The 'New World Order'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:06:00 +0000

The Great Reset

Economic Shutdown - Food Bank
The New World Order

One Possibility!

In regards to the current economic situation, because of last year's global recession and also the recent economic slowdown a catastrophic global economic crisis has occurred.

After the stock market crashed, all of the financial markets were closed for two weeks. Many were in a state of shock!

Hyperinflation, already a concern in Latin America had begun to affect other economies as well. Because of these concerns regarding hyperinflation and the stock market crash there was total chaos, globally! Everyone panicked so much that there was a run on the banks so all of the banks were forced to close. Some have since reopened. The media and the press had 24/7 coverage of all of this on every tv channel.

One could buy a cup of coffee for a
million bolivars in Venezuela 2018
Some businesses were forced by the government to temporarily close their doors during which time government employees examined business records to any companies/corporations they wanted. Also, the internet and all social media sites were shut down so they could start a new internet service with only government sanctioned streaming news programs. The reason they said was that it was a necessary evil and we had to accept it.

Asian News Program Reports On The
Global Economic Collapse And Crisis
Now they're telling us on the daily news reports that some sort of global restructuring is going on behind the scenes involving all of the world's financial markets, economic blocks, and that everything will be okay. The other day we heard they would be implementing a new global cashless system any day now and when this happens we will no longer be able to use cash. Biometric and rfid systems/alternatives are being installed everywhere. Our hands, fingers and retinas were scanned and recorded for this new biometric system.

A Common Sight These Days In
A Shopping Center Parking lot!
Our newly appointed global leader made his first appearance and he somewhat explained our economic situation. Everyone's shocked that all of this has so suddenly come to pass after the recent stock market collapse. It's difficult to believe this is really happening. It's crazy. Everything that the global president says now becomes the law. NWO banners and slogans are showing up everywhere, throughout every neighborhood, street, and city. Massive tv displays are being installed throughout every region and major city. These are easily visible and are currently displaying the daily news reports.

We all agree martial law has become a reality. U.N. troops, the military police, and the local police have been stationed throughout every city. I never imagined anything like this could happen! Biometric and rfid identification systems are an everyday part of life. Everything's gone digital overnight. Those who have resisted this new system and are trying to live off the grid are already facing serious problems going about their daily lives.

Just recently there were new policies established for the masses regarding those who haven't gone in and received their biometric identification stating that it's now considered mandatory!

A friend of mine and his family had decided not to be included in the biometric program were on their way to live underground at one of their relatives properties. They were then stopped at one of the many local law enforcement checkpoints. Afterward he and his wife and kids have turned up missing and they haven't been seen or heard from since.

I really hope they haven't been sent to an internment camp!

Living in a global fascist state!

A Look At The 'Fascist' Agenda Behind The 'Great Reset'

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George Washington, "It is not my intention to doubt that the doctrine of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am." -- 1798.

The Goal Of The Illuminati Is A 'New World Order'

The Illuminati's 'Eye In The Triangle'

Bohemian Grove - Owl Shrine. Where
powerful men go to meet once yearly.
The perception is that our day-in day-out world is real.

The truth is that this world is a hoax, an elaborate deception spun by an all-powerful Illuminati controlled secret society presided over by the global elite.

The Illuminati call the shots in every major upheaval that they cause.

Their sphere of activity extends over the entire globe.

Their ambition and greed for wealth and power knows no bounds.

It is also their target to depopulate the globe and maintain a much lower population compared to what we have now.

There are certain methods of subjugation and control which are indispensable to the Illuminati.

One is, of course, complete authority over all financial systems, especially borrowing and lending.

With all banks under their direct supervision.

At the highest level the World Bank decides the fate of countries.

And it is an interesting and amazing fact that both the Federal Reserve Bank and the Bank of England are controlled by these Illuminati dynasties, in spite of the names of these banks.

It has been said that both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy wanted to change this system.

When A Real Power Move Is To Be Made It Will Be Done Suddenly!

If you want to bring about a "New World Order", you must first crash the current system.

Their Goal Is To Collapse & Sink The Dollar
The Illuminati will never allow their global hegemony to be destroyed.

The expression of this global control has been the US dollar.

They will trigger a global fiat currency meltdown.

All fiat currencies will be attacked and will collapse.

The last currency to collapse will be the US dollar.

They will then bring in a One World Digital Currency under the purview of a World Government.

There's going to be a somewhat prepared response for any controlled opposition, but the need for this is going to be relatively limited since there's not going to be a realistic threat to these Illuminati and their plans.

"We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent." James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, l950

THEY LIVE - The Movie

'They Live' is a 1988 American science fiction horror film written and directed by John Carpenter. The film stars Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. It follows a nameless drifter (called "John Nada" in the credits), who discovers the ruling class are in fact concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed, and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media. Based on Ray Nelson’s short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning, the movie is one of those rare subversive stories that forces viewers to question their world and their surroundings.

Right from the beginning, as we see Nada walking around Los Angeles with his backpack, the movie sets a particular mood: Something is not quite right. While Nada appears to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, the city is not happy and it is not too kind to happy-go-lucky kind of guys. Quite the contrary, there is a sense of impending doom in the air: Poverty is rampant, helicopters fly around the city and street preachers speak of soulless beings ruling the world.

"Rowdy" Roddy Piper As John Nada
A preacher’s description of the "masters" is applicable to the Illuminati.

Seeking shelter Nada enters an empty church and discovers a hidden box. In an alley, he opens the box and finds dozens of sunglasses. Taking one, he hides the box of remaining sunglasses in a garbage can.

Nada discovers the sunglasses have unique properties. After putting on a pair, he sees the world in black and white and discovers it is not what it seems. Media and advertising hide constant subliminal totalitarian commands to obey and conform. When viewing those of wealth and authority Nada discovers they're not human.

When he has his sunglasses on, Nada sees through the smoke and mirrors projected by advertisement and mass media. He only sees the core of their message and the only reason why they exist. No matter which magazine Nada flips open, he sees the same subliminal messages, which tells a lot about the true function of "celebrity" and "fashion" magazines. Despite the fact that they are all different, they all ultimately serve the same purpose: To reinforce messages from the elite to the masses.

We’re living in two worlds, you and I.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media. Indeed, what most people perceive as life in a privileged, progressive and free society — is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and "freedom," such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

"The invisible Money Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Zionism, Socialism. All of these are directed to making the United States a member of a World Government ..." —American Mercury magazine, December 1957

The NWO Dictator

The "Son of Perdition", "Antichrist",
"Beast", "Man of Sin", "NWO Dictator"
It is a fact that advocates of the New World Order will attempt to fulfill the world’s messianic expectations with an antichrist. 2nd Thessalonians 2:3-4 tells us that the last days will not come until “the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition,” commonly called the Antichrist.

He will sit in the Temple in Jerusalem and demand to be worshipped as God. 2nd Thessalonians 2:8 He is also called “the beast,” in the Book of Revelation. This tyrannical world dictator will be empowered by Satan and be the embodiment of all that is opposed to God.

Like Hitler the antichrist will "have a mouth that will speak very great things, and his look will be more imposing than his fellows." He will think to change times and laws and is referred to as "The King of fierce countenance" who shall "have an understanding of dark sentences." Daniel 7:20, 25; 8:23 Because of this man all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, will be forced to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, so that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Rev 13:16-17

This man will come on the scene and will offer to lead the world into total peace. He will be recognized throughout the world as a man of peace. He will promise to solve the Middle East conflict. He will bring harmony in the ecumenical-ecclesiastical church. He will offer economic solutions to the world's problems. He will arise as a world leader of peace and prosperity and reign exactly three and a half years as the world's greatest dictator.

Beware of when this man appears on the world scene. His leadership will take the world into a Great Tribulation of terror, wars, suffering and death.

Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! The sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened. Zechariah 11:17

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"The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." -David Rockefeller

The Illuminati 'New World Order'

1930's Great Depression.
Soup Kitchen and Bread Line
(A NWO World Wide Government Accompanied By A Solitary World Bank And A Single World Religion.) (The NWO Will Have A Mapped Out Strategy And A Strategic Plan To Implement The Use Of RFID Microchips, Biometric Access Systems, Biometric Collection Devices - Handheld Scanners And Cameras, Biometric Databases, Unlimited Government Access To Data, Data Mining, Unmanned Drones, Travel Restrictions, Surveillance Cameras, Pre-Crime Surveillance, And Militarized Police.)

On October 29, 1929, The Stock Market Crashed. Will it happen again? Will the world this time be rescued by and come under the control of a madman?

The NYSE. The world's largest stock exchange market. US stocks plunge amid Wall Street crisis - 29 Sept 08.
Time Magazine 13 Oct. 2008

The rise of the one-world government is beginning to take its shape as early as now.

Its form is hidden in the emerging New World Order.

The New World Order is being established by the Elite of the Elites and consists of the Fourth Reich of the SuperRich/the Lords of Money/the International Bank Cartels/the Secret Societies/the Brotherhood and the Order/the Committee of the 300 Billionaires of the World including the Power Elite of 13 Old Line Families through the years.

This group envisions a one world banking system and currency that will give in to a cashless computer financial system, one world centralized control of global population, global control of the world’s environment, economy, trade and army.

They have already made a giant step. The year was 1945, when they drafted and created the United Nations.

These men have unbelievable power and they have spelled out their agenda in advance.

That global agenda is constructed around six goals.

The method by which these are going to be brought about will most likely be either a GLOBAL DEPRESSION, THIRD WORLD WAR, or MAYBE BOTH.

Goal #1 : The establishment of international economic order (cashless society)

Goal #2: The establishment of a one-world government

Goal #3 : The conquest and subjugation of two super powers (USA and USSR)

Goal #4: The ascension of the United States of Europe as the dominant nation in a Confederated one-world government

Goal #5: The ushering in of a supreme world leader to preside over the new unified one-world government

Goal #6 : The establishment of a one-world religion which will coordinate all the world’s religions, cults, faith groups and spiritual beliefs under the guidance of Supreme Pontiff

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"It's Necessary To Establish A Universal Regime And Empire Over The Whole World ...." "Let me control a peoples currency and I care not who makes their laws..." Adam Weishaupt Founder Of The Bavarian Illuminati

Project N. O. L. A. National Crime Camera Program

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A true Community-Based Crime Camera program, cameras may be installed on homes, businesses, churches, and schools as well as utility poles and public buildings then stream directly to your local authorities and the Project NOLA National RTCC at the University of New Orleans. Available Nationwide, Project NOLA will make your community a safer place to live, work and visit!

Don't worry about purchasing, renting or leasing expensive cameras as Project NOLA uses its own funds to purchase extremely high-end crime cameras for your community. Most all camera models provided by Project NOLA feature Sony STARVIS NightVision to see Color at Night, Advanced Artificial Intelligence to accurately and automatically detect and alert upon suspicious activity, redundant recording to prevent data lose, generously long 5 year warranties, and more!

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"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever." George Orwell author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, a glimpse at a dystopian future where the world is run by totalitarian regimes.

Panoptic Surveillance See-Thru 3D System

A Panoptic Video Surveillance See-Thru 3D System could be loosely described as a formalised, scalable implementation of X-ray vision. The system enables one or more surveillance agents, using a single high resolution, auto-stereoscopic display, to remotely monitor the security situation of an arbitrarily large number of locations at-a-glance.

The system would allow a single agent to monitor thousands of places at the same time without overwhelming them with the massive amount of information being processed and displayed. It enables this by using artificial intelligence to determine what’s important to look at.

The surveillance agent's mental load is radically optimized towards monitoring only what is most critical to security: presence and movement of (groups of) people and vehicles inside a campus/site and its buildings as well as any security-sensitive events (such as fires, smoke, badge access, assemblies, gun-shots, people running etc).

Agents can see, hear and transport their focused viewpoint through walls, floors and ceilings, zooming into a specific location to monitor it at a level so acute that it seems beyond the levels of even science fiction.

Designed to enable both wholistic site-wide and granular-level security, the system is ideal for monitoring airports, shipping ports, transit sites and other ports-of-entry, hotels, casinos, shopping malls, campuses, military bases, large buildings and building complexes, offering total situational awareness at a glance.

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"The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." Zbigniew Brzezinski

The Rise Of The New World Order

An Egyptian Pyramid Capstone. Symbolic Of The
Elite That Are Going To Rule Over Us In The NWO.
The recent history of the world is a history of conflicts between secret societies.

Established upper-class families with 'old money' have founded and finance the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Rhodes Trust, Skull and Bones, Trilateral Commission, and similar think tanks and private clubs.

These are the Illuminati, who plot to impose their totalitarian New World Order over us — an authoritarian world government controlled by the United Nations and a global central bank.

The whole Earth will be going through great changes soon, such as: climate changes, warfare, economic impacts, etc. All of this will work towards the fulfillment of a world government. This final kingdom or global empire is described in the Book of Daniel in several dreams and visions.

An Egyptian Pyramid With A Capstone In Place.
Fulfillment of the visions of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream - (in part).

'You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue--an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay'. Daniel 2:31-32

In succession the Babylonians gave way to the Medo-Persians, and the Medo-Persians gave way to the Greeks, and the Greeks gave way to the Romans. It was the Romans who were in power at the time of Christ. There had been almost an unbroken sequence of world empires from Nebuchadnezzar until the time of Christ.

BAPHOMET/SATAN/LUCIFER
Nebuchadnezzar's dream indicated that one empire would be replaced by another. The iron legs, feet and toes of the statue represented the future empire of Rome. This final kingdom would come at the very end of time or end of the age!

Daniel's Dream - (in part).

'After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast--terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns. While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully.' Daniel 7:7,8

The interesting thing to notice here is that, in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, there are ten toes on the feet, and in Daniel's dream, the final form of a world government had ten horns. So the number ten is very significant in the last form of world governments which is still future.

Since the Roman Empire ceased to exist as a real empire, how many world empires have existed? There have been some serious attempts. Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Hitler, tried to conquer their world. None of them succeeded. The Bible says there are only four of these world empires, and then a final form of the fourth one--feet made partly of iron and partly of clay. What would the iron and clay mean? It is a Revived Roman Empire--partly of the old iron of the ancient Roman empire, and partly of clay, something weaker and brittle. It would include some of the old areas, but it would not be as strong and monolithic as the old Roman Empire.

We are looking for another empire that will come out of ten nations/economic blocs and then become a world power.

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"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority." Strobe Talbot, Deputy Secretary of State, TIME, l992

Police Drones Are Starting To Think For Themselves

When the Chula Vista police receive a 911 call, they can dispatch a flying drone with the press of a button.

On a recent afternoon, from a launchpad on the roof of the Chula Vista Police Department, they sent a drone across the city to a crowded parking lot where a young man was asleep in the front seat of a stolen car with drug paraphernalia on his lap.

