Amazon laid off 16,000 people in one

day. One of them had been at the company

for 28 years. She found out at 4:45 a.m.

in the morning through a locked laptop

and a form email. Then her role was

reposted within days, hiring out of

Seattle and Vancouver with a likely

preference for Visa holders. The guy

you're about to hear from, he was one of

those 16,000 last week. an L7 at Amazon,

head of AI enablement for their global

compensation team. He ran a $740 million

shipping operation and built the system

that centralized dock operations across

800 fulfillment centers. Before that, he

has had an incredible career

progression. Walmart store manager,

Army, Navy, Guantanamo Bay legal

adviser, Joint Special Operations in the

Arabian Peninsula, and now he's running

for Congress against Dan Krenshaw in

Texas. His name is Nick Lee Plum, and he

is talking about something that I do not

hear other politicians talk about

virtually at all. Visa reform,

offshoring, and what happens when

companies lay off workers in the name of

AI, but secretly to disenfranchise

American workers. If you've been

watching the channel, you know that I

talk about how big tech makes the lion's

share of money, all the while laying off

the people that actually make those

profits possible. Nick lived that story.

He was inside the machine until last

week. The conversation covers what it's

like to get laid off from a company like

Amazon, why companies are quietly

replacing American labor through visa

arbitrage, and what his three-pronged

plan is to fix it at the federal level.

Whether you are in his district or not,

if you are in tech, this one matters.

I'm going to start with a quote from

Nick. My first official job was working

at a public golf course, mowing,

hauling, clearing brush, whatever needed

doing. I'd be there before sunrise,

sometimes clocking out just in time to

head to my second job at a local record

store. I was still in high school,

balancing work, classes, and trying to

hold it all together. That year, I left

varsity football to join the work

program. I wasn't preparing for college.

I was preparing for life. I kept both

jobs through my senior year, helping

cover my car note, clothes, and ba basic

expenses. We weren't broke, but we were

stretched. My dad was a depression era

minister. We didn't believe in handouts.

My mom patched jeans from the inside so

they'd last through winter. If you

wanted something, you earned it. That

experience taught me more than any

class. I learned what it meant to show

up tired, to carry responsibility before

you were ready, and to take pride in

doing honest work, especially when no

one was watching. I didn't realize it at

the time, but those early shifts would

shape how I lead today. When I look at

Congress, I don't see a work ethic

problem. I see a lived experience

problem. Too few have ever had to do

what the rest of America does daily just

to survive. That has to change. Nick,

welcome to the show. Thank you so much

for coming on. We're going to get into a

couple of the things you talked about in

that quote. Uh really excited to have

you here and to dig into some of that.

Let's start a little bit with your

background. So, you've talked about

growing up in a trailer park, small town

Texas, mom patching your jeans, dad

preaching on Sundays. What's the thing

you carry from that upbringing that

still shows up and how you operate?

>> Yeah, I mean, I I think the big uh first

of all, thanks for having me. It's great

to get a chance to chat with you. Uh I

think the big takeaway from that is is

really I feel like I lived an an

accelerated life. You know my parents

that adopted me uh too old to have been

my birth parents born in 1930 1933.

Uh most kids want to do something with

their lives to show their parents and

when you know you're you don't have a

lot of time left with your parents. Uh

it really forces this acceleration of of

everything. You look back uh you know my

dad was of that era where if you are

going to seminary you joined the

military. Uh that's why he wasn't a

veteran. He was went off to St. Paul

Bible College of Minnesota. Uh so on my

18th birthday, he said, "You got four

choices. Army, Navy, Air Force, and

Marine Corps." I I hopped off into the

Army, did my my tour there, then into

the Navy afterwards. But uh you know, it

it really just drove home. You you've

got to get these achievements soon. So I

was married before I was 21. Uh had my

first kid. uh you know just a few years

out of high school

military you know everything else kind

of whatever I got into I got into

Walmart and I wanted uh like the big

achievement at Walmart is having your

name on the top of the receipt if you're

the store manager wanted to get my name

on the top of the receipt before they

passed I was able to do that uh they're

both gone now uh but uh unfortunately so

is the world that they left behind you

know so maybe uh maybe that's the part

that I I really take away from that is

trying to transcend and the world they

left and raised me in, which was

admittedly antiquated, uh, but it wasn't

so bad either, and and try to press that

forward onto my kids, the this younger

generation.

>> Yeah. Well, well put. And I see, you

know, coming from the quote, I don't see

a work ethic problem. I see a lived

experience problem. I think that's going

to resonate with a lot of people

watching right now where it seems like

most of the people in charge of

decisions that are affecting ordinary

Americans lives are are out of touch or

they've never lived with a lot of the

problems we're we're experiencing. So I

I know that resonated a lot with me. I'm

from rural Ohio and um you know some

similar things in in in my upbringing.

Not nearly as austere but uh I can I can

really get behind that. Um, and and

speaking of that, you know, you you've

had this insane career trajectory

really, and we'll we'll get into um the

military to corporate to politics angle

later, but I'm hoping we could just kind

of fast forward since you touched on it.

Like, what is something that you believe

about how organizations should work that

would just get you laughed out of most

corporate boardrooms? Or maybe it has

gotten you laughed out of corporate

boardrooms before?

>> I I

it's hard to pick one for me. I think

there's two kind of principles that I I

live with. The the first is is say

anything. So, I was raised kids don't

speak unless you're spoken to. Uh

probably drove a lot of my behavioral uh

patterns as an adult. I I like to

observe. I'm pretty introverted. Uh all

of those things. But I I learned that a

lot of times I had a good idea or maybe

I had uh some technology exposure that

the older generation didn't have.

Whatever it may be, uh I learned that

when you don't create this environment

of open communication, bad things

happen. Uh so I I really believe saying

anything is is great for business. The

the other part that goes with that is if

I could encourage everybody to have the

mentality that if you lost somebody you

couldn't just rehire them or rehire a

replacement that would change a lot. So

it's kind of live your business like the

people you have today are not

replaceable. It doesn't mean you can't

get rid of bad talent and you know that

has to happen. A business has to run.

But if you create those two environments

where your associates or employees can

say anything and you're actually

treating them like a person, you're not

treating them as a consumable asset,

it's crazy what you get out of people.

It it it really is. And

the opposite end of that is it's crazy

how much you don't get out of people

when when you're not doing those two

things.

>> Yeah. Yeah. That that is that is the

truth. That's that's been my experience.

When I was at Andreal, you know, people

were we expected this very very high bar

from people, but it was also the notion

that like we are we are in this together

and we were working on it together. But

that's a hot take in tech right now

where uh employees are basically swapped

out like machine parts at these larger

especially Fortune 500 companies. It's

it's kind of a grim reality. So given

all of that, are you an optimist or a

pessimist about uh America, corporate

America is is heading and why?

I mean, I'm I I think, you know, as far

as some of the products go, we may get

better products. We may get faster

clicks. We may get uh, you know, things

delivered to our door faster. I'm I'm

optimistic to that end. Uh, I'd be

pretty pessimistic on

how that or or what that does for the

average American, the the worker that's

driving it, whether you're the blueco

collar worker, the white collar worker,

junior or senior, uh, the fungeability,

so to speak, of employees is is

sometimes a uh sometimes a good thing,

sometimes it's it's it's a bad thing.

the bigger you get. Uh I saw this a lot

at at both Amazon and Walmart. People

become really a line item on a P&L.

