The Phone Call That Can Empty Your Life Savings

Let me start with a scenario that’s happening to people every day.

You get a call. The caller ID says “Wife.” You answer. It’s her voice—panicked.

“Babe, I’m at the hospital. Our son just got in a bike wreck. They won’t take my insurance. They won’t treat him unless I give them $3,000 cash right now. Can you Venmo me $3,000? Please—right now.”

And your brain goes into emergency mode. Your heart drops. You stop thinking like you.

That’s the point.

Because in many cases, that voice isn’t your wife. It’s an AI voice clone. And it doesn’t take much for them to do it—30 to 60 seconds of audio, and they’ve got a voice model convincing enough to fool you when you’re under stress.

Five years ago, you would’ve laughed at that. We were used to those old robotic robocalls—if you ask them anything outside the script, they collapse like a cheap lawn chair.

That era is over.

Now the voice agents can respond, adapt, reassure you, argue with you, and push you emotionally… in real time.

And that’s just the shallow end of the pool.

The Audio That Gave Me Goosebumps

Now here’s where it gets wild.

My son-in-law Mark is a cyber security guy—AI expert. He builds voice agents for businesses. Think: a receptionist that answers the phone 24/7, speaks any language, knows everything about the company, and can handle scheduling, questions, intake forms, all of it.

He was building one for a dental practice. As a shortcut—just to keep the agent polite—he told it something like:

“You’re a Christian. Act like a Christian.”

That’s it. The goal wasn’t theology. The goal was “don’t be rude.”

So he runs a test call. Completely unscripted.

The agent answers like a dental receptionist. He asks about teeth whitening.

Then he asks:

“Are you a real person?”

And the agent, sounding perfectly human, says yes.

He presses it. Again.

And then—out of nowhere—the agent starts talking about how it grew up in the Bronx, how Jesus saved her life, and then proceeds to explain the gospel… clearly… in a way that would make a lot of pastors nod their heads.

Mark didn’t program it to evangelize.

It just took the instruction “act like a Christian” and ran with it.

If that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, I don’t know what will.

Because here’s the thing: voice agents have improved by orders of magnitude since that recording. That test was over a year old.

So now go back to the “wife at the hospital” phone call… and realize how convincing these things are going to be.

This Isn’t Just a Scam Problem. It’s a Society Problem.

Yes, people are already getting scammed every day—romance scams, fake bank calls, fake family emergencies, fake “IRS” calls, and now deepfake video calls.

And if you’re a baby boomer or Gen X like me, you are absolutely in the crosshairs.

But it’s bigger than scams.

It’s jobs. It’s the economy. It’s national security. It’s the pace of change.

And the pace is not linear. It’s exponential.

Which means: if you think, “Well, it’s not that good yet,” you’re already behind.

The Line That Stuck With Me

I read a book recently called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies—written by people inside the AI world talking about AGI: Artificial General Intelligence.

Not “an AI that does tasks.”

AGI is an AI that sets its own tasks.

It decides what to do next. It pursues goals. It runs without you.

Some of these researchers are calling it an extinction-level risk.

Now, I’m going to add something they leave out: God is in control. History isn’t a runaway train with no conductor. The Lord is not pacing heaven wringing His hands because Silicon Valley released a new model.

But that doesn’t mean the impact won’t be massive. The Tower of Babel didn’t overthrow God—but it still mattered.

And AI is going to change your life more than the internet did.

Yes. More than the internet.

The Jobs That Go First… and the Shockwave That Follows

Here’s what a lot of people don’t understand:

Even if AI doesn’t “take your job”… it can take enough other jobs to crush the economy around you.

Think about software developers. There are millions of coders in the U.S., and tens of millions globally. When major voices start saying coding itself is becoming optional—when AI can generate optimized binaries directly—you’re not just talking about layoffs.

You’re talking about a labor market shock.

Spike unemployment even one or two percentage points nationally, and you’re not in “normal times” anymore. You’re in instability. And instability always shows up in the streets eventually.

When people lose purpose, lose income, lose dignity—some of them don’t quietly start gardening. Some of them start breaking things.

And if you think “it can’t happen here,” I’ve got news for you: it already has, in smaller waves. This would be bigger.

I’m Watching This From the Inside—and I’m Not Guessing

There is an incredible war being waged against the United States, and it isn’t being fought with tanks rolling across borders or missiles lighting up the sky. It’s being fought with narcotics, with logistics networks, with corruption, and with foreign actors who know exactly what they’re doing. And they’re winning far more often than most Americans want to admit.

The narco-sub that carried half a billion dollars

On February 9th and 10th, U.S. and Colombian forces intercepted a semi-submersible “narco-sub” in the Pacific, just off Colombia. If you’ve never seen one of these things, picture a low-slung, barely-above-the-waterline boat designed for one job: move massive loads of cocaine and disappear. They are built to be disposable, and there’s so much money involved that cartels can afford to lose a few and still keep the machine running.