When the man left the car, carrying a gun and a bag of heroin, a nearby police car had trouble following as he sprinted across the street and ducked behind a wall. But as he threw the gun into a dumpster and hid the bag of heroin, the drone, hovering above him, caught everything on camera. When he slipped through the back door of a strip mall, exited through the front door and ran down the sidewalk, it caught that, too.

Watching the live video feed, an officer back at headquarters relayed the details to the police on the scene, who soon caught the man and took him into custody. Later, they retrieved the gun and the heroin. And after another press of the button, the drone returned, on its own, to the roof.

Each day, the Chula Vista police respond to as many as 15 emergency calls with a drone, launching more than 4,100 flights since the program began two years ago. Chula Vista, a Southern California city with a population of 270,000, is the first in the country to adopt such a program, called Drone as First Responder.

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"I think we need a new world order and that China has to be part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in, they have to own it in the same way as the United States owns…the current order," Billionaire globalist George Soros.

Welcome To The "New World Order"

Revelation 13: 16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Biometric identity cards integrate physical biological markers like iris scans and fingerprints into a single, highly secure smart card to verify a person's identity. These smart cards—often equipped with embedded microprocessors or memory chips—store encrypted biometric templates directly on the card or within a secure networked database

Government biometric ID cards integrate iris scans and fingerprints by embedding both physiological datasets onto a secure, encrypted smart card chip (usually via an EMV chip or an optical strip). This ensures that the cardholder's unique identity can be multi-factor authenticated both on-device and across centralized government databases.

How the Technology Works

Data Storage: Raw images of your fingerprint and iris patterns are not stored directly on the card. Instead, the biometric systems extract unique mathematical algorithms or templates and store them securely on the card's microchip.

On-Card Matching: Also known as match-on-card, this allows the card's embedded processor to securely verify the live scan of your iris or finger against the cryptographic template stored on the chip without transmitting your biometric data to an external server.

Centralized Verification: In systems utilizing AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) and ABIS (Automated Biometric Identification System), a live scan of the eye and finger is matched directly against massive central repositories (like the FBI's Next Generation Identification system in the U.S. or federal National ID databases) to guarantee absolute identity assurance.

The ID Card (Smart Card)

Embedded Microchips: These cards contain encrypted microprocessors that securely store biometric templates (not the actual raw image of your eye or finger).Match-on-Card Technology: The card itself verifies the biometrics. When you present your card and scan your fingerprint or iris, the scanner reads your traits, creates a live template, and compares it securely to the template stored on the card's chip.

The Biometric Scanners

Fingerprint Scanners: These are typically optical, capacitive, or ultrasonic sensors that read the unique ridges and valleys of your fingerprint.

Iris Scanners: These non-contact devices use near-infrared imaging to map the complex, unique patterns in the colored ring of your eye.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:00:00 +0000

The Illuminati

The Illuminati is a name that nowadays is used to talk of several groups characterized by secrecy, all groups working together, having one single goal, because they all share the same god. Historically however, it refers specifically to the Bavarian Illuminati, founded on May 1 of 1776, a secret society of people who believed to be enlighten, by this same so called “god” who in the Bible is called Lucifer, who gave them knowledge hidden from the masses which they all use for the ultimate goal of global domination through a New World Order under Lucifer as god. Their first and main rule is “Do not talk about Illuminati”. There is much proof that the Illuminati, referring to all these different secret societies, has been behind both World Wars plus the one coming up, as well as many other tragedies around the world, all that may had been necessary for them to come to World Domination, following their motto “Ordo ab Chao” (Order out of Chaos).

Adam Weishaupt
Adam Weishaupt

Adam Weishaupt is the man who is recorded as having started this secret society which would come to involve all Luciferian societies, even those dating back thousands of years ago; all to keep the plan of their ancestors alive ever since Nimrod, the first human who rebelled against the Most High and who chose to be king of the world.

Adam Weishaupt was taught by Jesuits and became a Freemason before starting the Illuminati. Freemasonry and Illuminati are not one and the same, although Freemasonry has come to be controlled by the Illuminati nowadays, keeping the Freemasons in the lower ranks in ignorance of their real goal and god, information which is held by those in the 33rd degree

All Seeing Eye on Pyramid
Adam Weishaupt once wrote:

“I did not bring Deism into Bavaria more than into Rome. I found it here, in great vigour, more abounding than in any of the neighboring Protestant States. I am proud to be known to the world as the founder of the Illuminati.”

In the Book ¨Proof of Conspiracy¨ by John Robison we read:

"Weishaupt had long been scheming the establishment of an Association or Order, which in time, should govern the World."

Illuminati Pyramid

The Illuminati was created in Bavaria, Germany, but the symbol they used as their logo seems to come from Egypt, or even the Mayans, and it holds a very significant meaning, it can be found on the United States one dollar bill.

At the bottom of the pyramid we can see the Letters MDCCLXXVI , which are the Roman numerals equivalent to 1776, which many believe are there to commemorate the independence of the United States but instead, it is there because this was the year that the Plan of the Illuminati for a New World Order would be set in motion on the “New World” called America.

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"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite." Senator William Jenner, 1954

Video Surveillance Gets Smarter

The City of Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications and IBM implemented one of the most advanced city-wide intelligent security system ever conceived. The engagement is a part of Chicago's Operation Virtual Shield, a project that encompasses one of the world's largest video security deployments.

IBM helped the City experts and network engineers to design and implement a surveillance strategy infrastructure to capture, monitor and fully index video for real-time and forensic-related safety applications. This entailed building a unified fiber network throughout the downtown Chicago area, deploying a critical wireless infrastructure to offer flexibility as required, installing hundreds of new surveillance cameras, linking thousands of preexisting cameras to the network, and creating a fully redundant backend system to monitor the video, store the images and allow for business continuity and disaster recovery applications.

Chicago's security solution is designed to provide several benefits to both city officials and citizens including: real-time video surveillance intelligence for proactive homeland security monitoring; faster response time to emergencies; more effective deployment of emergency responders; and increased travel efficiency through traffic congestion tracking.

Many things go unnoticed in big cities every day, but that world has now changed in Chicago with this video surveillance system that can recognize anomalies and alert authorities to take a closer look.

"Chicago is really light years ahead of any metropolitan area in the U.S. now," said Sam Docknevich, who heads video-surveillance consulting for IBM.

Chicago already had thousands of security cameras in use by businesses and police - including some equipped with devices that could recognize the sound of a gunshot, turn the cameras toward the source and place a 911 call. But the current system will let cameras analyze images in real time 24 hours a day.

"You're talking about creating something that knows no fatigue, no boredom and is absolutely focused," said Kevin Smith, spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

This system can be programmed to alert the city's emergency center whenever a camera spots a vehicle matching the description of one being sought by authorities.

The system can also be programmed to recognize license plates. It can alert emergency officials if the same car or truck circles the Sears Tower three times or if nobody picks up a backpack in Grant Park for, say, 30 seconds.

"Cities today are faced with ever-increasing threats and advanced security surveillance systems can be a critical component in ensuring safety," said Mike Daniels, senior vice president, IBM Global Technology Services. "IBM is proud to be a part of Operation Virtual Shield and the City of Chicago's visionary approach to homeland security."

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." - David Rockefeller

The Foundations Have Been Laid A Long Time Ago

The Apotheosis of George Washington as displayed on the ceiling of the Rotunda of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC (painted by Constantino Brumidi - 1865). It depicts George Washington rising to the heavens in glory sitting on a throne as a God. Very few recognize the spiritual elements of the architecture and the symbolism of this building which literally makes it a temple of Masonic mysteries. The city of Washington is even located in the District of the (Goddess of Columbia). In 1791, President Washington commissioned Pierre (Peter) Charles L’Enfant, a French-born architect, city planner and freemason, to design the new capital and City of Washington.

The masons had wanted America to be a 'New Atlantis' and Washington, D.C. a second Rome. They were committing America to what has been called 'A Secret Destiny'. This future 'destiny', is 'The New World Order'. Listen to an audiobook on Freemasonry - The Truth (right click to download)

Masonic Temple Buildings - Lodge Room

In order for a global "New World Order" economic system to be established with a one-world electronic currency the sovereignty of all nations must be undermined. Then, and only then, will everyone be forced to exist and live within the confines of a single global police state thereby losing our freedoms and rights as free human beings.

The ideal of a "New World Order" might never be closer than now. It may not be long before all of us experience an abrupt change in our way of living. There has been a group that consists of Masons, Jewish Bankers, and other influential wealthy individuals that has worked for a very long time through Freemasonry and the Order of the Illuminati to achieve this "New World Order". Their goal is to set up a Global Police State with a more controlled society and continuous surveillance over every citizen! First they’ll destroy this present world system (Old Order) and then bring in their global government. They have everything in place and ready to go so when the time is right they will make their move without any hesitation.

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"The New World Order cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the single most significant component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change its perceptions." – Dr. Henry Kissinger, World Action Council, April 19, 1994

Collapse Of The American Empire: Swift, Silent, Certain!

"One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse," warns anthropologist Jared Diamond in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed."

Many "civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

Now, Harvard's Niall Ferguson, one of the world's leading financial historians, echoes Diamond's warning: "Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine.

A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice." Yes, America is on the edge.

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"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson." — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fascism

Roman Fascist Symbol (left)

US House of Representatives chamber, United States Capitol (on the left and right of the podium)

Close Up

This symbol of absolute rule is commonly known as a fasces, and helped inspired the name of those who espoused such totalitarian power, the Fascists.

The word comes from fascio (plural: fasci), which may mean bundle, as in a political or militant group or a nation, but also from the fasces (rods bundled around an axe). One might say the fasces embodies the essence of fascism: The people are the sticks, tied to the state to form a strong, single unit.

The [individual] is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone. The State is the ax, which has the power to create, to enforce and to obliterate.

A fascist regime generally gains support by promoting a series of ideas through the media, public rallies and other forms of propaganda. These ideas include: a nation in crisis, an idealized past, and a need for social change.

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes." - SUPREME COURT JUSTICE FELIX FRANKFURTER, 1952

The Coming NWO Totalitarian State

A Global Government To Rule From The UN?

The Totalitarian State will be realized when the nations of this world come together as one body, having an omnipresent government presence where individual rights are routinely ignored.

1. Government Surveillance

In a Totalitarian State "You're Under Constant Surveillance!"

With our National Security Agency involved in wiretapping, maintaining a call database, and engaged in data-mining, we can foresee that Big Brother is no longer a fictional character. Each of us has a hand-held "computer/smart phone" we carry with us most everywhere we go, which we almost never turn off. We're monitored, in various ways, in our homes, cubicles at work, cafeterias, and also in public and private. Security cameras are everywhere!

In a Totalitarian State no place is safe!
2. Perpetual War

In a Totalitarian State, the Party embraces a policy of continual military skirmishes so as to eat up any economic surplus and keep people poor and under control. Today we can see governments having a similar course of action, moving seamlessly from one military conflict to another.

3. Bread and Circuses

In a Totalitarian State, the vast majority of the population are almost not even worthy of surveillance. So long as the Totalitarian State gives them a regular dose of food, alcohol, drugs, television, the lottery and pornography, they are considered to be under control.

4. A Police State

In a Totalitarian State the government exercises rigid and repressive control over the social, economic and political life of the population. There is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive. In a Totalitarian State, rights are non existent and laws are selectively enforced. The inhabitants of a Totalitarian State experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force, which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.

5. Newspeak

In a Totalitarian State language can be (mis)used to deceive and control the masses. In the real world today, political correctness and euphemism are both pervasive and pervasively derided. Some current examples are: "regime change" overthrow, "shock and awe" massive bombing, "revenue enhancement" tax increase, and "downsize" fire employees. If the Newspeak of today makes us wince, how much more will it when we're living in a Totalitarian State?

"It's up to us. No one is coming to help us. If we don’t make the effort, no one else will. It's time for the twilight of the idols. It's time for a new dawn, a new humanity, a new world order. It's time for the dawn of the Gods." - Adam Weishaupt

The Georgia Guidestones Partially Destroyed By Bomb Blast Are Brought Down

On one of the highest hilltops in Elbert County, Georgia stands a huge granite monument.

Engraved in eight different languages on the four giant stones that support the common capstone are 10 Guides, or commandments.

That monument is alternately referred to as The Georgia Guidestones, or the American Stonehenge.

Though relatively unknown to most people, it is an important link to the Occult Hierarchy that dominates the world in which we live.

The messages engraved on the Georgia Guidestones deal with four major fields:

(1) Governance and the establishment of a world government,

(2) Population and reproduction control,

(3) The environment and man's relationship to nature, and

(4) Spirituality.

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

2. Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.

3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

4. Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.

5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

9. Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.

10. Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.

Explosion Destroys Part Of Mysterious Monument In Georgia, Then They Are Brought Down

The Georgia Landmark Known as ‘America’s Stonehenge’ Is Destroyed in an Explosive Attack

For more than four decades, the Georgia Guidestones near Elberton Ga., have been an enigma. The authorities said, “unknown individuals” destroyed a large part of the structure.

An explosive device that “unknown individuals” detonated early on a Wednesday morning destroyed a granite monument in Georgia that was built under mysterious circumstances more than four decades ago and promoted by state officials as “America’s Stonehenge,” the authorities said.

The monument, known as the Georgia Guidestones, which was built about nine miles north of Elberton, Ga., had four granite slabs connected to a center pillar, with a capstone on top.

But around 4 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in July 2022, an explosive device was set off, destroying “a large portion of the structure,” the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. It is investigating the explosion together with the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office.

Though part of the monument was still standing after the explosion, the entirety had to be demolished by officials in the aftermath out of safety concerns.

Read more »

"By the end of this decade we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations ... a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable." -POPE JOHN PAUL II quoted by Malachi Martin in the book "The Keys of This Blood"

Monarch Mind Control

Katy In "Wide Awake" With Butterflies In Her Hair

The monarch butterfy symbolizes the mind control program Project Monarch. The trauma based mind control fragments the mind of the victim. Project Monarch was allegedly developed within the CIA’s MKUltra mind control experiments in the early 1950's.

Katy Perry’s music video “Wide Awake” is another music video among many from the music industry that conceals references to Monarch programming within its symbolism.

References to this practice occur often in mass media but are often coded using specific symbols and imagery.

The Monarch Mind Control Project is a mind control program, that was developed by the CIA, under Project MKULTRA.

Monarch Mind Control represents an important pillar of the New World Order. Authorities, celebrities, moderators, musicians, politicians, actors, sportsmen and others are being misused for the Illuminati agenda, to exemplify the wrong way of life and to condition us to accept the coming satanic age.