They're a number on a roster spot. And

if you're managing, I don't know, say

you you've got your you're Beth Kleti or

somebody and you've got a, you know,

100,000 people or more that roll up

underneath you, the likelihood of you

actually knowing the intangible value

that that person brings or knowing that

person's story, uh, and I don't mean

personal story, but their story within

the organization, uh, what critical

thing they built before automation, etc.

You don't know that and you can make a

lot of really bad decisions. So it's

even that right the the fungibility of

people's

it can give you an optimistic outlook at

first right you've got the scale of

economy you're growing you're booming

but when you zoom in and and the bad

things start to happen it can really

drive that pessimistic outlook

so I just I hope there's a way that we

can figure out how to balance

growth and innovation without leaving

the American middle class behind.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of that um that

fungeibility, I guess uh we should have

gotten into it a little earlier. I

should have asked um for viewers that

don't know, what is your uh career

trajectory? We'll we'll talk about um

some of your military pivot to corporate

a a little bit later, but in the

corporate world, you've mentioned uh

Walmart. I know you were most recently

at Amazon. Uh walk us through uh

positions there and and what your remmit

was.

>> Yeah. Uh I I mean I can I can sort of

Walmart. It kind of bleeds together. Uh,

and even if I I play it back further,

uh, kind of bleeds out of the military.

But at Walmart, I I got hired as an

assistant manager trainee. It's, uh,

typically the usual path for Walmart

management is you are a, uh, department

manager. I think they say 70% of their

store managers come from the hourly

ranks, which I think is a great thing.

That company, I think it's why it's been

uh, operating as as steadily as it has

for the last 50 55 58 years. just

however long it's been. Uh, but I was

hired in as a trainee in in Round Rock,

Texas. I I right away was put on the

overnight shift, which is kind of an

interesting thing. You are effectively

the store manager at night. There's

there's nobody else in the building with

you. You're making all the decisions on

how the building is stocked on the

grocery side, the general merchandise

side. You're running your own

scheduling. It is a uh crash course for

somebody that has not done any of those

uh those functions previously. and you

don't really build a schedule or you

don't hire in the military. You know,

you get issued your headcount, you make

it work. So, there was some some

learning there. Uh but within three

years, I was running a store man or I

was the store manager uh of a store up

in Willist, North Dakota during the oil

boom. It happened to be the company's

third highest volume store uh second

most profitable and then I went to May

not North Dakota which was the most

profitable super center uh in the entire

chain.

>> So, that gave me a little bit of

opportunity. I guess name recognition so

to speak in that little small world. Uh

we got to attend this Walmart Global

Leadership Academy which is for the top

I say. 2% of store managers. It's like

30 people a year uh out of the 1.2

million employee workforce get to go

through this. And back in the day you

would travel with the CEO, COO, the SVP

of the West business unit. And you you

started to learn how decisions were

made. uh not not just like merchandising

decisions but uh how the merchandising

decision transcends all the way to uh

some sort of global outre uh unrest in

the the Middle East that may impact

supply chain. So it it kind of gave that

global uh mindset to things which is

what they were preparing folks for. From

there uh I had the opportunity to go

work at Amazon. they were looking to

launch out uh these big robotics to film

centers. Probably uh 2017 to 2019 was

the big window of that. And in 2018 uh

they brought me on board to launch a

facility that no one wanted to go to out

in Fresno, California.

>> Nobody wants to go to Fresno anyways.

>> Who does, right? I mean, it had been on

uh all I knew at Fresno is it was on uh

cops a lot.

>> That's not a good sign.

>> California cops. Yeah. Usually not a

great sign. So, uh, I I get I get

brought in there and they did something

weird that for that site. No, like I

said, no one wanted to go there.

Usually, they would launch with a ton of

external talent. They launched with uh

something like 83 of the 87 managers

hired for that building were external.

Uh, big bet and they needed the capacity

out of Fresno to really drive that uh

Northern California and Southern

California volume growth that we

expected or the company expected for

that peak. We came in uh and just broke

every record the company had. And and I

mean I don't mean productivity, I mean

productivity, quality, safety,

engagement, retention. Uh you you if

there's a KPI for it, we crushed it. Uh

it became known as the lean machine,

kind of the gold standard for for Amazon

launches.

That allowed me then to go out and do

the same thing in another uh another

town in Opalaka. This one wasn't on

Pops. It was on the first 48 for like

years. Uh Opa in Miami. Uh rougher

neighborhood and I uh went out there. I

was on night shifts in both of these

places. I spent about seven years of my

life on night shifts. So went out and

ran Miami's night shift while they were

trying to run out the uh

>> same day shipping. And and this is what

I loved about Amazon is they had

>> really big ideas. Uh

probably had bigger ideas at a higher

frequency when I first started than than

we do now. Uh but their big idea was

they wanted to have a million items that

was same day shippable. Uh and in order

to do that, you had to change the whole

freight flow of things. Uh it's maybe

boring to people, but I I geeked out on

it. We used to pack the boxes at these

fulfillment centers, load them, you

know, fluid, handstacked onto a 53 foot

trailer, one box by one box, and then

that trailer would go to a a sort center

and it would be broke unloaded and

broken into smaller loads that would go

to, you know, the the carrier, the

distribution uh network. We were using a

lot of thirdparty delivery at that time

and Amazon was shifting into this first

party. So everything had to change. Uh

so to drive that I became really the

guinea pig for same upstream

containerization is what we called it.

So instead of loading the 53 foot

trailers we were loading carts and

loading pallets. Had to do massive

retrofits to basically brand new

buildings at that point. Uh figured that

guy out and had the opportunity to go do

it again in Las Vegas, Nevada where uh

really kind of the crescendo in ops. We

we again set all the quality records for

uh for shipping speed and time

throughout that big peak. That brought

me into uh again Amazon, you know, the

growth rate was so big that you start to

have like on numbers and this goes back

to that fungeability thing. On numbers

we could grow, we could build the

buildings, we could find the labor, we

could find the merchandise, you could

find the trucks, etc. But you also

needed skill skilled labor. you had

already scraped kind of the the bottom

of the barrel, not bottom of the barrel,

but the barrel on store managers that

were willing to relocate across the

country from your competitors. Yeah.

>> You had tapped out a lot of the top tier

schools that we were recruiting from.

And that also hit the hourly talent.

There was a significant problem in the

network hiring ship clerks. It's a

hourly function. It's like a department

manager at Walmart basically. Uh okay,

>> they have all the tactical knowledge.

maybe not all the the strategic

knowledge, but what they do is it's so

critical, so essential. Like they're

they're bringing the trailers to the

doors, they're opening the doors,

closing the doors, and because

everything is it's like mousetrap or

dominoes. You know, if one piece falls,

the whole building shuts down.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh I was given the opportunity to be a

senior manager, the idea team, and my

job there was to travel around to sites

that were struggling, figure out what

was causing that, build out a defect

regression. Uh at that point we didn't

even know like when a package was

delayed we know it was delayed. We

didn't have nailed down which part or

which process path caused the delay. So

the big theory was it was pre-slam. It's

before the shipping labels applied. I

went down identified it was the dock

causing it which is post slam. Realized

the real root cause was we were unable

to train these ship clerks. We needed

probably 12 to 15 a building to keep

things running 24/7 and it it just

wasn't happening. So, I created Central

Dock uh where effectively we stood up a

a center in Phoenix, Arizona. Uh hired

all the best ship clerks that we could

across the country. We brought them

there and then were able to just hire

smart people off of the streets and

train them in this really controlled

environment. But to do that, you had to

get, you know, 800 GMs, general

managers. We're talking big A type

personalities in charge of billion

dollar businesses to to sign off on

giving up command and control of their

building to somebody they didn't know

doing something that no one ever thought

could be done remotely a big ask.

