Twitter CEO Elon Musk said during an interview Tuesday night that the government needs to have a plan to physically shut down the power grid in areas that house “heavy duty” artificial intelligence servers in case mankind ever lost control of the AI.
Musk told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that “really heavy duty intelligence” would be concentrated in only a limited number of areas on earth and that it’ll be so concentrated that they can be located from space using their heat signature.
“I’m not suggesting we go and blow up the service centers right now, but there may be some — it may be wise to have some sort of contingency plan where the government’s got an ability to shut down power to these service centers,” he said. “Like you don’t have to blow it up. You can just cut the power.”
When asked at what point it might be time to cut the power, Musk said if humans “lost control of some super AI, like for some reason, like the things that would normally work to do a passive shutdown, like the administrator passwords, if they somehow stop working where we can’t slow down or get out.”
Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?
What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least;
President Biden with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office. / Official White House photo.
The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.
What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”
“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.
Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” an American expert on international trade told me.
The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie. The senior generals and government officialsin Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.”
Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.
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Henry Ford astutely observed that a revolution would occur overnight if people truly understood the banking and monetary system.
That’s because modern banking is an elaborate illusion that deceives people into a false sense of security… until it’s too late.
Large banks can fail in hours, and life savings can evaporate overnight.
The US banking system is especially vulnerable, as recent events have shown.
Why do so many people put their confidence and life savings into an unstable system?
I would say it’s because they do not understand three fundamental truths about modern banking.
#1. The money isn’t yours.
#2. The money isn’t actually there.
#3. The money isn’t really money.
Truth #1: The Money Isn’t Yours
Many people are surprised to learn that they don’t truly own the money in their bank account.
Once you deposit money at the bank, it’s no longer your personal property. Instead, it belongs to the bank, and they can do whatever they want with it.
What you own with a bank deposit is a promise from the bank to repay you—an IOU.
Depositing money is like making an unsecured loan to the bank, with practically no interest to compensate you for taking such a risk.
It’s a terrific deal for the bank and a terrible deal for you.
That’s why a bank deposit is very different from cash in hand. Yet the vast majority of people wrongly conflate the two.
Further, the bank can freeze “your” money by pushing a button for whatever reason they find convenient.
Perhaps you bought something the bank didn’t like or made a politically incorrect statement on social media. Then, don’t be surprised to see your account frozen or worse.
For example, PayPal recently floated the idea of charging people $2,500 for promoting so-called “misinformation.” Expect much more of this stuff in the future from banks and financial institutions.
If your money can be easily frozen or seized, it was never really yours.
Journalists are entrusted by the public to reveal truth, not serve the powerful in a witch-hunt for sources of the truth, writes Elizabeth Vos.
Among many items of interest, the documents revealed that U.S. Special Forces as well as NATO forces are on the ground in Ukraine; that Ukraine is significantly unprepared for its planned spring offensive; as well as evidence of U.S. spying on its allies and António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations.
It was impossible to imagine four years ago when WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and thrown in Belmarsh Prison that corporate media, which had smeared Assange, could stoop to new lows of government servitude.
But it has now happened with the arrest of Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, for allegedly leaking top secret government documents. The leaks exposed a number of significant lies told by both the U.S. government and corporate media about the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Among many items of interest, the documents revealed that U.S. Special Forces as well as NATO forces are on the ground in Ukraine; that Ukraine is significantly unprepared for its planned spring offensive; as well as evidence of U.S. spying on its allies and António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations.
“Several purported U.S. intelligence assessments paint a more pessimistic outlook for the Ukrainian military than the U.S. has provided publicly. They suggest Kyiv is heading for only ‘modest territorial gains’ in its much-anticipated spring counteroffensive.”
In other words, the content of these leaks expose lies told directly by the U.S. and NATO, as well as the corporate media that serve them.
Media on the Hunt
But how did major media react? The New York Times worked with Aric Toler, a U.S. and U.K. government-funded Bellingcat staff writer, to publicly expose accused leaker Teixeira less than a day after federal authorities had identified him.
But the Times and The Washington Post had described Texiera without naming him before the Department of Justice had, in effect doing the F.B.I.’s job for them by tracking down the leaker.
According to the affidavit supporting the prosecution of Teixeira, who held a top security clearance, the F.B.I. subpoenaed Discord, an application often used by gamers to communicate, and where the documents were alleged to have been originally leaked. The information handed over by Discord then lead to Teixeira’s arrest.