There have been many articles written which describe items of popular culture that conceal their symbolic references to an unknown, horrendous practice: Monarch programming. This technique of mind control seeks to create fully “programmable” individuals and is used by the shadowy elite in fields such as the military, politics and the murky underworld.

Another area in which mind control, especially Monarch programming, is used is the entertainment business – not only because some celebrities are actual victims of mind control, but because entertainment is used to subtly normalize and glamorize this awful practice through symbolism.

Katy Perry’s video Wide Awake is yet another music video that alludes to the concept of Monarch programming through its story line and its imagery. While this might not be obvious to most people, those who have some knowledge of the subject of mind control find it extremely blatant.

In many ways, the video resembles works such as the movies Labyrinth and Sucker Punch and music videos like Paramore’s Brick by Boring Brick. All of these productions visually represent the inner-world of Monarch slaves through a specific set of symbols: mirrors, butterflies (especially Monarch butterflies), mazes and so forth. Not only do these objects aptly portray psychological concepts, they are actual “trigger images” used in mind control on Monarch slaves. Wide Awake fully utilizes this set of symbols, which gives the story line a deeper, and more disturbing, meaning.

Read more »

"We are moving toward a new world order, the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road." Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987

Behind The Headlines: Crimes Of The Global 'Elite'

Sandy Hook Crisis Actor? False Flag?
For almost 30 years, investigator Ole Dammegård has been on a quest to find the truth behind some of the worst conspiracies in the history of world - such as the murders US President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Lennon and the blowing up of m/s Estonia killing at least 852 innocent people.

This has taken him on a very frightening and dangerous journey into unknown territories. What has been claimed as acts by lone madmen has turned out to be connected to the International military industrial complex and top level high finance, all sanctioned locally behind dark smoke screens. Ole has also analyzed the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was gunned down in February 1986.

Ole recently joined Behind the Headlines hosts Niall Bradley and Joe Quinn for a riveting radio show...

The transcript.

Read more »

"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists." J. Edgar Hoover

The Order Of The Illuminati

Its Origins, Its Methods and Its Influence on the World Events.

The Order of the Illuminati is often at the center of debates about the impact of secret societies on human history. Is the Illuminati a myth or does it truly secretly rule the world? This article attempts to shed some factual light on the Order of the Illuminati by reviewing some of the most important documents on the subject.

The world “Illuminati” is thrown around rather freely to describe the elite group that is secretly running the world. Most have a general idea of the meaning of the term, but are confused about the concepts and the ideas relating to it. Is the Illuminati the same thing as Freemasonry? What are their goals? What are their beliefs? Why do they act in secret? Do they practice occultism? This article attempts to draw a more precise picture of the Order by citing authors who have extensively studied the subject. Whether they are, at the end of the day, critics or apologists of the Illuminati, these authors base their thoughts on credible facts. Some of the most interesting documents on the Illuminati were written by initiates of Secret Societies as they understood the philosophical and spiritual undercurrent driving the movement forward. Using these works, we will look at the origins, the methods and the impacts of the Illuminati on world history.

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"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. Do I mean a conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, incredibly evil in intent." –Rep. Larry P. MacDonald, killed in Korean Air Lines 007, 1983

Surveillance Cameras With Computer Chips Or Smart Sensors That Predict And/Or Sense Criminal Activities, Alerts Police

With sophisticated cameras and smart sensor systems, law enforcement agencies and transportation departments across the United States are now able to proactively monitor and respond to crimes or accidents as they unfold; the sensors can also assist transportation departments in analyzing traffic patterns in real time; the system could allow officials to change one way streets, design real time traffic signals, and multiple speed limits to make traffic flow more smoothly.

The East Orange New Jersey police department was the first U.S. agency to install a Smart Imaging Sensor system as part of its broader network of security cameras around the city.

These smart sensors process images that the high-resolution cameras record in real time and can automatically detect and/or predict when a crime is occurring. When it senses something it will alert law enforcement officials instantly.

Government agencies and business around the world have already taken notice of predictive sensors.

Recently, an automated camera system called AIsight (pronounced eyesight), was installed in Boston after the 2013 marathon bombing, that monitors camera feeds in real time and alerts authorities if it spots unusual activity.

AIsight cameras use a statistical method called machine learning to learn what is normal for an area and then alerts on abnormal activity. That could be picking up anything from unusual loitering to activity occurring in restricted areas.

Read more »

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -H.L. Mencken

Soylent Green Or Bugs Your Choice!

Soylent Green Wafers

Soylent Green the Movie!

A nightmarish futuristic fantasy about the controlling power of big corporations and an innocent cop who stumbles on the truth.

In the future food shortages are so extreme that a jar of strawberry jam is $150 and people weep at the sight of beef. Housing in New York City, where "Soylent Green" is set, is only affordable to the richest of the rich. The elite, they're called.

Everyone else sleeps in their cars — or on the street.

At this time the Earth is overpopulated and totally polluted; natural resources have been exhausted, and the nourishment of the population is provided by Soylent Industries, a company that makes a food consisting of plankton from the oceans.

Bug Burger - Made From Buffalo Worms
Most of the World's population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation, including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as "high-energy vegetable concentrates". The newest product is Soylent Green: small green wafers which are advertised as being produced from "high-energy plankton". It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties but, like most other foods, in short supply which often leads to weekly food riots.

In New York City, when Soylent's member of the board, William R. Simonson, is murdered, apparently by a burglar at the Chelsea Towers West where he lives, efficient Detective Thorn is assigned to investigate the case with his partner Solomon "Sol" Roth.

Thorn comes to the fancy apartment and meets Simonson's bodyguard Tab Fielding and the "furniture" (woman that is rented together with the flat) Shirl and the detective concludes that the executive was not a burglary victim but executed. Further, he finds that the Governor Santini and other powerful men want to disrupt and end Thorn's investigation.

Edible Bag Of Seasoned and Crunchy, Crickets,
Grasshoppers, Silkworm Pupae, & Sago Worms
But Thorn is determined to continue his work and discovers a bizarre, disturbing secret of the ingredient used to manufacture Soylent Green.

Toward the end of the movie Thorn is injured and taken away by paramedics, and shouts out, “SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!”

Dead People to be exact!

Here's what we might expect soon in the New World Order diet.

Comparison to Pre-Collapse Times

In wealthy countries, in pre-Collapse times, it was customary for people to buy most of their food at large, corporate warehouse-stores called 'supermarkets'. Often, when people see pictures of these facilities, their reaction is that the photo must be a fake. The vast size, the piles of fresh-looking and exotic vegetables, the shelves and shelves of varied boxed and bottled and immaculately wrapped products, the neatly plastic-wrapped, perfect-looking meat, it seems impossible. It's all historically accurate, though. Those images are nothing like the modern reality of going to market, and it's hard for us today to imagine how this magical fantasy land of food that our ancestors took for granted was even physically possible.

The New World Order has not come close to restoring the pre-Collapse global food system, but with decades to reshape the ruined global systems of the early 21st century, a global trade and transportation network, and access to the entire world, they have been able to shape a new global food system which by and large is fairly enviable relative to a purely local food system.

Some New World Order Food Choices

Bugs, Bugs, And More Bugs!

How would like your bug burger prepared?

Read more »

"By the end of this decade we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations ... a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable." -Pope John Paul II

CyberExtruder's 2D to 3D Face Patent

CyberExtruder is a high tech company that has been given a patent for their process of creating reliable 3D models of a person’s face from a single or series of 2D images.

CyberExtruder has announced the release of Aureus 3D Version 5.7. "With Aureus 3D Version 5.7, we've achieved product performance at speeds unprecedented in the industry," says Paul Nicholas, President, and CEO. "With our 128 byte face template size, the smallest in the industry, we can perform matching on a database of 7.5 billion people (the world population) in 4.69 seconds. With speeds at this level coupled with superior accuracy and scalability, Aureus 3D Version 5.7 will change the industry. There’s nothing of its kind anywhere."

Aureus 3D Version 5.7 provides the easy to integrate and easy to deploy high-performance face recognition solution demanded in a wide variety of applications including loss prevention and security, access control, law enforcement and Safe City, and hospitality and gaming. Aureus 3D Version 5.7 is the perfect enhanced video analytic now required by industry leading VMS and PSIM systems.

A proprietary 2D to 3D face modeling technology mitigates the challenges of pose, lighting, and expression in combination with a novel deep neural network architecture that provides enhanced discrimination capability at high speed with low memory requirements. Providing OEM’s, solution integrators and end-users with the industry’s best facial recognition technology for a broad spectrum of real-world government and commercial applications.

CyberExtruder’s 2D-to-3D conversion is certainly an important innovation to the security and biometrics technology industries. Why? It enables better matching between offline photographs and surveillance video. While the matching of "watch list" images against surveillance video has traditionally achieved mixed results as a result of inadequate lighting, angle, expression, etc., this patent could signify a leap forward in terms of the quality and value of 3D facial images.

Research has focused on solutions to solve facial recognition’s weakest operational elements – Age, Pose, Illumination and Expression (known as the APIE problem).

The benefits of holistic 3D approach to face recognition are particularly evident when viewed in the context of mitigating errors in face matching due to subject pose (the angle of the person’s face relative to the camera) and expression (the person’s innate ability to deform their face).

Years of research have been aimed at developing ways in which a computer can not only understand how a human face is composed, but also how to differentiate one face from another. Security features which can now be applied across markets like loss prevention, financial services, law enforcement and security, healthcare, defense and intelligence and a myriad of marketing and customer service applications.

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." - NORMAN THOMAS, former U.S. Socialist Presidential Candidate

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman Launches Crypto Project 'Worldcoin'

Worldcoin's Eye Scanning Orb
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman has launched an audacious eyeball-scanning cryptocurrency startup 'Worldcoin' to help build a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online, enable global democratic processes and drastically increase economic opportunity. "If successful, we believe Worldcoin could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path to AI-funded UBI," Alex Blania and Sam Altman, Founders of Worldcoin.

Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID) and, where laws allow, a digital currency (WLD) received simply for being human.

The Orb Being Used In A Shopping Mall
According to the company, where the rules are less clear, such as in the US, steps will be taken so more people can benefit from both.

Users can now download World App, the first protocol-compatible wallet, and reserve their share. After visiting an Orb, a biometric verification device, they will receive a World ID. This lets them prove they are a real and unique person online while remaining completely private.

As the global distribution of Orbs is ramping up, users can find the closest one and book time to be verified with World App and at Worldcoin’s official website. In addition, the startup has begun the rollout of 1,500 Orbs to meet global demand for World ID.

"The project will increase the number of available Orbs to 1,500 throughout the summer and fall in more than 35 cities around the world," Worldcoin said in a blogpost. The new Orbs will be available in 35+ cities in over 20 countries, including India, across five continents between now and the end of 2023.

The availability of 1,500 Orbs will more than 5x sign-up capacity globally and enable millions of additional people to join the two million who have already signed up for World ID.

Read more »

"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991

Weather As A Force Multiplier

Category 5 Irma the Strongest
Atlantic Hurricane on Record
Owning The Weather In 2025
In 2025 US aerospace forces can "own the weather" by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to warfighting applications. Such a capability offers the warfighter tools to shape the battlespace in ways never before possible. It provides opportunities to impact operations across the full spectrum of conflict and is pertinent to all possible futures. The purpose of this paper is to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather modification system to achieve military objectives rather than to provide a detailed technical road map.

A high risk/high reward endeavor, weather modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the atom. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the enemy via small-scale tailoring of natural weather patterns, to complete dominance of global communications and counter-space control, weather modification offers the warfighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary.

Technology advancements in five major areas are necessary for an integrated weather modification capability: (1) advanced nonlinear modeling techniques, (2) computational capability, (3) information gathering and transmission, (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some intervention tools exist today and others may be developed and refined in the future.

Weather As A Force Multiplier: Owning The Weather In 2025 Research Paper

Read more »

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:58:00 +0000
America's Shopping Malls Are Dying A Slow Death

The Canton Centre Mall in Canton,
Ohio is boarded up and vacant
All across America, once-vibrant shopping malls are being boarded up.

Traffic-driving anchors like Sears and JCPenney are shutting down stores, and mall owners are having a hard time finding retailers large enough to replace them. With a fresh wave of closures on the horizon, the problem is set to accelerate, according to retail and real estate analysts.

About 15% of U.S. malls will fail or be converted into non-retail space within the next 10 years, according to Green Street Advisors, a real estate and REIT analytics firm. That's an increase from less than two years ago, when the firm predicted 10% of malls would fail or be converted.

"The risk of failure for a mall increases dramatically once you see anchor closures," said Cedric Lachance, managing director of Green Street Advisors. "Their health is very important ... and most of them are highly likely to continue closing stores."

Within 15 to 20 years, retail consultant Howard Davidowitz expects as many as half of America's shopping malls to fail. He predicts that only upscale shopping centers with anchors like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus will survive.

"Middle-level stores in middle-level malls are going to be extinct because they don't make sense," said Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, Inc., a retail consulting and investment banking firm. "That's why we haven't built a major enclosed mall since 2006."

Read more »

Surveillance cameras

170 surveillance cameras on one block! NYC now Camera City. In 2005, the NYCLU counted more than 4,000 street level cameras from the West Village down to Battery Park. The group also found that the 292 cameras along 125th Street in Central Harlem recorded nearly every movement on that busy street. "I would believe the number has dramatically increased" three years later, said Matt Faiella, staff attorney for the NYCLU. The cameras have myriad uses. The NYPD wants to install thousands to protect the city against terrorism. The NYPD's recently released plan to protect the city by installing some 3,000 additional cameras in the city raised concern at the NYCLU because it takes a new step in surveillance by creating a database of license plates and people's movements. The police said the images, including license plate captures, would be erased after 30 days. Because they're continually making new discoveries to increase the effectiveness of surveillance cameras, biometrics, rfid chips, etc., the government may soon be tracking us all.

High-Tech Laser Weapons

The next generation of futuristic weapons has arrived. The U.S. Navy announced that its high-tech laser weapon is ready to disable and destroy enemy drones and small boats, should the need arise.

The 30-kilowatt laser weapon system (LaWS) is housed aboard the USS Ponce, a naval vessel stationed in the Arabian Gulf— a body of water located south of Iraq that separates the Saudi Arabian peninsula from Iran.

While sailors have not yet used the new laser to destroy any real enemy targets, the Navy is prepared to do just that, if necessary, according to Rear. Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research.

Sailors operate the laser using a video game-type controller, according to Navy officials.

The first course of action is a nonlethal option — which amounts to a very bright glare. If a threat keeps coming they can increase the strength of the laser's highly concentrated beam, which will knock out the sensors or control systems on an enemy drone or vessel. If the adversary still doesn't get the hint, the beam can be turned up higher, making it capable of destroying the threat altogether.