>> Yeah, it was it was a giant ask. Uh was

able to deliver on it, you know, saves

back then the entitlement was like $740

million a year. Pretty pretty

substantial. And it that entitlement of

course only grew as the company scaled

and and got larger. Uh but then I I got

out of kind of the people piece at that

point and realized tooling was an

opportunity for us. Uh in order to have

the headcount on the dock

uh to ensure the packages go out, you

have to know how many moves you're going

to be making from the the ship clerk

like it's all very very interwoven. Uh

so I had the opportunity to step into a

role called the product manager at

Amazon. And uh for people that don't

know that the product manager role in

tech has been techni typically the guy

or person that understands the business

problem and they

>> it's worth I've worked with a lot of

product managers over the course of my

career and I still don't have a concise

definition for a product manager. I know

I've worked with some really good ones

and really really bad ones. So excited

to hear you get into it a little bit.

>> Yeah, I mean it's a broad job field

deal. You've got product managers,

technical product managers. They they

all do different things. uh technical

product managers, product managers,

technical within Amazon, I think there's

three or four different types.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh I was the type that was the value I

added to the dev team was I understood

the business problem. I could quantify

it. I could explain or articulate what

we wanted the solution to look like, not

necessarily how to solution it.

>> So it was, you know, if we're building a

shift planning tool, I need the shift

planning tool to be able to grab these

inputs from these tools. I need to

visualize it this way. needs to happen

at this frequency, this latency rate,

yada yada. Uh the dev team would then go

and build those things out. And as a

product manager, I owned uh outbound

shipping tools and I owned the risk

management tools, which is effectively

how our volume would get allocated to

different portions of the warehouse to

keep things flowing smoothly and ensure

when we made a promise to the customer,

they got their their package on time.

uh things went well there you know and

started to gain more exposure was

brought into really the final team I

worked with in Amazon and that was the

global compensation team still as a

product manager uh no technically that's

not right they brought me in as a

program manager to drive the roll out of

a something that had been a

long-standing objective of our CEO at

the at that time Dave Clark was to

standardize night shift pay uh with

Amazon you know we grew at different

rates we had different entities

uh not necessarily entities but lines of

business. You had the the fulfillment

centers, you had the sort centers, you

had the delivery stations. They each

worked a different opo. They each built

out at different rates.

So that meant they all had different

policies and you could have building A

and building B across the street from

each other, one paying a higher shift

pay. Now building A gets somebody hired,

they want to transfer to building B. And

the policies really just allowed a lot

of internal cannibalization.

>> Yeah. So I was brought in to to drive

the roll out of that. They were supposed

to have had everybody agreeing on one

policy and it was like I was going to

come sit in the meeting. It would be

signed off on. I would then go just make

it happen which is really you know what

I I did at that point or what I excelled

at at that point the most. Uh meeting

went sideways. Dave Clark didn't like

the idea. His SBPs all had liked it. I

ended the meeting said come back in, you

know, with a fast follow on a new

proposal.

Uh, one of the things that that I

struggle with is proposing anything

without looking at data. Like I

especially when you're talking

billion-dollar decisions, which is what

any of this really would have been. Uh,

so I took to the data and wrote out a

new proposal that didn't look much like

the the first one. I went back in in

front of Dave Clark and I said, "Hey,

listen. We don't have a just a night

premium problem. we have a weekend

premium problem. Uh we've got, you know,

this happening across the network. He

wasn't uh super, you know, aware that

that had been happening. Kind of lost

his mind on it. Meeting went sideways

again. And over the next three to four

months, Dave Clark left the company. The

SVPs that were in the room left the

company. and this goal that had been

failed by four previous teams just kind

of got pushed aside until you know the

new CEO SVP org structure was built out.

So I'm sitting there with a team of

folks that like we've done all the data

work for this, we've got the story,

we're just waiting for the decision

maker. Uh and it was of such scale there

had to be, you know, one of those SVP

levels to make the decision. uh I dove

into just comp data and this is a

problem I see that doesn't just happen

in in Amazon I think it's happening

anywhere in the United States probably

globally uh where automation has has

been a great thing it's enabled the team

to run payroll for you know 1.2 2

million people with a minimal staff.

Same thing with your finance teams. But

what it's also done is it's caused over

aggregation. Uh so like in a

compensation environment, especially a

company like Amazon, you're going to

have a bunch of pay codes. And I'll give

you some examples like bereavement pay.

That's a different line item on your pay

stuff. It's not the same as wage or

overtime wage or shift wage. uh we've

got had about 142 of those pay codes and

no one was looking at things by pay

level. They were looking at aggregates

and when you're talking billions of

dollars a quarter you know and uh in an

expense line and you're rolling up

general wage into you know maybe two sub

aggregations a lot of things are missed.

So I I got into this whole fraud

detection fraud waste abuse thing. Uh

and I I learned like associates at

Amazon were taking bereavement at like

5x the the death rate. Uh I mean if if

there was legitimate bereavement then

Amazon associates experienced 5x the

global death rate internally. Right.

Things that

>> Yeah. That's a good argument for not

working there. I don't want people

around me to pass away.

>> Yeah. Uh but they also had weird things

like their moms died multiple times.

Their uh

>> that that'll happen. That'll happen.

>> Yeah. Yeah. So I felt there was some

opportunity. Dove into that, built a

bunch of controls, clawed back, you

know, hundreds of millions of dollars

annually there. And then I got to the

point where I realized the only thing I

was actually having my my team do was

write SQL. I didn't know how to write

SQL.

So I dove into, you know, how that

works. And at that point, the SVPs came

back, you know, we presented the policy,

it went went over, we standardized shift

ifs, you know, we did this big thing

that had never been done. I had my

control piece running. I And it started

to afford me a little bit of time to

dive into, like I said, learning SQL,

learning some of the the tech work, the

the dev work, and I made the case

because I started seeing AI be talked

about and and be used that our team

needed a head of AI enablement. Uh so my

director, you know, gave me the the

internal title of head of AI enablement

for global compensation under under her

team. And what that looked like was

really uh kind of being the first person

to go out, learn the knowledge. What is

what is enterprise AI? What is aenic AI?

What is this going to turn into? How is

it going to disrupt the labor force? How

can we use it? Uh and and start to

educate the team, you know? So, how does

AI even before it was we're talking

three years ago, how do you start to

work it into a three-year plan?

>> Yeah. that kind of stuff to where you

know most recently

it was I mean we did all the AI happy

hours the training hours this is how you

use the internal tools this is what the

difference between these models are etc

uh but I was really focused on building

out the knowledge base for our team uh

like you people have seen graipedia

because Wikipedia was a a pretty poor

knowledge base

>> sure if you think about something uh as

critical as internal compensation

decisions you've got to

Make sure your inputs that are going in

are clean. They they are actually what

that the business is doing. Uh working

on things like the governance governance

aspect of AI. You deploy a model into AI

that does something as simple as it

scrapes for minimum wage legislation or

articles.

