AI Asian Guy: Silver, Slop and Psy-Ops
On the AI social media influencer targetting the dollar
I’m going to take a gamble and write a quick take that could age horribly, relating to a curious social media phenomenon I’ve been watching for a while. I say it could age horribly because the silver and gold markets, and the price of the dollar, are all in upheaval as I’m writing this.
The story begins over the Christmas holidays when YouTube and Xitter suddenly started promoting an economics channel with an AI “Asian Guy” commenting on the price of precious metals. The videos were slick, and Asian Guy’s synthetically-generated voice was pleasant to listen to. The background featured AI-generated impressionistic images that related to what was being said.
As somebody who has laboriously edited video essays, it’s something of a gut punch to see AI cranking them out by the bushel. And when I say cranking them out, I’m not joking. There were at least three or four videos per day that were packed with information about market manipulation, the suppression of precious metals, the fake nature of the dollar, and so on. All of which, naturally, had been pilfered and scraped from the work of others and posted online.
Moreover, it seemed to me as a casual observer that Econ YouTube was being saturated with this content; there was seemingly no end to the number of channels posting AI Asian Guy’s material and real people, except the big names like Peter Schiff, were being buried.
The message has been consistent since late December, when the content began appearing:
*Buy silver and gold (especially silver).
*The dollar is dying, so get prepared.
*Crypto is trash, dump it.
*Western financial institutions are suppressing the price of silver and lying about their holdings, and are about to be exposed.
Fast forward to late January 2026, and the price of silver has blasted to $107–$110 per ounce from the mid-$70s in late December, and gold has rocketed from around $4,325–$4,340 to past $5,085(!)
It would seem that the AI Asian Guy has been vindicated on everything.
One of the stories he/it spread widely was that JP Morgan was short millions of ounces of silver and risked a collapse or a bailout. AI Asian Guy reported on an internal memo of an emergency meeting. Yet, upon searching for the truth of that memo, the source appears to be AI Asian Guy himself.
The net effect of the endless churn of AI Asian Guy’s content will be to send people stampeding to buy silver and to lose whatever faith they had in the system and its financial institutions. And let us be honest here, faith in these institutions is already pretty pathetic.
I shall certainly not be leaping to the defence of the institutions of The Money Power.
But AI Asian Guy clearly represents coordination and networking aimed at achieving a specific goal. Or, to put it another way, are they reporting on the news or creating it? Are they responding to chaos in precious metals and “de-dollarisation” or helping drive it?
There can be little doubt that people who took the advice of this curious, AI-centred campaign and bought silver bars in December or early January will not be regretting it now.
Yet the irony is that content exposing market manipulation and financial intrigue could easily be construed as engaging in such manipulation and intrigue itself.
Of course, the world of finance is under more duress than a viral social media campaign with a pleasant but fake Asian Guy. Donald Trump seems dedicated to yanking on levers and stamping on delicately-constructed supply chains like a drunken cow. There are wars, threats of tariffs, alienation of allies, and the ever-sinking abyss of debt. The long-term trends were already baked in.
Perhaps AI simply allows all these narratives and tendrils to be formulated into a coherent picture, which is 80% real and 20% questionable.
AI Asian Guy appeared just before China declared that silver was a strategic asset that warranted strictly regulated export licenses. Thus, just in time for a squeeze that potentially exposes Western vaults and, beyond that, the fragility of fiat money. The campaign increases the strain on central banks and fake contracts by creating demand for metal that is already in short supply.
Do I have any sympathy for these institutions? Absolutely none.
Yet, I’m reminded of a line from a Hannibal Lecter book where Mason Verger says:
When the fox hears the rabbit scream he comes a runnin, but not to help.
There are schemers laying plans, and organisations and nations plotting. Perhaps plans within plans.
For whatever reason, I cannot help but think that this hollow-eyed Asian Guy artificial intelligence is their avatar. Inscrutable and unknowable.
What’s more, for now at least, we can assume that, whether Western, Asian, or simply a financial network, AI Asian Guy is operated by humans.
One day, maybe not.
I own gold and silver bullion and have watched with alarm as its value has increased rapidly.
I wrote a few weeks ago that $8000 an ounce gold had been projected for 2026; now I think that is entirely possible, but I shudder to think what the streets outside my door will be like.
What's the point of being rich if there is nothing to buy, no electricity, or public safety?
Once again 100% on the mark. Yes, I do not think that the "AI Asian Guy" is an emergent phenomenon or that he was randomly created by a single individual in his basement, either. I do wonder though whether there is only a small time window for shenanigans like this. Is it not likely that sooner rather than later, YT and other video platforms will be absolutely flooded with a cacophony of AI content pushing messages in all different kinds of directions? At that point, will people not just shrug all that kind of stuff off like the scam emails of days past?