Biometric Digital Fingerprint Scanner

Biometric technology, requiring digital fingerprints and a photograph for identification, is used by the Department of State to establish and verify the identities of visa applicants at embassies and consulates around the world through its BioVisa program. The Department of Homeland Security established the US-VISIT program under which a traveler’s biometrics are collected in his country, compared against a watch list of known criminals and suspected terrorists, and then verified again upon arrival in the United States. Biometrics are unique and virtually impossible to forge.

Hitachi Finger Vein Scanner

This is a new payment technology brought to us by Hitachi which makes your fingertip pay for transactions. This is a biometric cardless credit payment system, which adopts the uniqueness of the blood vessel patterns in each individual human body as the signature for payment authentication. The new biometric system is able to recognize pattern of the blood vessels in your fingers, so, what you need is to insert your finger for a scan to authenticate the credit card transactions. Blood vessels are hidden under the skin, which aren’t like retinas or fingerprints and shouldn’t be possible to counterfeit. In order for you to use your fingertip for making payment, you need to first register your finger vein pattern with the credit card company. The idea of cardless payment making use finger vein that has lowest counterfeit possibility is definitely good. A few of the common problems such as card loss and theft will be eliminated with this new system.

The Financial New World Order

A Connected Global Economy
Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund.” As the Telegraph reported, “the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body.”

It continued in stating that, "There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely to evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People's Bank of China." Further, "The creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like the first step towards a global financial regulator," or, in other words, a global central bank.

It is important to take a closer look at these "solutions" being proposed and implemented in the midst of the current global financial crisis. These are not new suggestions, as they have been in the plans of the global elite for a long time. However, in the midst of the current crisis, the elite have fast-tracked their agenda of forging a New World Order in finance. It is important to address the background to these proposed and imposed "solutions" and what effects they will have on the International Monetary System (IMS) and the global political economy as a whole.

Read more »

The Complete History Of Freemasonry

Chart Of Freemasonry. Click
on the image for a better view.
The creation of the New World Order (NWO) agenda was put in motion by the infamous character, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the one who decided to control the entire planet by any means necessary.

Of course, this meant: deception, control, financial enslavement, blackmail and murder... but also far graver things, like: wars, famine and depopulation... a genocide unlike any other before it.

Click on the image for a better view.
They are the richest clan in the world, and their empire was built on mountains of bones and sufferance.

1773 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild assembles twelve of his most influential friends, and convinces them that if they all pool their resources together, they can rule the world.

This meeting takes place in Frankfurt, Germany. Rothschild also informs his friends that he has found the perfect candidate, an individual of incredible intellect and ingenuity, to lead the organization he has planned – Adam Weishaupt.

May 1, 1776 – Adam Weishaupt (code named Spartacus) establishes a secret society called the Order of the Illuminati. Weishaupt is the Professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, part of Germany. The Illuminati seek to establish a New World Order. Their objectives are as follows:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments

2) Abolition of private property

3) Abolition of inheritance

4) Abolition of patriotism

5) Abolition of the family

6) Abolition of religion

7) Creation of a world government

July, 1782 – The Order of the Illuminati joins forces with Freemasonry at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad. The Comte de Virieu, an attendee at the conference, comes away visibly shaken. When questioned about the “tragic secrets” he brought back with him, he replies: “I will not confide them to you. I can only tell you that all this is very much more serious than you think.” From this time on, according to his biographer, “the Comte de Virieu could only speak of Freemasonry with horror.”

Read more »

Behold The Cube: Saturn Worship

The Black Box or Cube, or any other
color box/cube can represent Saturn.
(The Elite worship Saturn and receive energy from it! By using the cube/box symbol and along with the pyramid, all seeing eye, owl, pentagram, fire/torch, monarch butterfly, rising sun, etc. symbols they are revealing that they are very much in control. You'll see "The Black Box/Cube or any color box/cube" along with the other symbols being used in corporate logos, movies, video games, commercials, and tv shows.)

The black cube is used to represent Saturn in numerous cultures. You might not know it, but the entire world has been worshiping Saturn for thousands of years. The cult has never stopped and its rites are still present to this day. Saturn, dubbed the "Lord of the Rings", is the reason why we exchange rings at weddings or put halos on the heads of godly people.

Since ancient times, sages gazed at the stars, admiring their heavenly glow and attributing them godly powers, based on their effect on humans.

Hexagon on Saturn's North Pole. One
can draw a 3D cube in this 2D Hexagon.

Jewish Tefillin/Phylactery
Before the Great Flood, Saturn was regarded by all mankind as the supreme god and ruler of the kings. Occult researchers affirm that Saturn ruled the kingdom of Atlantis and became the divine ancestor of all earthly patriarchs and kings.

The Babylonians called Saturn "the Star of Tammuz." Saturn worship has been perpetuated through numerous gods during antiquity: "Chronos, or Saturn, Dionysos, Hyperion, Atlas, Hercules, were all connected with 'a great Saturnian continent' they were kings that ruled over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and Spain." - Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations

In Egyptian mythology Isis is considered Saturn’s eldest daughter: "I am Isis, Queen of this country. I was instructed by Mercury. No one can destroy the laws which I have established. I am the eldest daughter of Saturn, most ancient of the Gods."

The "Kabballah" of Jewish mysticism/Masonry comes from KabbaAllah or "CubeGod" around which people gather and ceremonially walk in circles. Thus it can be said they are "circling the square or black Cube/God." Masons are also constantly referring to "circling the square" and "squaring the circle."

The Freemasonic G (Geometry/God) symbol within a compass and T-square symbolizes this as well. Just as people circle around their Cube-God Kabba, so the Masons use a compass/square around their "G" God/Geometry.

Astrologically Saturn represents darkness, misfortune, death and fear. Saturday is named after the Roman god Saturn, the Ancient Greeks referred to this god as Cronus. The symbol of Saturn/Cronus is the sickle. The sickle of Saturn and hammer of Thor (Jupiter/Zeus) combined is represented in the the symbol of Communism.

The core of the control over Planet Earth's populace lies in ancient cults. These cults are still in existence to this day. The elite follow these most ancient religions being influenced by sexual worship. The main cults are the worship of the Planet Saturn (El), Moon (Isis), Venus (Lucifer) & Sun (Ra).

Crisis Actors For False Flag Shootings?

A new group of actors is now available nationwide for active shooter drills and mall shooting full-scale exercises, announced Visionbox, Denver's leading professional actors studio.

Visionbox Crisis Actors are trained in criminal and victim behavior, and bring intense realism to simulated mass casualty incidents in public places.

Same Girl - Different Shootings?
The actors' stage acting experience, ranging from Shakespeare to contemporary American theater, enables them to "stay in character" throughout an exercise, and improvise scenes of extreme stress while strictly following official exercise scenarios.

The actors regularly rehearse scenarios involving the Incident Command System and crisis communications, and appear in interactive training films produced in both 2D and stereoscopic 3D.

Producers formed the group to demonstrate emerging security technologies, help first responders visualize life-saving procedures, and assist trainers in delivering superior hands-on crisis response training.

For example, with a large shopping center, the producers review all security camera views and design dramatic scenes specifically for existing camera angles, robotic camera sweeps, and manually-controlled camera moves.

The actors can play the part of the shooters, mall employees, shoppers in the mall, shoppers who continue to arrive at the mall, media reporters and others rushing to the mall, and persons in motor vehicles around the mall, etc.

UN report calls for new global reserve currency to replace US dollar

UN Says New Currency Is Needed to Fix Broken ‘Confidence Game’. The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, the United Nations said.

UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development said today in a report.

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The Illuminati Eye Of Horus

The main methods of showing this symbol in the past were by using an eyepatch or winking. Today it's usually with one eye open and the other eye covered by one's hand or an object.

We are so amazingly distracted – baseball, football, 24 hour news, Kardashians, manufactured racism, manufactured politics, false flag events, etc.

We have Googled our way into a love for darkness rather than light.

There is a curious fascination with the perverse and the profane, with the wanton and the wicked.

Everywhere you look, there it is. The All-Seeing Eye Of Horus staring back at you from pop soda cans, sporting equipment, movies, television, radio, clothing. Even on the very dollar bill.

Why is the Illuminati All-Seeing Eye of Horus suddenly everywhere you turn? The answer is surprisingly simple, so simple in fact that it might escape our grasp.

This demonic symbol and sign reveals the Wicked One or Satan in the PERSON OF THE ANTICHRIST is about to take the stage.

Because of this man all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, will be forced to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, so that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

INITIALLY HE WILL BE RECOGNIZED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AS A MAN OF PEACE.

HE WILL OFFER ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS TO THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS.

HE WILL REIGN EXACTLY THREE AND A HALF YEARS AS THE WORLD'S GREATEST DICTATOR.

Beware of when this man appears on the world scene. His leadership will take the world into a Great Tribulation of terror, wars, suffering and death.

Maybe we should consider the days that we are living in and ask ourselves this question, "Are we living in the biblical last days?"

The New World Order

The Illuminati/Global Elite are the ones controlling those in government who willfully seek to take the left hand path.

The Illuminati are the ones controlling world affairs through present day governments and corporations and are behind events that will lead to the establishment of a New World Order.

There is a worldwide conspiracy being orchestrated by an extremely powerful and influential group of genetically-related individuals, at least at the highest echelons, which include many of the world's wealthiest people, top political leaders, and corporate elite, as well as members of the so-called Black Nobility of Europe, dominated by the British Crown. The Luciferian Agenda of the Secret Societies that are planning this New World Order is to have a World Government, World Religion, World Army, World Central Bank, World Currency and a micro-chipped population. This New World Order global government will be a fulfillment of bible prophecy concerning the last days. Daniel 8: 23 Rev. 13: 4, 5, 7

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The North American Union

Thomas Donohue (president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) on June 16, 2006 remarked that "for CEOs, North America is already a single market, and business decisions are no longer made with a Mexico strategy---or a Canada strategy---but, rather, with a North American strategy....I think it's pretty clear now that it no longer makes sense to talk about U.S. competitiveness and Mexican competitiveness---or, for that matter, about the competitiveness of Canada. We are all in this together---we, as North Americans." Youtube Video on NAFTA and the Council on Foreign Relations - Link

All UK citizens in ID database by 2017

All British citizens will have their fingerprints and photographs registered on a national ID database within 10 years under plans outlined by the Government.

Millions in sensitive jobs, including teachers, carers and health workers, will be among the first to be entered on to the identity register.

In a bid to kick start the project - the world's biggest - foreign nationals working in Britain will begin to be issued with cards from November. Starting next year, the first British citizens will be enrolled beginning with some airport staff, power station employees and people working on the London Olympics site.

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The Ultimate Weapon Of Mass Destruction: Scalar Weapons

"Electric power is everywhere! Present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels." Nikola Tesla

Electromagnetic pulse and plasma weapon R & D is rapidly occurring behind the misnomer of "Non Lethality," and clearly parallel Tesla's work. Major US defence contractors and leading government weapon research laboratories are intensely interested in "Directed Energy Weapons (DEW)." Research includes "Radio Frequency and Particle Beam Weapons", "Air and Space Based Directed Energy Weapons", and, among many others, "DEW Weapons Effects on Personnel". Of interest too, is a paper written by Australian defence analyst, Carlo Kopp, which outlines in considerable detail an "Electromagnetic Bomb." The "E-Bomb," Kopp says, has the ability to inflict damage "... not unlike the experience through exposure to close proximity lightning strikes." In a broadcast dated 27 February 1996, Beijing radio outlined advances in particle beam energy technology and alluded to a "weapon even more powerful than the 'death ray.'" The broadcast likened the weapon to a "Thunderbolt," adding that the moment it struck it's target (vaporising it), a temperature of 8000 degrees Celsius would be produced.

Not least are the comments of Boris Belitsky, a leading Russian Science and Engineering correspondent, broadcast on Voice of Russia, 24 February 1997. Belitsky in replying to a question on Russian military applications of microwave generators, stated "they can be used to fire a plasmoid, that is, a blob of plasma..."

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RFID Tattoos For Tracking Cows... And People?

Founders of SOMARK Innovations Inc. , Mark Pydynowski, left, and Ramos Mays, right, with their electronic ink tattoo device at their office in San Diego.

Did you know that Saint Louis based Somark Innovations successfully tested an "RFID tattoo" on cows and rats? Yes indeed, tattoo, not the ol' RFID chip found in passports, dogs, and Dutch VIP clubbers. Somark's system uses an array of needles to inject a passive RFID ink which can be read through the hair on your choice of beast. The ink can be either invisible or colored but Somark is keeping mum as to its exact contents. They only say that it doesn't contain any metals and is 100% biocompatible and chemically inert. The tattoo can be applied in 5 to 10 seconds with no shaving involved and can be read from up to 4 feet away -- the bigger the tattoo, the more information stored. Best of it all, it's apparently safe for humans to ingest allowing the FDA to track back Mad Cow Disease, e-coli outbreaks, and Soylent Green. Don't worry, they can't track you just as long as you chew your food like mama taught. However, with "military personnel" listed as Somark's "secondary target market," well, it's just a matter of time before we're all cattle now isn't it.

Cops In Riot Gear --- Freedom To Fascism

The Militarization of the Local Police

The Real Threat of Fascism. We all should realize and be aware of the fact that the nations Germany and Italy were liberal democracies before the rise of fascism.

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New Biometric Smart Cards

ActivCard, a specialist in IDentity Management software for remote access, single sign-on and digital ID card solutions, announced an expanded cooperation with its partner Precise Biometrics AB, developer and provider of world-leading and user-friendly biometric security solutions based on fingerprints, to deliver smart card-based identification (ID) badge solutions with biometric authentication. ActivCard has incorporated Precise Biometrics' technology for fingerprint matching on smart cards, "Precise Match-on-Card", to its "ActivCard Gold 2.2" software, the most successful and widely deployed smart ID card middleware platform available on the market today. By verifying the fingerprint that's on the card, the Precise Match-on-Card method guarantees that the reference biometric template (the user's identity) never leaves the card, so it is not subject to theft. ActivCard Identity Management System™ or AIMS is a vital part of the ActivCard IDM solution that includes ActivCard Gold™ middleware software to enable client authentication methods, including one-time-use dynamic passwords (SKI), PKI and biometrics. The IDM solution may include the ActivCard Applet Suite on the card for credential management, Trinity™ single sign-on software, and ActivPack™ AAA Server for remote access.

