's a little bit like um you know to make a gruesome example like if you got into an accident and you had you lost one of your arms, you're still you still feel like you. It's an appendage. Um and so if we're able to have a greater sense of self over time um through humanoid robot bodies or these brain machine interfaces, I think if we shed our mortal coil at some point, we will have merged with AI and still have continuity of self throughout that process. So, you're starting to get into some pretty uh you know, philosophical topics that I didn't know if we were going to go there on a political uh podcast, but there Hey, we go everywhere on the conversation and uh you know, I think
you've given me some really interesting dreams for the next few nights. Good. Brian Armstrong, thank you so much for joining the conversation. Really appreciate your time. Yep. Thanks for having me. This has been the conversation with Dasha Burns. If you've made it this far, you must be a conversation super fan and I'd love to hear from you. We've got an interview with renowned documentary filmmaker Ken Burns coming up around America 250. What questions would you like us to ask him? Shoot us a text or leave us a voicemail at 2026431536. We'll be back next week. Click that subscribe button below to make sure you never miss an episode of The Conversation. Thanks for watching.