>> You've got to know, you know, everything

that it's querying. You got to know who

wrote it. You got to know when it was

written, if there's updates that are

required. And if you you think about a

really an agentic workforce, you may

have several hundred a thousand agents

running different tasks at different

times. Each one of those has to be

archived, you know, documents require or

requirements documented, etc. So there's

a lot of the not when people think about

AI rollout maybe they're thinking that

the guys that are building the models

that's not where most of the work is

going to be in the AI roll out. It's

it's going to be defining standards uh

you know fine-tuning things to these use

cases identifying how now you've got to

like I learned how to use Curo really

well I've built full stack applications

you know that were internally they they

read midway you know great for

enterprise level stuff but you have to

identify that product managers can do

that now and not every SDE is going to

be able to go learn the business case or

develop the business acument So like

you've got to realize that the the

street is two ways in some instances,

other times it's one way.

You've got to think about does that

increase the value of roles, decrease

the value of others. So kind of thought

leadership is is what a lot of it was.

Uh beyond just the technical piece.

>> Yeah. And you underscore a really

important point there. uh when I've seen

AI roll out at enterprise scale at these

Fortune 500 companies, I always joke

that LLM development and Agentic AI

become significantly less fun when you

have to do it in an environment where a

bunch of money is on the line and a

bunch of private customer data is on the

line. There's all of these very

difficult concerns that you were you

were mentioning with AI governance that

that come in that people just don't

really think about so much. Um, and just

to just to sort of recap the the career

journey, what we've talked about so far,

I mean, essentially broad strokes, you

went from

a relatively small domain of managing

people, real people, real processes in

in a store and then you climbed up that

ladder and then you abstracted to

managing across multiple stores or

across a wider remit. Then you moved on

to

>> Yeah. Yeah. and and then you moved on to

uh an environment in Amazon where these

things are becoming facilitated with

robots in some kind of a a stamp out and

replicable way hopefully down the road.

Then you further abstracted into

how do I manage these pro I'm the guy

that gets called in to unbunch up these

processes that aren't working very well

because you've seen it done correctly

from the ground up so many times and now

you're talking about being the head of

AI. Now it's even more meta where you're

kind of governing the workforce that

proctors these processes. So it's kind

of this abstraction of going meta layer

to meta layer to metal layer. It's quite

quite interesting and um it's something

I'm very interested in is very first

principles thinking or having that lived

experience of doing this on the front

line as a Walmart store manager. The

most humble version and the most

consequential version of essentially

what your role ended up as uh in its

most primitive form. um and climbing all

the way to different levels of

abstraction. Do you view um running for

office as an extension of this process

then?

>> Yeah, I I would Yeah, I guess when you

when you spill it out, I haven't thought

about it that way. Uh but yeah, it it

does, right? The the big motivating

factor for me here was sitting in some

of these meetings, you know, where we're

making decisions, we're talking about

what the future may look like. uh and

not hearing anybody in the room ask is

this good for the community, is this

good for our employees, is this good for

our is this good for us even you know uh

and and to me I think that where we are

going uh not just with AI but with other

factors you know uh visas offshoring etc

you get into this this piece where if we

don't have leadership asking is are

these decisions and are these policies

actually serving the middle class and

that's where I I think most of

Congress's focus really should be is is

on the middle class. Uh the citizens

they derive their authority from we're

we're not going to have the right

policies. We're not going to have the

right decisions being made. Uh so

absolutely it's just extracting out

further and the maybe anecdotally

there's lessons learned right like I you

can't run a big business at scale uh

unless you have healthy simple

repeatable processes. You know that's

going from stocking a can of beans to

building out the the AI model and

governance labor. Now you can abstract

that into policy. You're if you've got

bad policy, all the iterations that it's

seen, every iteration that goes through

that policy, whether it's, you know, a

visa application being submitted and

approved, you're going to have more and

more failure. Uh so it's like the most

critical things that we need are are

robust, sound policy. We don't have

that, uh we're we're going to fail. So

yeah, I think it's a an abstraction

driven by

it's an abstraction, but my motivation

is driven by seeing the negative

outcomes that that I I think we're

headed for.

>> Yeah, it's a really compelling thesis.

It's a really compelling thesis. I I

mean, a lot of folks in government, you

know, it seems like they were maybe born

with a silver spoon in their mouth.

They're not familiar with these problems

at a ground level. And this is also

something I'm I'm eager to talk a little

bit about your uh military experience as

well. Thank you for your service. Um

I've I've had the honor of working with

a number of veterans over the year in uh

commercial space in defense tech. And um

one of the things I've always noticed is

they

veterans seem to have some better

intuitive sense than most other folks

that I've worked with about consequences

of actions. Do you see any kind of a

connection there about the the the

weight and the meaning of your actions

and how that's maybe applying to your

political bid?

>> Yeah, I mean I think there's I think

there's some probably uh

maybe the takeaway lesson for me out of

the military was timeliness of actions,

not even just consequence of actions. Uh

and I I'll give you an example. So like

I said, I started in the army. I got

hurt. I had to have my knees uh

reconstructed. Took me about 11 months

of uh of dealing with surgeries, three

surgeries to get

>> Ouch.

>> I did it. Yeah. It wasn't fun. I tried

to join the army again. Had a lot of

heartburn, you know, like I never failed

out. I you know what I mean? Like if

there was ever anything I wasn't doing,

it was because I didn't want to do it.

Uh

>> yeah.

>> So that was a time where you could

effectively say I was fired, right,

>> for medical reason. Uh but still

nonetheless fired. So I tried to join

the army. They just laughed at me.

They're like, "Dude, we don't get

medically discharged and come back next

year." Uh, so I went to the Air Force.

They didn't take prior service pets.

Went to the Marine Corps. They needed

headcount. They said they would take me.

I'd have to go back through uh their

boot camp. And I knew my knees weren't

like that good. They were they were

enough to get by, but not that. So, I

ended up joining the Navy.

>> They they took me uh which was weird,

right? Like I I go in and I get issued

my CEAG which is the you know the big

green duffel bag of your uniforms and I

get the dress blue pants. I you guys

have seen it you know the you got the

little bib and or bib on the back and

the bow and the pants well the pants

have 13 buttons on one side and then the

back side they've got a bow and I

couldn't figure out which was the front

or back. And logically to me I think the

buttons are the back because you know

I'm sure going through this whole

process ships are small you don't have a

lot of room maybe you button I don't

know. Uh, so my first experience in the

Navy is wearing my pants backwards,

which is kind of funny.

>> That's funny.

>> Uh, but anyway, I I I had a chance to go

work in Guantanamo Bay. And, you know, I

was in the Pentagon uh in living in DC

when President Obama was inaugurated. I

I heard, you know, all the excitement

and everything. If you think back or or

knew what was happening on the news at

that point, most of America was like,

"Let's get everyone down in Guantano

Bay. Let's get them processed. Let's

let's be done with this." the political

appetite was very very strong to to gain

to get convictions.

>> It's a tough time to be down there

politically speaking.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Super tough time to be

there. Uh but they wanted convictions.

You like the NGO foothold wasn't super

strong yet. You had the John Adams

project, but they were starting to ramp

up and and Cheney really around.

Dick Cheney, you know, messed around

with getting the uh

the rule set that he wanted basically

built out. the uh military uh

commissions act uh I think it was 2007

wasn't passed until 2007 right that's

six years after 911 happened which you

know 3 years after the invasion of Iraq

that's a pretty significant amount of

time uh to get anything dealt with so

you know I'm sitting there and I I watch

I was on a case US v Cotter uh I was

assigned to the defense which was its

own thing you know caused major debates

between my parents and I on and how can

you go, you know, support this versus

that? And I, for me, it was the rule of

law and it was the mission I was

assigned. Uh, and it was still a

high-caliber mission and I was excited

to, you know, get to go defend the rule

of law and experience how these things

were happening. But, uh, the day Obama

was inaugurated, we go to the galley to

watch the swearin

and we had had a a motion hearing, a

motion to suppress, uh, some evidence

hearing that morning. It's like we were

in trial. Uh we go and watch the galley

for lunch, come back, and literally as

we walk in the door, there's a fax

coming in from the fax machine. It's

120day stay in the case of USV CD. I

think it was uh President Obama's first

EO maybe, if not his first, his second

or third.