E-Smart Technologies is a leading provider of high technology security systems that can be used to combat fraud and terrorism. E-Smart products enable government agencies and commercial enterprises to continuously and securely verify, certify and manage identification and access of citizens, personnel, customers and any other persons seeking physical or logical access. E-Smart is the exclusive provider of the Biometric Verification Security System(TM) (BVS2)(TM), featuring the Super Smart Card(TM) for Asia and the US, which experts believe to be the world's only commercially available smartcard with a full on-card matching system for biometric ID verification. The Super Smart Card™ provides maximum security due to its unique architecture that incorporates a hardware based firewall system coupled with dynamic software protection. In addition to including an on-card biometric fingerprint sensor and digital photo ID, the Super Smart Card's multi- application design allows multiple independent and secure applications to co-exist and operate on the same card. Only the registered users finger can activate the card. The sensor performs with wet, dry, hot or cold fingers. This is not the case for most other sensors. The system prevents unauthorized use of any card or card application by requiring the authorized card-holder's fingerprint to initiate any transaction or access any information. If lost or stolen, the Super Smart Card™ is useless - no one else can activate it for use of any kind. Tampering permanently disables the card and destroys any information. Counterfeit or stolen cards cannot work on the system, and are totally useless.

The USA PATRIOT Act

The Reichstag fire (an act similar to 9/11), burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building in Berlin, Germany, on the night of Feb. 27, 1933 allowed the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933. This conferred dictatorial powers on Adolf Hitler. (Notice the "protecting the homeland" banner... (Isn't it interesting that they chose part of the very phrase Hitler used.) Hitler, "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland".)

On October 26, 2001, US President George W. Bush enacted the USA PATRIOT Act. The USA PATRIOT Act is officially the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". The bill was in direct response to the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. The goal of the Act was to reduce restrictions on law enforcement and government officials when investigating criminal activity.

9-11 False Flag Attacks
It gave international law organizations the right to probe and search citizen’s e-mail, medical, financial and personal records. Some of the main sections of the law enacted restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering, expanded the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, and broadened immigration laws in regards to detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The bill was passed by a wide margin in the US Congress.

The USA PATRIOT Act broadly expands law enforcement's surveillance and investigative powers and represents one of the most significant threats to civil liberties, privacy and democratic traditions in U.S. history. The Patriot Act gives sweeping search and surveillance to domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence agencies and eliminates checks and balances that previously gave courts the opportunity to ensure that those powers were not abused. The Patriot Act and follow-up legislation threatens the basic rights of millions of Americans.

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Was The San Bernardino Mass Shooting A False Flag Attack?

A Staged Event? False Flag?
Breaking News: The San Bernardino Mass Shooting just occurred hours ago in San Bernardino, California, around 11:00am local time on December 2nd, 2015.

The getaway car! Note the damage to the
front windows & the drivers side front tire.

Same car only on a different street?
Why was it placed at two locations?

Note the missing picket fence!
It’s important to question everything right from the start. The odds are that this is yet another false flag operation with the same old purposes of scaring the public, justifying martial law (school and hospital lockdowns) and pushing the gun control agenda.

Surprise, Surprise: Active Shooter Drill Scheduled at Same Time and Place

Readers of the independent media will know full well by now the hallmarks and telltale signs of these kind of false flag staged terror events, whether they are bombings, shootings, hijackings or any other kind of attack.

Almost without exception – from 9/11 to 7/7 to Sandy Hook and all the rest of them – the script includes drills at the same or nearby time and place, to fool people into initially thinking the operation is an exercise or drill, and to distract both the victims and public from the actual attack.

It comes as no surprise then to see that the San Bernardino mass shooting was in fact preceded by this announcement of an active shooter drill in the San Bernardino area on November 30th, 2015, just 2 days before today’s mass shooting.

“VICTORVILLE-(VVNG.com): Victor Valley College officials would like to inform students and area residents that there will be an “active shooter” training exercise on the VVC campus on Monday, November 30th.

There will be significant police presence at this time according to Chief Leonard Knight who said this training will last several hours. In order to avoid any confusion, the public is being notified ahead of time. Victor Valley College Police Department (VVCPD), San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department (SBCSD), Victorville Police Station, San Bernardino County Fire Department (SBCFD), Victorville Fire Station, and American Medical Response (AMR) have planned for and are conducting this exercise to ensure coordinated, timely and effective response to the college community, as well as enhance safety at Victor Valley College.”

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9/11 Attacks No Wreckage! Only A Round Hole At The Pentagon?

Close Up Image Of The Pentagon. No
Wreckage, Plane, Engines, Or Wings
"How easy is it for you to shift your belief system from 'I totally believe in my government' to 'Oh My God! What’s going on?' That’s exactly where I went in all of this." – Albert N. Stubblebine III

Albert N. Stubblebine III is a retired Major General in the United States Army. He was the commanding general of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command from 1981 to 1984. In this compelling interview, Stubblemine reveals the following information about the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001:

Stubblebine initially believed the official story regarding 9/11.

Then, he saw the hole in the Pentagon. The Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757.

All of the sensors around the Pentagon were turned off except one. That one sensor captured an image of the object that hit the Pentagon. At first it looked like a missile, but later the imagery was changed to look like a plane.

Note: The collapse of the twin towers was caused by controlled demolition – not the fuel from the airplanes.

Note: Larry Silverstein, the lease holder of the WTC complex, admitted that that BUILDING 7, which was not hit by a plane and had only a small fire, was intentionally "pulled" – which is phraseology used for controlled demolition.

An Early Image Of The Pentagon Before
The Collapse Of The Exterior Wall. 9/11
All of the air defense systems around Washington DC were turned off that day.

Also on 9/11, there was an exercise designed to mimic an attack on the towers by airplanes.

When you connect the dots, the picture says that what we were told by the media was not the real story.

Stubblebine, visibly upset, describes how he felt when he realized the truth about his government after having a strong belief in his country since early childhood: "My belief system was so strong from age five when I could remember standing on a parade ground at attention with not anybody telling me to do that – at West Point."

Below are some notes from the interview including a partial transcript.

5:15 Stubblebine hears about the 9/11 attacks: "We’re at war."

6:00 Stubblebine said there must have been intelligence information to know that an attack was coming and we didn’t see the signals. Somebody missed it.

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Tasers

"Taser" is an acronym for "Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle," a reference to juvenile adventure book character Tom Swift. A taser is a weapon that shoots two dart-like electrodes at its victims, then sending electric shocks through wire intended to stun a victim into submission, rendering him helpless and able to be controlled without excessive force. When the Taser electroshock weapon was introduced into widespread use in the early 1990s, it was touted as a "non-lethal" alternative to firearms, to be used to subdue criminals in situations that did not warrant the use of a deadly weapon. However, though the manufacturer as well as many law enforcement agencies continue to argue that tasers have reduced the need for officers to draw firearms and therefore resulted in fewer deaths, many civil rights groups and concerned citizens point to the more than 200 deaths that have resulted from tasers used by law enforcement officers as evidence that tasers are taking lives. One of the contributing factors to these taser injuries and taser deaths is the increasing use of tasers to subdue people who are not a serious threat to law enforcement officers. Instead of being used only in situations in which firearms would be used, tasers are more and more frequently used to simply subdue criminals in any kind of arrest situation. Officers may be subject to laws governing excessive force and police brutality because they sometimes risk lives unnecessarily when using tasers. Further, the news over the past few years has offered verifiable reports of police officers using tasers on individuals who are handicapped, pregnant, mentally-disabled or non-English-speaking, in addition to those who were simply objecting to an officer's aggression or inability to explain details of an arrest. The rise of cell phone camera technology and Internet video databases such as YouTube and LiveLeak has given the public more opportunity than ever to capture and display videos of taser incidents that are often astonishingly graphic.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Now The End Begins!

Close your eyes and imagine a world without electricity and modern conveniences: no Fox News, no Facebook, no email, no Blackberry, no cold drinks, no heat in the winter, no automobiles, no food and no way to cook it even if you had it.

It’s just become the end of the world as we know it.

Are you and your family going to survive?

Ours is a world of steaming hot lattes on demand, ice-cold beer in the twinkling of an eye, and internet and phone connections in a nanosecond.

We are the ultimate immediate gratification society.

And what would happen if ….

The dollar bought nothing

A virus could not be cured

Terrorists exploded nuclear bombs across the country

Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic activity all became more prevalent

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Surveillance Cameras With Computer Chips That Sense Criminal Activities, Alerts Police

( Right Top - A police officer closely monitors security camera images related to an ongoing crime. Bottom - Information on crime suspects is collected.)

With DigiSensory Technologies’ sophisticated cameras and sensor systems, law enforcement agencies and transportation departments across the United States are now able to proactively monitor and respond to crimes or accidents as they unfold; the company’s Avista sensors process the images that its 3.2 megapixel high-resolution camera records in real time and can automatically detect when a crime is occurring; when it senses something it will alert law enforcement officials instantly; the sensors can also assist transportation departments in analyzing traffic patterns in real time; the system could allow officials to change one way streets, design real time traffic signals, and multiple speed limits to make traffic flow more smoothly.

The East Orange New Jersey police department was the first U.S. agency to install DigiSensory’s Avista Smart Imaging Sensor system as part of its broader network of security cameras around the city.

The Avista sensors process the images that its 3.2 megapixel high-resolution camera records in real time and can automatically detect when a crime is occurring. When it senses something it will alert law enforcement officials instantly.

Government agencies and business around the world have already taken notice of DigiSensory Avista predictive sensors.

Read more »

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 08:50:00 +0000
Walmart Closing Locations Globally

Walmart announced it is closing 154 U.S. stores, according to a company press release, including the company’s 102 Walmart Express stores, the smallest format stores.

It is part of a global downsizing that will shutter 269 stores around the world out of Walmart's nearly 11,600 stores.

The smaller-format store format had been tested since 2011.

In addition to all the Express stores, 23 Neighborhood Markets, 12 Supercenters, seven stores in Puerto Rico, six discount centers and four Sam’s Clubs will be closed.

About 16,000 associates will be affected worldwide - roughly 10,000 of whom are in the U.S. - according to the company.

It said more than 95 percent of the closed stores in the U.S. are within 10 miles on average of another Walmart, so the hope is those associates can gain employment at nearby stores. In cases where that isn't available, transition assistance will be available, the company said.

Military vehicles at a Walmart parking lot?
“Actively managing our portfolio of assets is essential to maintaining a healthy business,” said Doug McMillon, president and CEO, Walmart Stores, Inc. “Closing stores is never an easy decision, but it is necessary to keep the company strong and positioned for the future. It’s important to remember that we’ll open well more than 300 stores around the world next year. So we are committed to growing, but we are being disciplined about it.”

However, some in affected communities were dismayed at the decision.

Michael Huffman of Waskom, TX, called the decision to close the Walmart Express in his town "a very bad and immoral corporate decision."

He said, "Walmart ran the only other grocery store in town out of business. ... There are a lot of elderly people in Waskom who need a grocery store."

Walmart said the stores it will close "represent less than 1 percent of both global square footage and revenue." The closings represent about 2 percent of Walmart stores globally, Walmart said.

The Bentonville, AR, big-box giant garnered a fiscal year 2015 revenue of $485.7 billion and employs about 2.2 million associates worldwide.

Frightening Frequencies: The Dangers Of 5G

As the old saying goes, give us an inch and inevitably we’ll want a mile. And certainly, this sentiment is true with technology.

Who doesn’t want faster, bigger (or smaller), more efficient? Take wireless mobile telecommunications. Our current broadband cellular network platform, 4G (or fourth generation), allows us to transmit data faster than 3G and everything that preceded. We can access information faster now than ever before in history. What more could we want? Oh, yes, transmission speeds powerful enough to accommodate the (rather horrifying) so-called Internet of Things. Which brings us to 5G.

Until now, mobile broadband networks have been designed to meet the needs of people. But 5G has been created with machines’ needs in mind, offering low-latency, high-efficiency data transfer. It achieves this by breaking data down into smaller packages, allowing for faster transmission times. Whereas 4G has a fifty-millisecond delay, 5G data transfer will offer a mere one-millisecond delay–we humans won’t notice the difference, but it will permit machines to achieve near-seamless communication. Which in itself may open a whole Pandora’s box of trouble for us – and our planet.

More bandwidth – more dangers of 5G

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New York City Police Department's Surveillance Helicopter

According to the NYPD, you won't even recognize that its there, but high above the heads of New York City's citizens, there is a $10 million special NYPD helicopter with an impressive arsenal of surveillance equipment inside it. The chopper, called "23", looks like plain helicopter on the outside, but on the inside it is chock-full of hi-tech gadgetry. The helicopter's surveillance cameras, including one for infrared photography, are mounted below the aircraft.

The chopper's arsenal of sophisticated surveillance and tracking equipment is powerful enough to stealthily read license plates - or even pedestrian's faces - from high above. The helicopter's surveillance system can beam live footage to police command centers or even to wireless hand-held devices. Without leaving Manhattan airspace, the chopper also was able to get a crystal-clear picture of jetliners waiting to take off from LaGuardia Airport and to survey Kennedy International Airport's jet fuel lines. The helicopter is just part of the department's efforts to adopt cutting-edge technology for its counterterrorism operations. The NYPD also plans to spend tens of millions of dollars strengthening security in the lower Manhattan business district with a network of closed-circuit television cameras and license-plate readers posted at bridges, tunnels and other entry points.

Enhanced Driver’s License Now Ready For Border

Ontario residents can now apply for an enhanced driver’s license to use instead of a passport when crossing into the United States, Transportation Minister Jim Bradley announced today, even though the new documents won’t be ready for weeks.

The U.S. will require passports or other secure identification documents for anyone crossing into the country by land or sea starting June 1, while a passport will still be required to enter the U.S. by air.

What is it?

A new high tech licence designed to prevent identity theft and possibly serve as an alternate to your passport when travelling to the U.S. But a Ministry spokesman admits that could be ‘years away.’

What’s special about it?

It has a second photo on the front, raised lettering of the license’s number, signature and date of birth, a fine-line background, a 2D barcode, micro and rainbow printing, and ultraviolet features among others.

When can you get it?

They’ll be issued the next time you renew your license, starting this month.

What’s the cost?

It won’t be more expensive, retaining the $75 charge you pay now.

What if you’ve just renewed your license?

You’re out of luck. The only way to get the new version is to move, change the information on your current card or wait until your next renewal five years from now.

CCTV Security Cameras

An explosion proof camera and various dome mounted cameras are pictured above. CCTV is an acronym that stands for Closed Circuit Television. It is defined as the use of one or more cameras used for surveillance purposes. It was initially developed to increase bank security and has since spread to every corner of the security industry. Home security systems, businesses, corporations, organizations, and schools are several examples of locations that implement CCTV Security Systems. They produce high quality, exceptionally sharp color images, and have motion sensors that track movement across an area. They can pick a person out of a crowd and lock on them, tracing their movements; they can run at night because of infrared technology. The possibilities are endless for CCTV, especially as the technology continues to develop.

Boston Bombing: Major Problems for Controlled Media

You’re a reporter for a TV news outlet.

You’ve become aware of a disturbing trend. Thousands of private citizens are now analyzing video and photographs of crime scenes and posting their findings.