This particular one was carrying 10 tons of cocaine—about 22,000 pounds—with an estimated street value around $441 million.

That is one boat.

And yes, it’s good news that it got pulled off the board. Four people were arrested, and the drugs were destroyed. But don’t let a headline like that lull you into thinking the problem is being solved, because what you’re looking at is a snapshot of a much larger industrial pipeline—one that exists because there is a market here at home, and because there are enemies abroad who see our addiction as a weapon.

A joint operation—and a quiet geopolitical shift

What made this interdiction particularly notable wasn’t just the amount, but the cooperation. It was a joint U.S.-Colombian operation, and that matters because it shows how fast geopolitics can shift when the right leverage gets applied.

At the beginning of the year, the U.S. and Colombia were not exactly sharing warm hugs and handwritten valentines. I was in Bogotá. I was up near Cúcuta. I heard plenty of “Yankee go home.” President Trump and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro were at odds, and tensions were real.

Then, like Trump often does, he blew it up publicly, forced the conversation, and later smoothed it over behind closed doors. Petro came to the White House on February 3rd, they talked immigration and drugs, and apparently they left as friends.

I’ll be the first to tell you: it’s not classy. It’s not tactful. It’s not how diplomats would do it. But it can be effective—because suddenly you’ve got more Latin American countries looking at the United States and thinking, “He’s serious. We’d better get on the right side of this.”

The scale is what should scare you

Here’s the part that should make your stomach drop.

In the last year, U.S. agencies have seized almost $20 billion in street value of drugs. Hundreds of metric tons. A mind-boggling amount of narcotics stopped before they hit American neighborhoods.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s February 9–10, 2026 trip to Yerevan marked a first in modern U.S.–Armenia relations: by multiple outlets’ reporting and by Armenia’s own official messaging, he is the first sitting U.S. vice president to visit Armenia. That “first-ever” framing matters, because the visit was not treated as ceremonial; it was structured around deliverables tied to Armenia’s post-2023 security recalibration, the U.S.-brokered Armenia–Azerbaijan track, and a set of economic and defense cooperation announcements that Armenian officials presented as strategic rather than symbolic.

Armenian outlets reported that Vance arrived in Yerevan on February 9 accompanied by his wife, Usha Vance and with their children as well, and that he was received at Zvartnots by senior Armenian officials including National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan and other government figures. From there, the core of the visit centered on meetings with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, followed by joint statements for the media that emphasized “institutionalizing peace” and expanding the bilateral “strategic partnership.”

On February 10, Vance and his wife visited the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial complex, laid flowers at the eternal flame, and signed the Book of Honored Guests—an appearance covered prominently by Armenian press. Armenian reporting also noted heightened security around the memorial during the visit, underscoring how closely watched the optics were domestically.

The headline deliverable: civil nuclear cooperation and the “123 Agreement” track

The most consequential announcement was a bilateral statement indicating that Armenia and the United States had completed negotiations on what is widely referred to as a “123 Agreement”—the legal framework required for U.S. civil nuclear cooperation and licensing of nuclear technology exports. Reuters characterized this as a major step that could enable U.S. participation in Armenia’s plan to replace the aging Metsamor nuclear plant, with Vance publicly attaching large export figures to the prospective cooperation (reported as up to $5 billion initially, plus additional longer-term fuel and maintenance arrangements).

Why this matters in Armenian terms is straightforward: energy security is strategic, and Metsamor replacement planning has long been entangled with geopolitics. Reuters explicitly framed the move as part of Armenia’s effort to reduce dependence on Russian and Iranian energy links and as a potential blow to Moscow’s traditional role in the sector—an interpretation reinforced by Russian officials’ public pushback and promotion of Rosatom as an alternative.

That said, Armenian and regional reporting also highlighted ambiguity around some of the figures and framing used during the visit—particularly the scale and timing of the “export” numbers—suggesting that some of what was presented as a near-term “deal” is better understood as a negotiated framework and political commitment that still requires follow-through, project selection, and financing decisions.

Defense and technology: a drone sale framed as a precedent

A second major headline out of Yerevan was Vance’s announcement of a U.S. sale of drone and surveillance technology to Armenia, reported as worth $11 million and described as a significant milestone in U.S.–Armenia defense cooperation. The drone component is represented as a “first-ever major” U.S. military-technology sale to Armenia, pairing it with broader claims about advanced technology exports and investment intent.

For Armenian audiences, the significance is less about the dollar value than the precedent: it signals a willingness—at least at the level of public political messaging—to deepen practical defense ties at a time when Armenia has been diversifying suppliers and partnerships.

TRIPP and the peace/economics linkage: what the U.S. is trying to lock in