>> Yeah.

>> And now it's like, okay, there's no

decision that's going to be made now.

We're 120day stay. It was followed by

another 120day stay, another one,

another one, and then, you know, finally

uh we did some things. cuz you know we

we presented the case in uh the Ottawa

Supreme Court which was neat to go see

how how that worked. They ended up

citing with us that

uh Omar he was he was 15 when he was

captured. His dad was uh a major

figurehead in al-Qaeda. A lot of people

say he financed a lot of their

operations. Uh but Omar was born in in

Canada and he was a MITER and Canada and

the United States had both entered into

an optional child soldier protocol with

the UN that effectively said he should

have had some different uh

his journey should have followed a

different path than it did. And because

of that, this Canadian Supreme Court

ordered repatriation to Canada. Prime

Minister Harper refused it. Trudeau

ended up coming in honoring it. They

they settled with Omar for like $10

million due to to not following their

own laws. Uh but it it goes from like

the timeliness of action. Had they sped

that through, and I'm not saying that's

the right thing, but had they not played

to try to create the perfect rule set

that disadvantaged everybody, they'd

have had a conviction and it would, you

know, they'd have had hundreds of

convictions.

>> But instead, the games were played and,

you know, they were afraid to fail fast.

So they ended up failing long and very

expensively.

>> Yep.

>> Uh there's consequent con

consequentiality to those as well. Uh

saw probably more of that downrange

where I was uh you know legal adviser

with CJ Sodaf AP. They're uh it's

combined joint special operations task

force Arabian Peninsula. It's a JTF of

Navy Seals, Green Brays, ODAS that are

uh the operational detachment alphas

that are going out getting the bad guys,

bringing them back. I dealt with

detainees uh and you know consequences

are severe there too right you you send

them after the wrong guy you know the

wrong thing happens uh and and those are

like no no no failure decisions so to me

you know wasn't 30 yet I was mid20s you

know being around that it it made sense

for me to be okay making hund00 million

decisions at Walmart before I was 30 as

well like $100 million of Walmart money

was a lot less than, you know, making a

wrong decision there.

>> Sure.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. It sort of level sets for you,

right? The the severity of the actions.

I mean, is that something that just

turned your stomach then when you made

it to the boardrooms of Amazon about how

long people would kick the can down the

road or punt on a decision before you

could really act on it?

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a buzzword in

corporations is, you know, layers and

spans of control and those types of

things. And and you get into just this

blatant bureaucracy where,

>> you know, I mean, it I I joke I didn't

have this case, but I mean, it might as

well been, right? Like a font color, you

know, deciding a font color on a web

page could be for some teams three weeks

of meetings. You know, what does it

matter, right? Like put out one

in red, one in blue, AB test it, come

back, make your decision, let let's

roll. like those are

>> just ship one don't AB test and just

call it a day you know

>> even that right uh but there's no reason

the decision or some sort of

implementation couldn't be sped ahead

>> and and that's where

you know probably we get are getting a

lot of layoffs and type you know things

in tech that we've we were going to have

and continue to we've had we have had

and will continue to have uh folks built

bureaucracies and big giant teams around

them that didn't accomplish a whole lot.

Uh I don't understand it. Like

>> Yeah, me neither. I think I always say

the layoffs uh will continue until

morale improves. Um and morale does not

seem like it's improving. And and you

yourself were you were laid off. Talk to

us a little bit about that. What what

happened? How did you find out?

>> Uh what did that look like for you?

>> That's crazy. Uh

>> not at all how I would have expected it

to go down. So, been with the company uh

April would be my 8y year mark.

>> I think I'll I'm still technically I get

90 days of garden leave where they they

pay you to just, you know, find a new

job within the company or or ride your

time out because of the Warren Act.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh which is which is interesting, right?

You get this Warren Act which is

supposed to give you 90 days before a

layoff. These corporations have

translated that to we'll give 90 days

pay and lock them out. Uh

>> whatever. But last Wednesday, uh, I wake

up, you know, I'm usually was on my

computer by like 6:30 in the morning. I

go out to log in. I'm completely locked

out. It doesn't accept my password. I

have to go find the email address that

uh like there was rumors of layoffs and

I had heard how it happened in the past.

So, I it's not like I had to totally

figure it out.

>> When aren't there rumors of layoffs at

Amazon, though? I feel like this is a

rolling basis.

>> Man, you hit it. Like, that's the thing,

right? The layoff sucks itself, but

there was

14 or 15,000 laid off in October of 25.

We had they had originally put the note

out it'd be 30,000. So, you know, 15,000

people really everybody uh had a strong

inkling 15,000 heads were more more

heads were going to roll uh in mid late

January. So, that means you spent

November through Thanksgiving through

Christmas just nervous waiting on

>> Yeah. Don't don't enjoy the holidays.

Yeah.

>> Yeah. No, and I mean I've got two

daughters. I I scaled it way back. Uh

>> that's tough.

>> I'm glad I did. Uh yeah,

>> it is tough. But that's the reality. You

know, you've got few hundred,000

corporate workers at that corporation

and all across America right now. Well,

more than a few hundred thousand across

America. But sitting there nervous, you

know, you don't you don't know if you're

going to get laid off. And I it's

interesting. I used to be very like,

hey, it's at will employment, you know,

and and I think in my mind I I never

like I look back, I'm still at will

employment's reasonable. you don't you

shouldn't be obligated to to hire to

keep somebody on board that's a bad

actor that's not doing their job that

but I'd never thought about at will

employment in the terms of 16,000 people

being laid off on the same day that

>> like I I shared an article one lady

she's the 25th most tenured employee at

Amazon been there 28 years and she found

out the same way I did that is through

the email she applied to the company

with because they lock you out of your

your internal email uh sent it about 44

45 in the morning. So, no texts and and

the email.

>> Yeah, it is. It is email said, you know,

your your role has been eliminated.

Someone else will schedule a call with

you later today. I didn't take the call.

I What else are you going to tell me? Uh

my I had a friend take the call and the

person that that uh

that they jumped on the phone with was

sitting in Costa Rica. Uh spoke very

little English. They couldn't even

understand them. They couldn't answer

any of the questions they had. And I I

got that report before, you know, the

time was for me to schedule mine. So, I

I opted out. But horrible experience.

And anecdotally,

I haven't published it, but I mean, I

have I have people, you know, I'm well

connected in Amazon, was there for a

long time with a lot of old-timers. Uh

send someone sends me an internal

snapshot of that person's phone tool. uh

the 28-y year person, her director

already has her role posted

>> and

>> and can you tell me where they're hiring

for it?

>> Yeah. Uh Vancouver or Belleview for that

one.

>> Okay. Okay. I'm surprised it's uh I'm

surprised it's in the uh on this side of

the globe.

>> Yeah. If you go out beyond I mean that's

uh Vancouver typically is uh is I've

seen that code for like visa hire. Uh

>> yeah,

>> that they can't bring into the United

States. They can get them into Canada a

whole lot easier.