They can’t be stopped. They’re looking at news footage, casual video, photos, and what they’re coming up with challenges the official story lines your network pushes.

Some of their analysis is good.

For example, video footage of the first bomb in Boston doesn’t appear to show any shrapnel damage to the fencing near the explosion, or to the blue canopy just above the street. You, the reporter, wonder about that.

The now-famous 78-year-old runner who fell down in the street, just after the first explosion? Security personnel wearing yellow jackets were standing closer to the bomb, but they didn’t wobble or duck or waver. You, the reporter, wonder about that, too.

You, the reporter, see a photo of a storefront which was presumably right next to the first bomb. The windows are blown out. But all the glass is lying in the street, which would indicate the force of the explosion was coming from inside the store. How is that possible, you ask yourself.

Then there are the quickly circulating photos of the man in the wheelchair. He’s missing large parts of both legs. People are pushing the chair. His legs aren't bleeding. And other posted photos show he already was wearing prosthetics?

Read more »

Globalization And A One World Economy

Corporate citizenship in the world economy. Transnational Corporations exert a great deal of power in the globalized world economy. Many corporations are richer and more powerful than the states that seek to regulate them. Through mergers and acquisitions corporations have been growing very rapidly and some of the largest TNCs now have annual profits exceeding the GDPs of many low and medium income countries.

Predictive Programming

Neo’s passport in 'The Matrix'
expired on September 11, 2001
What is predictive programming? Is it an invasive form of Subliminal Behavior Modification? Alan Watt author of 'Cutting Through The Matrix' says that, "Hollywood is the magician's wand which has been used to cast a spell on the unsuspecting public. Things or ideas which would otherwise be seen as bizarre, vulgar, undesirable or impossible are inserted into films in the realm of fantasy. When the viewer watches these films, his/her mind is left open to suggestion and the conditioning process begins. These same movies which are designed to program the average person, can give the discerning viewer a better understanding of the workings and the plan of the world agenda."

It used to be just TV and cinema, but now 'the screen' implies a number of different media flavours and delivery formats: television, film, HD, DVD, Blue Ray, computer/console games, and also the internet and mobile media.

The control system works by keeping everyone focused on the lowest levels of the pyramid, the base levels of illusion/reality. Within this contrived paradigm, people are conditioned to believe in the synthetic culture received through their screen. Cars and football, home makeovers and cooking, gossip and reality television, etc. It all amounts to the same thing: diversion. The magician’s misdirection distracts attention while the Illuminists controls your thoughts.

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U.K. To Begin Microchipping Prisoners

The British government is developing a plan to track current and former prisoners by means of microchips implanted under the skin, drawing intense criticism from probation officers and civil rights groups.

As a way to reduce prison crowding, many British prisoners are currently released under electronic monitoring, carried out by means of an ankle bracelet that transmits signals like those used by mobile phones. Now the Ministry of Justice is exploring the possibility of injecting prisoners in the back of the arm with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that contains information about their name, address and criminal record. Such chips, which contain a built-in antenna, could be scanned by special readers. The implantation of RFID chips in luggage, pets and livestock has become increasingly popular in recent years. In addition to monitoring incarcerated prisoners, the ministry hopes to use the chips on those who are on probation or other conditional release. By including a satellite uplink system in the chip, police would be able to use global positioning system (GPS) technology to track subjects' exact locations at all times. Click Here - to see a Rfid Chip image with details on individual parts.

The War Of Gog And Magog

(Nuclear War in the Middle East?)

With the threat that Israel or the U.S. could eventually opt for a military strike against Tehran's nuclear program or even actually strike Iran's nuclear facilities could be the start of a major regional war. Should the US or Israel intervene in Syria - the results could be the same.

Israel and even the entire world are now experiencing the most critical time in history. The president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, has stated again and again that his main goal is "to remove Israel from the map of the world" and for this he is preparing nuclear weapons. The "Palestinians", never existed as a nation inside Israel are fighting against Israel and since 1948 have been an instrument of the Arab-Muslim world. Islamic-terror organizations are surrounding Israel from every side and shooting missiles and rockets into Israel. Syria is armed with biological and chemical missiles aimed at Israel. All of the Arab countries have armed themselves with modern weapons to be used against Israel in the near future. The United States is putting pressure on Israel to divide the Land of Israel and to establish a 'Palestinian State'. Years after the re-establishment of the State of Israel and after several wars with Arab-Islamic nations that wanted to destroy Israel again and again, Israel is again facing pressure from every side with step-by-step preparations of the enemies of the people of Israel to destroy the State of Israel through an apocalyptic war with nuclear weapons that were never used in the past.

In bible prophecy, Ezekiel 38 & 39 informs us of a future war and invasion of Israel by a vast coalition of nations (Russia, Iran, Libya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Turkey and Moslem Republics) that surround it. This invasion could occur at any time because of the heightened tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions and the crisis in Syria. In regards to Iran clearly US and European powers fear that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon with UN sanctions aimed at pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment. Since Russia has developed close ties with Iran and Syria it makes sense that they would be invading along with the Islamic confederacy.

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Opt Out of a Body Scan? Then Brace Yourself

HAVING been taught by nuns in grade school and later going through military boot camp, I have always disliked uniformed authorities shouting at me. So I was unhappy last week when some security screeners at’Hare International Airport in Chicago started yelling.

“Opt out! We got an opt out!” one bellowed about me in a tone that people in my desert neighborhood in Tucson usually reserve for declaring, “Rattlesnake!”

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Biometric Technology

Before long, we may use fingerprints, iris scans, and voice recognition to log onto computers, buy groceries -- even when picking up kids from school. This could be you: At a convenience store, a scanner reads your fingerprints and deducts the price of a coffee and doughnut from your checking account. Once at the office, your employer uses software to monitor the rhythm of your typing or a Webcam to measure the proportions of your face before letting you onto the network. Your call to customer service won't go through until you're identified by the cadence of your voice.

Palm Reader
What: Fujitsu PalmSecure Measures: Vascular patterns and blood flow in the hand
Status: Widely available at ATMs and other locations in Japan. U.S. launch expected this year The PalmSecure bombards the user's hand with "near infrared" light to detect the pattern of blood vessels. Fujitsu is close-lipped about a U.S. debut expected later this year but says PalmSecure could be useful in health care and for granting access to buildings.

Let Your Fingers Do the Paying
What: Pay by Fingerprint device Measures: Fingerprints Status: available in certain grocery stores. Shoppers enrolled in the program can speed through checkout lines. This enables consumers to pay for goods and services with a swipe of their finger on a biometric sensor. It allowes secure access to checking, credit card, loyalty, healthcare, and other personal information, through the unique characteristics of an individual's biometric features, thereby creating a highly secure anti-identity theft platform.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:51:00 +0000
NSA Creating Spy System To Monitor Domestic Infrastructure

The National Security Agency has begun work on an "expansive" spy system that will monitor critical infrastructure inside the United States for cyber-attacks, in a move that detractors say could end up violating privacy rights and expanding the NSA's domestic spying abilities.

The Wall Street Journal cites unnamed sources as saying that the NSA has issued a $100-million contract to defense contractor Raytheon to build a system dubbed "Perfect Citizen," which will involve placing "sensors" at critical points in the computer networks of private and public organizations that run infrastructure, organizations such as nuclear power plants and electric grid operators.

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How America’s Police Became An Army: The 1033 Program

As many have noted, Ferguson, Missouri, looked like a war zone. And its police — kitted out with Marine - issue camouflage and military - grade body armor, toting short-barreled assault rifles, and rolling around in armored vehicles — are indistinguishable from soldiers.

America has been quietly arming its police for battle since the early 1990s.

Faced with a bloated military and what it perceived as a worsening drug crisis, the 101st Congress in 1990 enacted the National Defense Authorization Act.

Section 1208 of the NDAA allowed the Secretary of Defense to "transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is — (A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense." It was called the 1208 Program. In 1996, Congress replaced Section 1208 with Section 1033.

The idea was that if the U.S. wanted its police to act like drug warriors, it should equip them like warriors, which it has—to the tune of around $4.3 billion in equipment, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union. The St. Louis County Police Department’s annual budget is around $160 million. By providing law enforcement agencies with surplus military equipment free of charge, the NDAA encourages police to employ military weapons and military tactics.

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Full Body Scanners

(A TSA Agent working for Homeland Security views naked full-body images.)

What are full-body scanners? Remember the X-ray specs of science fiction comics that would let people see through walls and clothing? Full-body scanners are a bit like them. The scanners take advantage of the fact that at certain wavelengths,

TSA Scan Or Invasive Patdown?
electromagnetic waves can pass through clothes but not through the skin, metal or substances such as drugs and explosives. If your eyes were sensitive to these wavelengths like the scanners, every person you meet would appear naked, with pens, coins, belt buckles and the like magically festooned about their person.
You would also be able to see if they were carrying a knife, gun or explosives.

What are the health concerns surrounding them? There are two main types of full-body scanner. One uses X-rays while the other uses lower-energy millimetre wavelengths.

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The Coming False Prophet

A papal tapestry is unfurled and draped over the edge of the balcony as cardinals gather on the left and right sides of the balcony, looking out over the crowd in St Peter's Square.

The crowd cheers and starts chanting after hearing the announcement that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has been voted as the new pope. We're now all waiting for Prevost to appear on the balcony, with the crowd continuing to make noise and wave flags in anticipation.

The number of people in St Peter's Square rose to more than 40,000. The flow of people toward the square increased significantly after the white smoke.

In his first speech as Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected pontiff, Cardinal Robert Prevost, said "Peace be with you all". He also called for the Church to "build bridges" and paid tribute to his predecessor, Pope Francis. The speech was delivered from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

A LAMB WITH TWO HORNS!

(Many believe that a pope will be the false prophet of Revelation 13: 11, and that this pope will unite the world's many faiths and then compel/force the masses to worship the antichrist. The time frame for this will be in the middle of the final seven year period.)

'And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH'. (Revelation 17:5) What will be the final form of Babylon the Great? We can be sure that the Whore:

(1) Will be personified as 'the False Prophet' (Revelation 16:13). Since Babylon the Great only rides the Beast, i.e., 'I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast [the Antichrist]' (17:3), she is not to be confused with the Beast himself.

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The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

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RFID Tag System

(Wal-Mart RFID tags to Track Clothing. A Wal-Mart employee uses a handheld scanner to read EPC labels on men's denim jeans.)

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are embedded in a growing number of personal items and identity documents. Because the tags were designed to be powerful tracking devices and they typically incorporate little security, people wearing or carrying them are vulnerable to surreptitious surveillance and profiling.

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Iris Recognition

The iris offers a rich source of data for biometric measurement.

The patterns of the iris are unique and templates derived from the iris can yield identification performance which is better than DNA matching.

The iris is the only internal organ visible from the outside and is protected from environmental factors (such as dirt and abrasion) which can afflict other biometrics. Iris recognition offers advantages in accuracy, high speed of exhaustive search, non contact with sensors and passive collection methods.

In conclusion iris recognition is an automated method of biometric identification that uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques on video images of one or both of the irises of an individual's eyes, whose complex patterns are unique, stable, and can be seen from some distance.

Biometrics

The FBI's Facial Recognition
Technology. Soon we all may
be in their biometric system.
Biometrics is the science and technology of measuring and analyzing biological data. In information technology, biometrics refers to technologies that measure and analyze human body characteristics, such as DNA, fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, voice patterns, facial patterns and hand measurements, for authentication purposes.

Though the field is still in its infancy, many people believe that biometrics will play a critical role in future computers, and especially in electronic commerce. Access levels will include the ability to use credit card information to make electronic purchases.

In the future biometrics will be used to identify and then control and monitor individuals or people in groups that are under surveillance. (Such as: prisoners, terrorists, and people that are a known threat or suspicious of being involved in an illegal or dishonest activity and are at risk to the government or police, etc.)

Echelon (Signals Intelligence)

Trillions of bytes of textual archive and thousands of online users, or gigabytes of live data stream per day that are filtered against tens of thousands of complex interest profiles.

Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world’s telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world. The United States National Security Agency (NSA) uses Echelon to intercept and process international communications passing via communications satellites also. It is one part of a global surveillance systems that intercept messages from the Internet, from undersea cables, from radio transmissions, from secret equipment installed inside embassies, or use orbiting satellites to monitor signals anywhere on the earth's surface.

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The Knights Templar And The Illuminati

The Knights Templar
No one exploring the myriad myths and tales of secret societies can leave out the unbelievably popular Knights Templar. There are links between this medieval order of warrior monks and Muslims, Masons, and even heretics, so we need to get a grasp of their darker side.

Whether stars of the Disney film National Treasure or pawns of modern-day political and commercial propaganda, the Knights Templar have taken root as one of the world’s leading mystery groups. But what is the truth? Did they really have a great secret? Did they really hide treasure? Were they really guardians of the Holy Bloodline? Let’s take a look.

Supposedly a group of nine knights were taken from the ruling nobility in the region of France known as Champagne, collected themselves together in Jerusalem around 1118 A.D., and formed the now infamous Knights Templar.

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Mass. State Police Check Out Boston Dynamics' Spot The Robot Dog

Spot The Robot Dog Formally SpotMini Redesigned
Spot can carry up to four hardware modules on its back, giving Spot whatever skill the robot needs for a specific job.

Cops have long had dogs, and robots, to help them do their jobs. And now, they have a robot dog.

Massachusetts State Police is the first law enforcement agency in the country to use Boston Dynamics' dog-like robot, called Spot. While the use of robotic technology is not new for state police, the temporary acquisition of Spot — a customizable robot some have called “terrifying” — is raising questions from civil rights advocates about how much oversight there should be over police robotics programs.

The state’s bomb squad had Spot on loan from the Waltham-based Boston Dynamics for three months starting in August until November, according to records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and reviewed by WBUR.

Robot Dogs At Work
The documents do not reveal a lot of details on the robot dog’s exact use, but a state police spokesman said Spot, like the department’s other robots, was used as a “mobile remote observation device” to provide troopers with images of suspicious devices or potentially hazardous locations, like where an armed suspect might be hiding.

“Robot technology is a valuable tool for law enforcement because of its ability to provide situational awareness of potentially dangerous environments,” state police spokesman David Procopio wrote.

State police say Spot was used in two incidents, in addition to testing.

Boston Dynamics vice president for business development Michael Perry said the company wants Spot to have lots of different uses, in industries ranging from oil and gas companies, to construction, to entertainment. He envisions police sending Spot into areas that are too hazardous for a human — a chemical spill, or near a suspected bomb, or into a hostage situation.