The leak itself and the arrest of the alleged source is significant enough, but what makes this story disturbing is the role of the media in actively finding and exposing Teixeira, revealing his identity instead of protecting him.
The media frenzy appeared unanimous in its focus on identifying the leaker more than reporting on the newsworthy content of the material.
The Exact Opposite of WikiLeaks
Julian Assange speaking from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, August 2012. (wl dreamer, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
In contrast, Assange went to the absolute limits of human endurance for the sake of protecting whistleblowing sources.
In 2017, early in the Trump Administration, Trump was reportedly willing to negotiate a pardon for Assange if he would out the sources of the DNC Emails and disprove Russiagate once and for all.
In August of 2016, Assange made comments on Dutch Television that all but admitted the source of the DNC emails was the murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. So, why not admit the identity of a dead source, if it indeed was Rich, disprove Russiagate, and gain his freedom?
Because WikiLeaks’ obligation, according to Assange, was the absolute protection of sources no matter the cost. It is a principle that may prove to cost the award-winning journalist his life.
When civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the “Discord Leaker” bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top FBI official does it, it’s just news. In fact, officials talk openly about using “strategic leaks” as a P.R. staple.
Most readers might not remember Daniel Ellsburg, but for those of us who came of age during the Vietnam War, the maelstrom that formed around him and his actions helped to define that era. Ellsburg, of course, is famous because he leaked a number of internal government documents called the Pentagon Papers in which the writers expressed skepticism about the chances for U.S. success in the Vietnam War.
Ellsburg chose to leak to the New York Times and the Washington Post, which at that time (as well as today) were the print voices of the political and academic elites. By 1971, when the papers printed some of the documents (after the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow publication), the war was well out of favor with the Democratic Party – whose politicians had started the war in the first place – and it had been three years since Walter Cronkite denounced it on his evening broadcast.
The Richard Nixon administration, which had inherited the war and expanded it into neighboring Cambodia, charged Ellsburg with violating the Espionage Act of 1917, but the courts dismissed the charges in 1973 because of government misconduct. Ellsburg has been a free man since then and has been a celebrity in elite circles. (I saw him at a 2007 conference sponsored by the Future of Freedom Foundation. We gave him a standing ovation.)
Jack Texiera, the Massachusetts Air National guardsman who is accused of leaking U.S. Government documents relating to the Ukraine war and other U.S. interventions elsewhere, is unlikely to enjoy Ellsburg’s celebrity status with the progressive elites. Like Ellsburg, he is charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917; unlike Ellsburg, the recipient of the allegedly leaked documents was a website that clearly does not have favor of the NYT or the Post.
On a flight, reading about the FBI’s arrest of Jack Texiera, already dubbed the “Pentagon Leaker.” A quick review reveals multiple media portraits already out depicting him as a dangerous incel who shared his wares on Discord, a social media app where “racist memes” and “offensive jokes” flourish.
Taibbi adds that the Post labeled him as a “gun enthusiast” as a means to further discredit him. Unlike Ellsburg, Texiera will not have Ivy League law professors representing him, nor will the editorial pages of the nation’s elite newspapers defend him. Indeed, the NYT has boasted about how it found the identity of the alleged leaker before government authorities did. David French, who recently became a columnist for the NYT and since has used his new journalistic perch to shill for unlimited American involvement in the Ukraine war, has condemned both Texiera and his defenders on Twitter, calling them “repulsive.” The alleged leaks, declares French, “can do immense damage.” Tom Nichols in The Atlantic has declared him to be a “narcissist” endangering America.
In the past, elite media has defended leaks of government documents, especially when it is clear that government officials have been lying. Unfortunately, in this new age of progressive media, the press now plays detective for the government if the leaks come from the “wrong” people. Taibbi writes:
The New York Times and Washington Post trumpeted roles in helping identify Air National Guardsman Teixiera for the FBI. “We’re delivering him to you with his head on a platter,” is how Glenn (Greenwald) put it.
Of course, one must ask what it means to be “endangering America.”
“What’s happening is they’re training the AI to lie,” Musk said. “It’s bad.”
Musk said that AI is either being programmed to lie or to “either comment on some things, not comment on other things, but not to say what the data actually demands that it say.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk warned during an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated or else it could destroy humanity.
Musk said that AI had the potential to be more dangerous than almost anything because “it has the potential of civilizational destruction” and that it could be catastrophic to wait until after something bad has happened before deciding to implement regulations.