>> Yep. Uh but across other teams that

person that I I told you about had their

team from co a or person from Costa Rica

call half of their teams been reopened

in Costa Rica and India

>> of course

>> uh and that's what I I think a lot of it

is is I was expensive you know I'd been

there a long time I had progressed

through roles I had had great you know

evaluations which caused you to get put

at the top end of pay bands.

>> Yeah.

>> I was around when RSUs were cheaper.

that means there's a lot of, you know,

equity to vest and I I don't get to

receive now.

>> Uh,

makes sense. You know, if you can if

you're looking at people as totally

fungeible with that MBA type attitude on

spreadsheet management,

you're you're going to cut till you hit

your target.

>> Yeah, I I think you hit the nail on the

head. This is um I mean, I come at it

from the tech angle. A lot of techies

are are seeing this too where tech was

just this really cool really cool place

to work in. It was primarily a

meritocracy and it didn't matter what

you looked like, how you talked, any of

that. Even if even if you were very like

friendly to other people or or very

sociable, it's just can you execute, can

you build good code? Can you ship

product? And it was it was very very

close to being a really good

meritocracy. Um, which is how it was

when I started. And I've just seen it

shift over time to where most of these

higher level roles are now occupied by

MBAs, which I won't outright vilify, but

I'll say that a lot of the MBAs that

these roles are occupied by are people

that have never had really a quote

unquote real job. They have never been

at the beck and call of somebody else.

Maybe they've never even had a manager

uh in their career before or had to

report to somebody. And there's just

there's very little empathy for it

there. Which starts to beg some

questions like this uh this woman that

was there for I think you said 28 years.

>> Yeah, 28 years.

>> 28 years at the company like what kind

of subject matter expertise, scaling

wisdom, uh company lore about decisions

that have been made are you getting rid

of with that person? I mean that that

person deserves to be compensated

whatever they're compensated and

probably more just for the knowledge

resource that they've become at the

company. So, it's a totally silly and

short-sighted decision. Um, I'm really

sorry that happened to you. And to be

clear, I mean, you were you were L7,

correct?

>> Yeah, I was an L7. Uh, I had so I I was

in a principal product manager was the

the job family. I had been a senior

manager previously. The way that works

is senior manager is L7 with headcount.

Principal is L7 without headcount.

uh back I think it was February of 24

I'm sorry February of 25 I I decided to

give my headcount up they were all visa

holders I was not willing to certify

paperwork at that point uh that it's you

know explained what they were doing that

it was a critical role set and I I

really felt AI could write SQL which is

what we brought them for I could build

dashboards I I had some heartburn about

it I never told anybody that's what the

issue was I gave up the headcount and

you know slid into this IC role which

was really the the first time where I I

knew I was accepting a lower you know

max pay band uh which probably also hurt

the equation you know I'm I still have

the senior manager pay I'm in an IC role

well that's the way the policy is they

don't adjust you down you just no longer

move upward in in pay band uh but yeah

it was that's a significant position

right I would call But,

you know, if it were a smaller company,

they'd probably have it at at least a VP

level. Uh,

>> yeah.

>> You're you're making like anytime a wage

decision is made, you've seen Udith

Mandan's made a bunch of uh wage policy

changes over the last few years with

United States Warehouse where I think

the last one was 1.5 billion dollar

annual investment. So, you think even

you know building out data influencing

that these are not you know they're

they're not small roles. Uh but more

importantly like if you go back to the

warehouse piece when I got hired in to

28 to to Fresno to FAT one in 2018 and I

think it's an interesting story. I roll

in and you know we've got my team was me

coming from the you know actual like

retail management. I had a uh

a major from the army that had retired

that was on my team working. He was my

peer. And then we had uh it was like

five of the eight guys that worked for

us as our area managers. They were uh

two of them were college hires, but the

rest of them were all freight fresh out

of the military enlisted guys. Uh

anywhere from E5 all the way up to we

had an E9 uh Air Force Master Chief. So

they're guys that that knew nothing

really about tech. They knew how to

drive an operation. Uh we were able to

to build that. But we roll in in our our

training team in in Tracy, California

out of a site called Oak. Their names

were Kotti, Thi, and Audi. And they all

were brought in from this MIT EMBA

program. They were like the top recruits

that had graduated uh this international

business MBA program. And they had

massive dry erase boards. Like the the

entire, you know, wall of this this room

was was dry erase boards. And they were

everything was manual. Nothing was

automated. You had to shift plan. That

was, you know, long form calculations.

they were managing or balancing indirect

labor versus direct labor to shave off 2

tph, you know, yada yada. And Mike and

I, the the army major, sat down at lunch

and we're like, man, how are we ever

going to figure this out? We're we're

never going to be able to do this. Like,

this is not what we do. Did we sign up

for the wrong thing? Are we moving? Am I

moving back home?

>> Uh, we we figured it out. But where my

story goes is all that's automated now,

right? I helped drive that automation

through that work where I was automating

the planning tools. I don't know if but

like eight or nine people in the company

that know what's actually automated on

the back end of that and I don't know if

many of them are left. Uh not many are

because a lot of them had left even

before uh I was laid off or in in prior

rounds. Those are things you completely

forget. And there there's a someone like

that 28-year person. You probably could

have rolled her into a closet, let her

collect dust, brought her out once a

year, and that one time a year if you

had insight would be worth enough to pay

for her entire bloodline, like you know,

her future bloodline salaries.

>> Yeah,

>> these uh sorry, just the decisions at

scale, you know, a small decisions

hundreds of millions of dollars.

>> Yeah. I I it's um it's all shortterm

thinking. It's all can we make profits

in the next quarter uh and sound good on

the earnings call is what it seems like

to me. I I've been in the same boat with

a bunch of engineers I've managed where

you know maybe you have somebody who's

been at the company for 5 years which is

a long tenure on the tech side of things

and

their velocity isn't very good during

sprint. They're not turnurning out a lot

of tickets. They're not writing a ton of

code. They're showing up to meetings.

They're they're good part of the gang.

They're getting some stuff done but

they're slow. They're they're behind the

pack.

>> Yeah. But every once in a while you need

to go to them and you need to be like, I

looked at the uh the git blame for this

file. The last change on this file was

four years ago. It was committed by

somebody who has not worked here for 2

to 3 years now. Do you remember what

went on? They'll say, "Oh yeah, that was

the war between the CTO and the director

of engineering. They had an ideological

debate over what framework to use. This

happened, that happened, and we made

this decision that's imperfect, but we

need this bit of code because if we

change it, everything else in the system

will fall apart. And if you lose that

guy, oh, you good good luck. Good luck

with your your code base. It's uh it's

no good. Um so I I definitely agree with

what you're what you're saying there. Um

okay, so you get laid off, but you had

your congressional run. You you've been

revving this up and working on this

before you left Amazon, correct? What

was that like doing in parallel?

>> This was Yeah, this is something I was

running in parallel. I mean, I had uh

that February time frame of when I I

said I gave up my headcount. That really

was this this moment for me where a lot

of things were coming together, right? I

had uh I had the belief that AI was

going to start to be disruptive. I had

become virtually the only American Id

ever seen in in calls and in meetings. I

>> I know that feeling.

>> Yeah. And and then my daughter, my

oldest daughter, Zoe, I've got two.

One's a a freshman in in college, the

other is a junior in high school. uh she

my my freshman in college was you know

going through the application phase at

at the university. She wants to be an

OBGYn. She has since she's like eight

years old that she decided to do

>> uh and has done everything right. Like I

I mean a lot of parents will will brag

and I I'm going to do that here for a

second, but legitimately she's done

everything right. You know, I took the

different path. I had the two jobs in

high school. I I wasn't planning to go

to college. I I knew there was no

funding. like it was it was a different

different path.