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Surveillance Cameras With Computer Chips Or Smart Sensors That Predict And/Or Sense Criminal Activities, Alerts Police

With sophisticated cameras and smart sensor systems, law enforcement agencies and transportation departments across the United States are now able to proactively monitor and respond to crimes or accidents as they unfold; the sensors can also assist transportation departments in analyzing traffic patterns in real time; the system could allow officials to change one way streets, design real time traffic signals, and multiple speed limits to make traffic flow more smoothly.

The East Orange New Jersey police department was the first U.S. agency to install a Smart Imaging Sensor system as part of its broader network of security cameras around the city.

These smart sensors process images that the high-resolution cameras record in real time and can automatically detect and/or predict when a crime is occurring. When it senses something it will alert law enforcement officials instantly.

Government agencies and business around the world have already taken notice of predictive sensors.

Recently, an automated camera system called AIsight (pronounced eyesight), was installed in Boston after the 2013 marathon bombing, that monitors camera feeds in real time and alerts authorities if it spots unusual activity.

AIsight cameras use a statistical method called machine learning to learn what is normal for an area and then alerts on abnormal activity. That could be picking up anything from unusual loitering to activity occurring in restricted areas.

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The Future Of Money: Gearing Up For Central Bank Digital Currency

IMF speech made on February 9, 2022

Let me start by thanking the Atlantic Council for providing a fitting venue to discuss central banks’ forays into Digital Currencies.

Since its founding in 1961, the Council has made important contributions to strategic, political, and economic policy debates. Those debates have served us well, helping us to test the boundaries of our thinking and be better prepared for what lies ahead.

So, today, we aim to test our thinking again. We have moved beyond conceptual discussions of CBDCs and we are now in the phase of experimentation. Central banks are rolling up their sleeves and familiarizing themselves with the bits and bytes of digital money.

These are still early days for CBDCs and we don’t quite know how far and how fast they will go. What we know is that central banks are building capacity to harness new technologies—to be ready for what may lie ahead.

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Global Control Through RFID Chips Or With Biometrics

Biometric Hand/Vein Recognition

An Inserted RFID Tracking Chip
There is a possible global economic crisis coming that will lead to a financial "melt down" that the elite could use in order to establish a Global Financial Economic System. This would give centralized power to the United Nation’s International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, creating a type of "Global Federal Reserve System".

This is setting the stage for a cashless electronic currency with the use of a high tech surveillance RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip to be implanted under one’s skin or with biometrics.

The Global Elite, blinded by their thirst for power, orchestrate obtaining total control over the people in the excuse of providing for more transparency; a greater surveillance of the world financial markets, cross border firms, money laundering, terrorist financing, etc…

They believe that they are the only ones capable of governing mankind properly. However, these globalists know very well that people will not easily give up their freedom of the use of cash to accept these "bio-chips" or a biometric system unless there is a worldwide panic, be it financial or maybe even a flu pandemic, etc. to convince the population that the only way not to lose everything is to accept the use of a RFID chip or biometric system.

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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 08:50:00 +0000

The Tower Of Babel

(Gen. 11:1-9) Symbolizes the common effort of mankind to build a common political society. The Louise Weiss EU Parliamentary Building in Strassbourg that opened in December 2000

is said to have Pieter Brueghel's (Tower Of Babel) painting for its model. Also, on this promotional poster used by the EU there's a reproduction of The Tower of Babel with construction cranes above it and the caption 'Many tongues, one voice.' The myriad number of groups, governments, societies and interest groups who are working toward a New World Order are gradually placing all the necessary things in order to facilitate the revived dream of Babel. This would unite all nations and peoples in the worship of Lucifer. What's the logic behind the symbolism in this building? The EU says it is seeking to "build up the house of Europe" - a task yet to be completed. The building is complete and in use, but is designed to look unfinished, and even has ringed platforms to represent scaffolding. And here's the scary part. A reporter questioning "Why the Tower of Babel" as a design concept, was answered in an astounding way by an EU official. He said, "What they failed to complete 3000 years ago – we in Europe will finish now!"

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MIT Shows Off A Smart Tattoo That Can Turn Your Skin Into A Touchpad

With DuoSkin, wearables are no longer just an accessory. They become part of your skin.

The MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research set out to create on-skin user interfaces using gold leaf, which is commonly found in craft stores, as a conductor. Piggybacking on the trend in body-art and metallic jewelry-like tattoos, the team decided to repurpose gold leaf because it is “robust to movements and skin deformations during motion…[and] both workable and aesthetic in appearance.” The smart tattoos, outlined in a paper that has been presented at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers, look like fashion statements but they include other materials and electrical components that make the tattoos interactive.

The tattoos can turn into an interface that can be used, for example, as a trackpad or a button to remotely control your phone. Alternatively, they can track and show you information about yourself. For example, by including thermochromic displays that change color in reaction to heat, the tattoos can show you your body temperature.

A third possible function is wireless communication. The tattoo could include an NFC (near field communications) tag, an electrical component that includes small microchips to store data that can be read by phones or other NFC devices nearby. In the near future, the technology could serve as a substitute for identification, subway cards, and even movie tickets, DuoSkin’s lead researcher Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao said in an interview.

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What Are Chemtrails And How Are They Harming Our Food And Water?

Chemtrails
Just when you thought Monsanto was under wraps, you find out they’re up to something even more horrific. What’s even worse is that it all started a long time ago!

In the late 1960s Monsanto supported the secret Muad’ Dib Geoengineering Lab to develop “chemtrail” technology; their crown jewel program to protect earth from global warming via weather control. Sounds so humanitarian, right? Wrong!

Most folks discover the reality of “chemtrails” by initially reading about it online and then going outside, looking up into the sky, and noticing the crisscrossing streaks of white clouds trailing behind jet aircraft, stretching from horizon to horizon, eventually turning the sky into a murky haze. Chemtrails are like science fiction turned reality.

This article will answer the question “what are chemtrails?” We'll share the effects of chemtrails on your environment, food, water and their connection to cancer. This information is meant to increase your awareness of the toxicity in our environment and encourage you to eliminate toxins that are within your control whenever and wherever you can.

What Are Chemtrails?

Chemtrails are geo-engineered aerosols that are loaded with toxic chemicals, including but not limited to: barium, strontium 90, aluminum, cadmium, zinc, viruses and “chaff.” Chaff looks like snow but it’s actually Mylar fibers (like in fiberglass) coated with aluminum, desiccated blood cells, plastic, and paper. Polymer chemist Dr. R. Michael Castle has studied atmospheric polymers for years, and he has identified microscopic polymers comprised of genetically-engineered fungal forms mutated with viruses, which are now part of the air we breathe.

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China Is Building A "Social Credit" System.

Everyone listen, stated the lady, "Dear passengers, people who travel without a ticket, or behave disorderly, or smoke in public areas, will be punished according to regulations and the behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system. To avoid a negative record of personal credit please follow the relevant regulations and help with the orders on the train and at the station."

This is particularly chilling to anyone familiar with George Orwell's dystopian classic, 1984.

Is China's social credit system really the dystopian sci-fi scenario that many fear?

China’s draconian censorship efforts appear a world apart from the freedom of speech protections tenuously preserved in American society. But as the two world powers evolve the similarities are becoming just as striking as the differences. While their social designs diverge, their intended results do not: both seek to shrink the Overton Window in favor of what the governing class considers a healthier, more orderly, more moral discourse.

In China, censorship isn’t just limited to critiques of the government. It also includes what the ruling party considers moral rot. Underage drinking, drug use, violence, and hyper-sexualized content get scrubbed from media and film. This top-down social engineering finds its shape in the country’s new social-credit system, which punishes undesirable behavior like canceling dinner reservations or jaywalking by restricting travel rights or access to (financial) credit.

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Rfid Technology

RFID Label MPI Label Company | Alien chip | 96-bit

RFID tag UPM RAFLATAC | ShortDipole (ETSI) 96-bit Gen2 UHF

RFID tag UPM RAFLATAC | Frog DualDipole 96-bit Gen2 UHF

RFID tag UPM RAFLATAC | MiniDipole 96-bit Gen2 UHF

Implantable RFID chips RFID, Inc | used for animal tracking
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is an object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radio waves. All RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a radio frequency (RF) signal and perhaps other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal. The RFID tag can automatically be read from several meters away and does not have to be in the line of sight of the reader. The current thrust in RFID use in supply chain management for large enterprises. RFID increases the speed and accuracy with which inventory can be tracked and managed thereby saving money for the business.

Biometrics To Be Used On IDs.

Minnesota to Use Facial Recognition Technology on IDs -- State will add biometrics component to prevent fake driver's licenses

BY BILL SALISBURY

Pioneer Press via Knight Ridder
Minnesota soon will start using biometric face scans to prevent would-be crooks — and underage wannabe smokers and drinkers — from getting fake driver's licenses from the state.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Thursday announced plans to add biometric facial recognition technology to driver's licenses as part of a broader effort to protect consumers from identity theft and unauthorized use of personal data. That effort will include stiffer criminal penalties for hackers and others who abuse access to personal data on computers.

"Identity theft causes great trauma, inconvenience and damage to a lot of people and families," Pawlenty said at a Capitol news conference. He said the state must do more to crack down on identity thieves and strengthen safeguards for personal information.

Driver's licenses are one of the state's most important forms of identification, he said, and biometric technology will help law enforcement officers ensure that individuals are who they say they are.

The new technology would match an individual's driver's license photo with images in the state's database.

Here's how Pawlenty's office described it: "Facial recognition technology converts an image into a mathematical computer algorithm as a basis for a positive match. It uses the structure of a person's face — such as width between the eyes, forehead depth and nose length — to assign mathematical points of reference creating a unique data file."

The face scans will enable the state to detect people attempting to obtain licenses using the same photo with multiple names and birth dates, or the same name and birth date with multiple people's photos, said state Public Safety Commissioner Michael Campion. "The technology … will create a higher level of integrity for Minnesota's driver's licenses."

Pawlenty said 13 other states use the technology, and it has proved "highly accurate."

No new photos will be needed to develop the state's face-scan file. State workers will scan photos on current driver's licenses to create the new file.

The new technology will cost about $1 to $2 per driver's license. Pawlenty said an $800,000 federal grant will offset these costs and that he will ask the 2006 Legislature to pay the rest.

Although he believes he has the power to implement the new system on his own, he said he would ask the Legislature to approve it.

For Minnesota retailers, the new technology means customers will be far less likely to try to use fake identification cards to make purchases, especially of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, said Steve Rush, board chairman of the Minnesota Retailers Association. Businesses will not have equipment to read the face scans, however; only the state will have that ability.

Parallels - The Roman Empire And America

Today, the United States has many parallels as an empire to that of the collapse of the ancient Roman Empire. There were many causes of the fall of Rome however, but the main problems which led to it are exactly the same as those we face currently, here in America as a nation.

The fall of the Roman Empire took a few centuries for the total dissolution of that government to take place. However, in America the same problems that brought down the Roman Empire are expedited to the point that we are looking at decades, rather than centuries before the collapse of the US government.

The following are examples of what brought Rome down as an empire, and what is going to destroy the American government in a very short time.

Antagonism between the Senate and the Emperor:

We experience this in the US today in the form of the constant bickering between the House and Senate in their disdain of the President over power, money, and control.

Decline in Morals:

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New Rfid Technology

RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which already have shrunk to half the size of a grain of sand. They listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting their unique ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries: They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response. You should become familiar with RFID technology because you'll be hearing much more about it soon. Retailers adore the concept. Wal-Mart and the U.K.-based grocery chain Tesco are starting to install "smart shelves" with networked RFID readers. In what will become the largest test of the technology, consumer goods giant Gillette recently said it would purchase 500 million RFID tags from Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif. It becomes unnervingly easy to imagine a scenario where everything you buy that's more expensive than a Snickers will sport RFID tags, which typically include a 64-bit unique identifier yielding about 18 thousand trillion possible values. KSW-Microtec, a German company, has invented washable RFID tags designed to be sewn into clothing. And according to EE Times, the European central bank is considering embedding RFID tags into banknotes by 2005.

The VeriChip, made by Applied Digital Solutions, Inc., is an implantable RFID microchip for humans. It is about the size of a grain of rice. The chip has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and can be used to hold patient-approved health-care information.

Los Angeles To Install Body Scanners In The Subway

The Los Angeles' subway will become the first mass transit system in the U.S. to install body scanners that screen passengers for weapons and explosives, officials said recently.

The deployment of the portable scanners, which project waves to do full-body screenings of passengers walking through a station without slowing them down, will happen in the coming months, said Alex Wiggins, who runs the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's law enforcement division.

The machines scan for metallic and non-metallic objects on a person's body, can detect suspicious items from 30 feet (9 meters) away and have the capability of scanning more than 2,000 passengers per hour.

"We're dealing with persistent threats to our transportation systems in our country," said Transportation Security Administration Administrator David Pekoske. "Our job is to ensure security in the transportation systems so that a terrorist incident does not happen on our watch."

Recently, Pekoske and other officials demonstrated the new machines, which are being purchased from Thruvision, which is headquartered in the United Kingdom.

"We're looking specifically for weapons that have the ability to cause a mass-casualty event," Wiggins said. "We're looking for explosive vests, we're looking for assault rifles. We're not necessarily looking for smaller weapons that don't have the ability to inflict mass casualties."

In addition to the Thruvision scanners, the agency is also planning to purchase other body scanners — which resemble white television cameras on tripods — that have the ability to move around and hone in on specific people and angles, Wiggins said.

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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 08:49:00 +0000
Electronic surveillance: it's everywhere and it's growing

"Eye-in-the-sky" surveillance dome camera
mounted on top of a tall steel pole.

Has the demand for and use of electronic surveillance increased? The rapid changes in telecommunications technology has been accompanied by a growth in the potential intrusiveness of electronic surveillance and a steady increase in government surveillance activity. Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior of people, objects or processes within systems for conformity to expected or desired norms. Although the word surveillance literally means "watching over" the term is often used for all forms of observation or monitoring, not just visual observation. Such as the art of watching over the activities of persons or groups from a position of higher authority. Surveillance may be covert (without a persons knowledge) or overt (perhaps with frequent reminders such as "we are watching over you"). Because they're continually making new discoveries to increase the effectiveness of biometrics, rfid chips, etc., the government may soon be tracking us all.

The Future Of Biometrics

Iris scanner

The next ten years will bring major advancements in the field of biometrics -- things like reading faces, fingerprints and irises to safeguard our own security and personal information.

The headlines stated "Europe Is United Again", May 2004

10 nations in eastern Europe and Mediterranean join bloc. Europe stood proudly reunited yesterday almost six decades after it was split in two by the Cold War, as 10 nations in eastern Europe and the Mediterranean took their places in the European Union. The once-communist states of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia officially joined the EU family. Mediterranean islands Cyprus and Malta joined them as well, rounding out what is indisputably the world’s biggest single economic bloc, and a fledgling political force, with a total population of 455 million, the EU now surpasses the United States as the world's biggest economy.