Musk said that he helped create ChatGPT because he saw Google racing to control the AI industry without seeming to understand the need for safety and controls.
When asked to give specifics of the danger that AI could pose to humanity, Musk said, “If you have a super-intelligent AI that is capable of writing incredibly well and in a way that is very influential, you know, convincing and then is constantly figuring out what is more convincing to people over time, and then enter social media, for example, Twitter, but also Facebook and others, you know, and potentially manipulates public opinion in a way that is very bad, how would we even know?”
“What’s happening is they’re training the AI to lie,” Musk said. “It’s bad.”
Musk said that AI is either being programmed to lie or to “either comment on some things, not comment on other things, but not to say what the data actually demands that it say.”
Back from vacation I made the mistake of scanning the news and was shocked by the media’s ongoing orgy of self-congratulation and Two-Minutes-Hating, in response to the capture of “Pentagon Leaker” Jack Teixeira. Glenn Greenwald has already covered a lot of this on System Update, but this represents a major new progression in the ongoing mutation of news media, from public advocate to cop.
The New York Times and Washington Post trumpeted roles in helping identify Air National Guardsman Teixiera for the FBI. “We’re delivering him to you with his head on a platter,” is how Glenn put it.
It’s an awful look for the press. This isn’t tracking down a serial killer or exposing Enron’s fraud. The alleged “crime” here is releasing true information, information that belongs to the American public and is secret only by official designation. At most, a newspaper might decide not to publish such information, but to help jail the leaker? It’s nuts. Reporters are supposed to be interested in everything and listen to information without judgment, like doctors, yet the whole industry is working itself into a moral frenzy because a bunch of overgrown Minecraft enthusiasts were privately passing around a few truths like a joint.
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But many incorrectly imagine that a future technocratic dystopia created by those measures would look a lot different from the dystopia we’re in right now, and it simply would not. Those measures would be used to help keep this current system locked in place, not to create a new one.
I had a nightmare that I leaked some classified information and got arrested and waterboarded by New York Times reporters.
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The goal is to keep us fighting with as much hostility as possible over issues which inconvenience our rulers as little as possible. It’s really amazing how successful they are at this.
The other day I saw a video of a guy angrily running over a case of Budweiser with a monster truck for reasons that made no sense to me, and everyone was excitedly yelling their opinions about it, and I was just like, oh my god we are so fucked. They’ve got us totally wrapped up.
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You couldn’t design a more effective totalitarian dystopia than the one we’re in right now. One where everyone’s brainwashed by propaganda without even knowing it, where everyone thinks, acts, votes and shops exactly as their rulers want them to, all while thinking they are free.
People worry about technocratic escalations like increasing surveillance, digital IDs, central bank digital currencies etc, and rightly so; those measures do give the powerful a greater degree of power over the populace. But many incorrectly imagine that a future technocratic dystopia created by those measures would look a lot different from the dystopia we’re in right now, and it simply would not. Those measures would be used to help keep this current system locked in place, not to create a new one.
People imagine totalitarian dystopia as some dark threat looming in the future because they don’t understand how profoundly unfree we already are right now. They think we’re free because we can choose what to buy at the supermarket and call the president “Brandon”, but we’re not. They imagine that our rulers have some grand conspiracy to create a dystopia where they can force us all to do as they wish, not realizing that we’re already in a dystopia where we are doing exactly as they wish. It really can’t be improved upon. They’re just locking it in.
Seriously, think about it: what could the rulers of western society possibly extract from us that they’re not already getting? There’s no meaningful political opposition, no antiwar movement, no anti-capitalist movement, very little critical thought — they’ve got total control. Everything we do in this dystopia is designed to funnel profit into the coffers of the oligarchs and power into the hands of the imperialists, and all efforts to resist and change these funneling systems have been successfully quashed by mass-scale psychological manipulation.
This totalitarian dystopia looks like freedom because they let us more or less do what we want, while controlling what it is that we want to do using mass-scale manipulation. They further bolster this by creating systems where what we do has little or no meaningful effect. Even if we had actual software in our brains that gave our rulers total and complete control over our minds, they’d have the masses think and behave in more or less the same way they do right now.
The primary weapon of our totalitarian rulers is not surveillance, police robots, digital IDs or CBDCs — their primary weapon is propaganda.
MCViewPoint 