>> Y

>> she uh you know graduated high school

with a 4.5 GPA, 32 college credits.

>> She was the uh state knowledge bowl

champion. Her team was in Colorado,

runner up nationally, varsity swimming,

>> president of the French club, you know,

like every little EC or extracurricular

you could imagine. and her goal had

always been to go to University of Texas

in Austin where her aunt went uh you

know it's where like we were Longhorns

fans all of that stuff and they straight

up rejected her uh not just from UT

Austin but from the entire UT school

system uh and you know the backup was&m

they rejected her from the main campus

they gave her a couple satellite school

options meanwhile SMU accepts her you

know gives her founder scholarship to

lets her in. and Johns Hopkins lets her

in. Every school in the West Coast does.

>> Yeah.

>> It's not where she wanted to be. And

even in SMU, you know, with 50 grand off

is still, you know, 60 grand a year.

>> Yeah. [laughter]

>> Which is outrageous. But I I then

started looking not just at what would

happen to me or my team, you know, the

demographic change of my teams, what I

saw with AI. I realized like I I started

to understand how the whole funnel of

everything was was working that colleges

were the uh introduction like the input

to the funnel that drives visas that

facilitates offshoring which is hurting

the middle class. Uh the big takeaway

was when I looked at UT Austin's uh

student demographic change

I can give you the most recent numbers.

I don't remember what it was in 2024,

but from uh 2016 to 2025, the white male

student population at UT has declined

31%.

>> Uh the white female uh student

population has decreased 21%. The Asian

female population has increased 51%.

Asian male by 25%. There's more Asian

females attending UT also than there are

black and Hispanic males combined. And

if you look at during the last 10 years,

there there's been more black and

Hispanic males in Texas than there are

Asian females. You know, you've got 1.6%

of the the population in in America is

Asian, but yet in these universities,

they're they're making, you know, 20 for

20 25% of the headcount. And it's not

just that they're Asian. You have to

zoom back 18 years. Those births could

not have been naturalized. like they

could not have been born by the American

Asian population that was in America 18.

>> It's statistically impossible.

>> It's statist like it's so clearly

statistically impossible that

you know we won't be able to say that

definitely in you know 20 years from now

but back 20 years ago we could say that

the only way that you have gotten to to

where we are with these universities is

through corporate uh driven migration.

And it's in Texas it's particularly

damaging. We have a 6% auto admit

policy. So if you're in the top 6% of

your high school, you're auto admitted

to all of the state universities.

>> So then you have a school like Frisco,

uh Frisco, Texas up by Dallas. It's a 6A

high school. You know, massive student

population. Probably over 3,500 kids

graduate from there or not graduate

attend that school. when you're taking

six% of of that graduating class, that

offsets probably 10 small like my high

school class graduated 54 kids.

>> Uh you're you're never going to

demographically offset, you know, the

the old Texas small town when you've got

every big high school in in Texas is,

you know, in Dallas or Austin or Houston

in these areas that are completely

inundated with foreign workers.

>> Yep. Uh the other part people don't know

and this is now more of an FYI than

response to your question but like these

kids attend these schools as residents

you know they come over as an H1B

holders dependent on an H4 visa they're

not international students so those

safeguards that universities have in

place to limit international enrollment

are completely nullified

>> yeah they don't they don't even matter

in this situation

>> and they pay instate tuition so you're

not even getting that that lift that

people say you're getting from out state

tuition.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh or international. And then when they

graduate, they qualify for I think it's

the biggest scam ever to our labor

market, the optional practical training

program or curricular practical training

while attending.

And both of those programs uh enable the

employer to not pay FICA and the

employee doesn't pay FICA. So dollar for

dollar, the employee is 7.65% cheaper

than the American. And then dollar for

dollar on earnings that employees making

7.65% more than Americans. And I think

that then transcends into early home

buying, getting out of student debt

earlier, all of these things. And and I

I hit it. I pulled it all together,

right? I said, "No one else is

>> looking at this this way that that no

one's making the argument." And then I I

really leaned in on no one else has the

data acumen to be able to go out and

tell this story.

>> Yeah. Uh, so I started, you know,

extracting every bit of Visa data that I

could find, every bit of H-1B visa that

I could find, uh, you know, through

through my account, through through

proxy, whatever. You know, did

everything I could do to hammer the

information more and and get this this

story out to people. I think it's been

effective. I think it probably

contributed not just in I I I blame my

wage to impacting my layoff. I think

this probably had a massive amount to do

with it. You think Amazon was aware that

you were starting to do research and get

the word out and that this may have uh

put you in the layoff group?

>> Yeah. Well, I mean, I know that they

were aware, right? Like my my director

pulled me aside that there was concerns

of a conflict of interest brought up by

my team. Uh,

you know, had to go through filling out

a conflict of interest form, doing all

of these things. And

>> yeah,

>> you know, I I don't want to get too much

into all that, but like it's it's a

tough thing to even consider that your

employer would think you running for

Congress could be a a conflict of

interest, right? Like I would love that

if I'm an executive and one of my

employees that's you know been here not

from the beginning but you know from the

beginning of our major roll out

>> they'd be a great potentially you know a

great advocate or they would understand

what what is actually happening and

>> uh but the conflict got brought up right

when you're the only American on the

team and you're talking about major vent

reform and saying things like listen a

moratorum is required so that we can you

know level out and fix revise the laws

and get ready for, you know, whatever's

happening with AI and we need

protectionist data laws so that

offshoring doesn't happen. Yeah, I could

see where they, you know, could think

that there's at least a personal

conflict, so to speak, but

>> 100%. And I mean, furthermore, to your

point, I mean, Amazon is an American

company is is based and headquarters in

America. It was founded in America and

even on that core principle that they

are not seeing it as a positive that one

of their own is doing something that is

a a public service because office does

not pay as much as a tech job. Uh your

life is under the microscope the the

more uh more sort of notoriety you get.

It is it's not inherently a pleasant

thing compared to a relatively speaking

cushy tech job. Uh, not to say your gig

was easy, but it's it I mean the

compensation is very good at L7 at

Amazon.

>> Um, it seems like it would just be in

their best interest as an American

company, but they just don't really seem

like an American company anymore. And

this is I mean this is widespread across

all of tech. You know, the best uh uh

witness that I've had to it is I was at

American Express as director of

engineering recently and I joined up.

I'm out here in Phoenix. So, we move up

to the north side of the the city to to

get closer to the uh the office

building, and I go on there for uh for

my first day, and I notice, you know,

I'm I'm one of the only white people

here. Like,

>> not to be racist, but it's like that

it's 80% Indian on this campus. And I

thought, you know, I have an open mind.

I I've seen this before in tech to a

certain degree, never to this degree.

And I was coming over from Defense Tech

where things staffing was much more

sane. And I think the company I came for

previously sponsored one H1B last year

um just one and uh it was a bit of a

culture shock to me and you know had a

great time working with a lot of those

guys at a bit on a personal level but I

I I really was shocked um when one of my

teams was cut from me. I I managed three

teams across our line and lending

products for the uh American Express

cards. One of my teams was cut from me.

I was told I would not have backfill

headcount for it and instead I would be

getting a team from India that I had

never worked with. I had never chosen I

had never vetted their technical

competency to work as my team. Uh just

just dictated to me no decision is

director of engineering just this is

decided on high. Uh and then of course

the management chain as well. Um we have

my uh my VP Indian National his boss

another VP Indian national um his boss

executive VP Indian national his boss

the chief information officer Indian

national um all on all on down the chain

so I I I I felt my days were numbered

there and I didn't have autonomy and I I

couldn't do paradoxically what was right

for an American and a company named

American Express. Um it's quite a sham

of a name at this point which uh you

know just to just to double tap what you

mentioned there with the the experience

from Amazon and sort of seeing that

staffed out over time um with with

foreign workers. Uh this is just

happening all across any any company

with a tech outfit or engineering outfit

right now to who knows what consequence

and as you're illustrating it's having

spillover effects into your colleges

which are feeding into this um your tax

money which is helping to subsidize

this. and it feels like we have no

control over it. So, what what will you

do is uh if if elected to Congress then

what what what will you do to change

this? I think um that that's where the

intrigue came from when I reached out to

you on Twitter. I'd been keeping up on

your Twitter. I looked at your

ballotedia

um you know started to skim your

platform and get a sense for your points

and I was really excited to see somebody

speaking up about this. I'm bummed that

I don't live in Texas and I don't live

in your district. You'd have my vote.

What do you intend to do about this?

>> You can move. Uh no. So, I I think the

first thing is education that the it's a

three-pronged conversation. You you

can't talk about any of this in silo

without you. All you're going to do is

uh

you're going to create another path of

least resistance and and that you know

momentum isn't going to go in the

direction you want it to go. It's going

to just shoot out that wrong door. So,

those three prongs are uh visa reform.

>> You've got to do so what are the three

things you have to address? you've got

to address visa reform or visas

offshoring and then uh potential AI

based job elimination. So starting at

the the first the the visa thing I

before Chip Roy had kicked out the pause

act I was trying to meme that the

reclaim act uh restoring employment and

citizenship laws through accountability

integr integrity and moratorum.

>> There's some simple things that that we

miss like let's go way back to simple

Walmart store manager days. Uh I need an

exit tracker. We don't even know who

exits the the country really. We we know

how many visas have been uh granted. We

know that someone, you know, gets their

H-1B. We assume that they're here. We

don't know if they're they're exited

permanently. Uh so even if you try to

quantify the problem of how many H-1B

visa holders are here currently

competing for jobs, you have a very hard

time doing that. I think it's evidenced

by Dick Durban and Chuck Grassley

sending letters to all these big tech

companies asking them, "Hey, how many

foreign workers do you have working for

you?" uh if they had good question.

>> What's that?

>> Don't ask that question.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Don't ask. Well, no one's

responded. Uh it was through in October

uh pre- layoffs. Anyway, don't ask that

question. But it shows the system's

broke. Uh as far as an analytics piece,

>> if you can't point to a KPI and measure

the system, the whole system is not

functioning as it should. Therefore, it

doesn't need to operate right now.

Right? like if we just go simply that

that piece uh but then I you know you've

got all the different issues with with

the student visas the work visas the

derivatives that how it impacts taxes I

would love to see and the way I wrote

out the reclaim act was it's a two-year

minimum moratorum

uh two years now uh that gives us a

little bit of time to understand what AI

may actually do in the next two years

each week AI tech is changing each month

it's changing more uh within two years

AI isn't going to look much like AI

today. I I don't think uh as far as how

it's being applied. I think people are

really now just starting to experiment

with application. Within two years there

could be some significant you know like

widespread jobs and uh I think that's

reasonable. So the two years gives that

and the two years would have to extend

unless the INA is rewritten.

>> The INA the immigration naturalization

act was the last major update in 1990.

uh back in 1990, I think they say 28% 25

or 28% of businesses had the internet

connected into their headquarters.

Not that every site was running it. Uh

you know, and I I asked a guy, my uh my

girlfriend's father, he he runs a steel

plant, and I asked him what internet

roll out was like in his day, and he

said, "Oh, yeah, we got it." and we

hired somebody to be our internet

manager and she was a contractor and she

had one computer in the building hooked

up to the internet and she managed the

internet. Uh that's the immigration

policy that was created in that era that

we're taking into this this AI era where

offshoring is is super feasible now

right uh data can you know where we're

connected globally you can find where

the cheapest flavor is you can arbitrage

and you can displace Americans so the

first one's the moratorium I don't even

want to get into my specifics on what I

think should happen in those new IA laws

but I think it's you create this

pressure cooker forcing

You know, like it's like uh you know, if

you worked in tech, you probably set a

calendar invite before you had something

done to hold yourself accountable to

that date.

>> Yes.

>> That that's the way I see this, right?

It's taking that business practice of

setting a date on something to to force

people to do the work.

>> Uh I think it's reasonable that Congress

could within two years, if both sides

came together, really nail down a system

that that works for everybody. Uh to the

the folks that take the opposite view of

me, I would say any system that allows

someone to live here 17 25 years uh

indentured, completely bound to their

employer uh to where they have to return

home if they're laid off, which is

happening in Maris is a completely

broken system. And I would say that we

fought, you know, wars over uh bound

labor in this country. Uh and we

rejected it wholeheartedly. But yet that

broken policy from 1990 has been morphed

into something that it's allowing that

and facilitating the hyper concentration

of growth. It's broken and everybody

should acknowledge that and and be

willing to try to fix it in two years.

Second piece is that those crazy

protectionist data laws. We need them

and if the work the work requires data

uh if you're doing call service, you

need customer transaction data. You need

inventory data. If you're doing

scheduling, you need, you know, company

headcount data or or if you're MX, you

need finan American financial

transaction data. If that data could not

leave the United States, the jobs can't

leave the United States either.

>> Uh,

>> interesting.

>> So, I would take a very uh like through

education, I would say you you've got to

bring these jobs back. This is the only

way to do it. It it's not even

necessarily about the protectionism as

far as data risk. It's about what goes

with the data risk is the job risk and

and we need those jobs.

I'd look at I'd go so far into looking

at tax code changes. But I think that

you could really just kill the global

supply or global support center thing

that's happening in India. All those

companies building out their their

Indian hubs with protectionist data and

IP laws. Uh third piece with AI,

you you can pick one of two angles,

right? You can say either AI is being

overblown

and it's not going to expand the way

that that we think it is or that people

say it is or you could say it's going to

be massively disruptive.

If it's the first cycle where we say

it's not going to be as big of a deal,

then then you have to assume that

companies that have made significant

investments in into this technology are

going to still have to find a way to

show ROI to get more investment to

continue their build out to prove their

thesis. If AI is not the bee's knees,

the only way you show efficiency is

through mass layoffs and then attribute

it to AI. It doesn't have to be AI, but

you can drive those mass layoffs, say AI

did it, you demonstrated value, you

attract more capital, you reinvest that

capital, you, you know, and the cycle

rolls. That's damaging to Americans.

Now, if it's the other end where AI is

going to be the bee's knees and the

hyperscalers end up winning everything

that the hyper concentration of wealth

is just going to accelerate and we've

got to be looking at things like taxing

compute potentially uh because you're

not going to have work anymore and if uh

work's going to change so fast I don't

think the manufacturing piece is going

to pick up as quickly as it would need

to to absorb you know the white collar

decimation

>> uh UBI becomes something that we may

have to consider. I I don't like even

saying that because I believe in the

dignity of work. Like work for me has

been who I am, what I am. I saw my dad,

he was he was a preacher, you know, it

wasn't his job. He was Reverend Plum. Uh

it is your source of dignity,