Will a global religious system the Roman Catholic Church become the Mystery Babylon spoken of in the bible?

In Revelation 17:1-6 The angel said to John come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Face, Eye, Retina, Fingerprint, And Hand Scanning Devices

Face Recognition Technology
Here users are provided the opportunity to identify or verify themselves either by biometric identification, ID card or PIN/password.

Hand Scanning Device
These units use state of the art 3D imaging technology providing for a secure biometric recognition authentication.

All of the operations of these biometric devices can be accessed from the menu on the touchscreen or keypad.

These devices feature a high definition infrared (IR) camera that enables user identification even in dimly lit environments.

When using a biometric face reader the person looks into the camera, it captures the relative position, size, and shape of the user’s eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw which is then used to subsequently verify or identify the user.

These biometric face readers offer lightning quick detection.

That's ideal for areas where a large flux of people have to pass.

They're also capable of recognizing the same face with up to 15 different facial expressions.

So no matter how you look or feel the reader will know that it's you!

In biometric applications, physiological characteristics are extensively used for personal identification. Some of these characteristics have also served forensics and law enforcement. Facial features, friction ridges on fingertips, ear geometry, toe print, teeth pattern, etc. have been historically used in court of law to prove an individual’s presence at crime scenes. Physiological characteristics are unique to an individual and have served as a proven way for positively identification. For example, fingerprints have been used extensively for personal identification in civil as well as law enforcement applications. Technological advancement made it possible to identify and map other physiological and behavioral features that could be leveraged to establish an individual’s identity.

Both retina and facial recognition are categorized as physiological characteristic. Retina recognition is more popular in high security applications where reliability aspect is crucial, while face biometrics is used for mass surveillance as well as personal identification. Many mobile banking and finance application use face biometrics, popularly known as ‘selfie banking’, to identify and authenticate its customers. Though application of retina biometrics has been shrinking and gradually getting outnumbered by iris recognition in recent years, it is still one of the most reliable biometrics. Retina scan requires a very close encounter with the scanning device by using a beam of light deep inside the eye which is considered to be invasive, while iris pattern can be captured with near infrared illumination from a distance which is comparatively safer for human eye. Despite their differences, retina and face biometrics share common objectives: identifying and authenticating people.

A Global Currency

The Phoenix a hypothetical currency rises from the ashes of the dollar.

In 1988, The Economist ran an article titled, Get Ready for the Phoenix, in which they wrote.

A New Global Digital System Will
Replace All Of Today's Currencies
THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries, and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let's say, the phoenix.
At the beginning of 1988 this appears an outlandish prediction. Proposals for eventual monetary union proliferated five and ten years ago, but they hardly envisaged the setbacks of 1987.

The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today's national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the last twentieth century.

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British Military Attacks Drones With Huge Laser - Costs $13 Per Shot

New DragonFire laser defense system has just been tested and the laser shoots down high-speed drones and can even hit a coin.

It can shoot down drones moving at 400 mph with incredible accuracy.

With a contract signed to provide the Royal Navy with the weapon for $415 million (£316 million), it'll be on board a UK destroyer in 2027, with a rapidly accelerated deployment timeframe, five years ahead of the originally anticipated date.

The UK government just announced that the contract with MBDA will ensure the laser-directed energy weapon (LDEW) system is on board a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer very soon.

The recent test runs of DragonFire at the UK Ministry of Defence's (MoD) Hebrides range witnessed the laser taking out drones flying at up to 650km/h (just over 400 mph). The MoD tells us that this LDEW can hit a coin smaller than a US Quarter from a kilometer away, which is a mind-boggling feat.

The UK DragonFire programme brings together the best of UK industry. It leverages MBDA's decades of weapon system manufacturing expertise, Leonardo's position as a world-leading authority in laser technology, electro-optics, and advanced targeting, and QinetiQ's experience as the only UK company to successfully develop and safely operate high-energy laser sources in the UK and coherent beam-combining technology.

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Body Check

(Dynamic structured light acquisition techniques use a set of lines projected onto an object of interest to generate a 3D surface. Fingerprints or facial scans can be acquired using this method without the need for contact, making acquisition possible from a distance)

In recent years a number of countries have initiated biometric schemes aimed at protecting their borders. Although they are typically launched amid claims that they will accelerate the immigration process, this isn't always their central purpose, and frequently the new systems culminate in long queues.

Back in 2002 Australia unveiled its plans for SmartGate, a system that uses biometric facial recognition technology linked to the passenger's e-passport.

Recent travellers in the US may have been taken by surprise by a new biometric security system in place at key airports, which requires ten fingerprints for identification. Clear Cards, which carry biometric information, have been used by Americans since 2005.

CLEAR is a private program that uses biometrics — your identity is verified through a scan of your iris or fingerprints, depending on which image is most distinctive. Clear’s biometric identity verifier is now in 24 airports (34 soon) and eight sports stadiums.

Clear ID Pass document is available to US citizens and permanent residents. In addition, to the documents required to apply for the ID, applicants were required to submit digital images of their fingerprints and iris scans, as well as a digital photo before they are issued the document. Clear then "creates and stores a template, or mathematical representation, of the fingerprints and iris images, to create a unique biometric ID of the Member."

All of the data submitted by the applicant is sent to TSA, which creates an applicant's "security threat assessment" based upon a background check that's included its controversial "no-fly lists." After the verification process, each approved applicant is issued a “card” that allows them to access designated airport security fast lanes for processing through security at airports nationwide. The card also gives access to discount parking and speedy entry into major sports venues.

Dubai has established e-gates where registered passengers swipe an ID card and pass through a fingerprint scan, and the Netherlands has introduced Privium, a paid-for iris scanning service that offers a range of benefits, including lounge access and fast-track check-in.

e-Borders

Now e-Borders (electronic borders), a programme run by the UK Home Office's UK Border Agency at a likely total cost of £1.2bn, aims to tighten security at the country's borders. e-Borders is a joint programme run in partnership with the police and intelligence agencies. It requires commercial carriers and owners, or operators, of all vessels to submit detailed passenger, service and crew data in advance of their departure to and from the UK.

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The Illuminati Arrive In America - 1785

George Washington concerning the Illuminati
(George Washington (1732-1799) Founding Father, 1st US President, 'Father of the Country'. He spoke of the Illuminati in a letter written to the Reverend G. W. Snyder (24 October 1798). He said: "It is not my intention to doubt that the doctrines of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread to the United States. On the contrary, no one is more fully satisfied of this fact than I am".)

Washington issued several warnings shortly before his death, about the Illuminati. Washington knew that the Illuminati, based in Europe, had arrived on American shores. In 1789; John Robison, a Scottish scientist warned all Masonic leaders in America that the Illuminati had infiltrated into their lodges and on July 19, 1789; David Papen, President of Harvard University, issued the same warning to the graduating-class and lectured them on how Illuminism was having an influence on American politics and religion, and to top it off; John Quincy Adams, who had organized the New England Masonic Lodges, issued his warnings.

In 1785, the Columbia Lodge of the Illuminati was established in New York City. Among its members were Governor DeWitt Clinton, Horace Greeley (politician and editor of the New York Daily Tribune), Charles Dana, and Clinton Roosevelt (the ancestor of Franklin D. Roosevelt). Roosevelt wrote a book called Science of Government Founded on Natural Law, in which he wrote: "There is no God of justice to order things aright on earth, if there be a God, he is a malicious and revengeful being, who created us for misery." He referred to himself and other members as the "enlightened ones," and said that the U.S. Constitution was a "leaky vessel" which was "hastily put together when we left the British flag," and therefore needed revision.

In 1786, a lodge was started in Portsmouth, Virginia, where allegedly, Thomas Jefferson was a member; followed by fourteen others in different cities of the thirteen colonies.

In April 1793 France sent new ambassador Edmond Genet to America so he could collect payment for the American debt incurred during the American Revolution. The money was to be used to finance France's war with England. However, his real reason for being here was to gain political favor for France and spread Illuminism, which he did through the establishment of 'Democratic Clubs.'

Washington said of "the clubs" that they "...would shake the government to its foundations."

Read more »

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:33:00 +0000
The Plan

Whether you believe in a spiritual war or not, you still need Salvation. It is all that will save you when this life on earth is finished.

Do you know beyond the shadow of a doubt where you would go if you died tonight? If not, please consider the following, we pray it’s a blessing to you. The Bible says there is only one way to Heaven

Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” (John 14:6)

Good works cannot save you.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Trust Jesus Christ today! Here’s what you must do:

1. Admit you are a sinner.

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:” (Romans 5:12)

“If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:10)

2. Be willing to turn from sin (repent).

Jesus said: “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:5)

“And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:” (Acts 17:30)

3. Believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

4. Upon believing the gospel, God declares you to be righteous and saves you by his grace.

“For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:10)

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

Why Are Sores For Those With The Beast's Mark? Is its Contagious?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:14:00 +0000

Scientists Discover the First-Ever Contagious Cancer in Fish
It's only the fourth known contagious cancer found in animals, but others may remain undetected.
A mysterious cluster of blackened skin lesions affecting catfish in New England turned out to have a stranger cause than anyone would have predicted: a contagious form of cancer.
Researchers in Vermont studied melanoma tumors collected from brown bullhead catfish (Ameiurus nebulosus) living in Lake Memphremagog. The tumors on different fish were genetically much more similar to each other than their hosts, they found, strongly pointing to the cancer’s infectious origin. It’s only the fourth ever kind of transmissible cancer discovered in animals, and there remain many questions about this cancer and others like it, the researchers say.
“Transmissible cancers are a puzzling biological phenomenon that are not expected to exist,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published Wednesday in Nature, “with the potential to devastate host populations.”
Blackened catfish
Lake Memphremagog is a freshwater lake that stretches from Quebec, Canada, to Vermont. Since 2012, both local biologists and fishers have been spotting an increasing number of brown bullhead catfish with blackened skin in the lake. Surveys have indicated that by 2014, roughly a third of catfish in the area had these lesions.
Though scientists initially suspected the lesions were directly caused by a virus or environmental toxin, it became evident that they were actually melanoma tumors. This only raised more questions since these catfish, like most species, are bottom dwellers unlikely to get much ultraviolet radiation exposure from the Sun (in humans, UV exposure is responsible for the vast majority of cases). The growing and high rates of cancer also indicated that something out of the ordinary was going on.
The researchers decided to genetically analyze tumors from affected fish and compare them to healthy tissue from the fish as well as other unaffected catfish. They expected to find mutations that might explain why these cells were more prone to becoming cancerous. Instead, they found evidence the tumors were very genetically different from their hosts; this then prompted a deeper whole-genome sequencing of the tumors.
Ultimately, they uncovered hundreds of thousands of genetic variants shared between the tumors that weren’t found in the fish hosts or other catfish, well beyond the sort of similarity you might get from a conventional type of cancer.
“When you look at shared variants in non-transmissible cancers, you see many random variants, and as you compare more and more cancers, they share fewer and fewer variants,” co-lead researcher Julie Dragon, an associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Vermont, told Gizmodo. “In the case of transmissible cancers, it is the opposite. The more you sample, the more shared variants you find.”
The researchers did investigate other possibilities, such as the introduction of toxins to the lake from a nearby landfill. But affected fish are widely distributed throughout the lake, and water quality tests haven’t revealed anything unusual. More recently, the researchers have also found this cancer among catfish populations in other ponds and lakes across New England, including places with no major human-made sources of pollutants. So, barring any huge surprises, the only plausible explanation is that this particular lineage of cancer has shifted into a parasite-like entity, one that has long outlived its original catfish host and now spreads to others like an infectious disease.
The mysteries of transmissible cancers
To date, transmissible cancers have been found in dogs, Tasmanian devils, and at least 10 different species of bivalve mollusks, including clams and mussels. This is the first ever documented in any fish and the first ever found in a freshwater animal.
There are plenty of unresolved mysteries about this cancer. Though it doesn’t pose any danger to humans, for instance, it’s still unclear how it might affect the long-term population health of brown bullhead catfish. Outbreaks of some transmissible tumors, like the one found in Tasmanian devils, have a fatality rate of 90%, yet transmissible venereal tumor in dogs is rarely fatal and highly curable.
We also don’t know how it transmits between the animals. Since these cancers have only been found in sexually mature catfish, it may primarily spread when the fish huddle close together during the spawning season. Yet it’s also possible these cells can survive long enough in lake bottoms to be caught by other fish (something similar happens with transmissible cancers in bivalves). And the environment might still play a role in fueling its spread; the researchers note these tumors tend to have high levels of arsenic, a well-known carcinogen. So toxins like arsenic or the hormonal changes of the spawning season might be making these fish more vulnerable to the cancer.
“A big [question] is how the cancer is avoiding the fish’s immune system. We will be exploring that for sure because it can tell us something about how cancers avoid the immune systems in humans as well,” Dragon said.
Another mystery to solve is when this cancer first split off from its original host. The researchers note that the first scientific reports of melanoma in brown bullhead catfish date back to the early 20th century, but naturalist and essayist Henry David Thoreau wrote about similar-looking fish in his home state of Massachusetts even earlier than that in the mid-1800s.
On a broader level, it’s likely there are even more transmissible cancers out there that have yet to be discovered, the researchers argue, and that their impact on the world is greater than we know.
“We think that these may be more widespread, but we are just not noticing them. You often don’t see things you are not looking for intentionally,” Dragon said.
The researchers next plan to continue studying other populations of these fish that seem to have this cancer and to start answering some of the questions above. And while these sorts of parasitic cancers aren’t a problem for humans (as far as we know, hopefully), the lessons we learn from them could still help us down the road, according to Dragon.
“What I hope folks take away is that cancer goes beyond humans, and genomics is a powerful tool for researching cancer and other diseases,” she said. “With this project we have a unique opportunity to research melanoma in a new way that could greatly benefit humans.”

Also:

Revelation 16:2
When the first angel emptied his bowl onto the earth, grievous sores broke out on those who had the mark of the beast on the forehead or right hand (Revelation 13:16–18). These were unbelievers who worshiped the beast. The Greek term here is helkos, which can refer to an ulcer or abscess—this is not a minor rash.
AI Overview
The sores on the kingdom of the beast refer to a specific biblical plague described in the Book of Revelation, targeting those who worship the beast.
Biblical Details of the Plague
The First Bowl: An angel pours out the first bowl of God's wrath onto the earth.
The Affliction: Foul, malignant, and painful sores (or ulcers) break out on people.
The Targets: The judgment specifically strikes individuals who have received the mark of the beast and who worship its image.

Also:

Seven Bowls Of God’s Wrath
A study through the book of Revelation.
Revelation 16:1-21 (NKJV)
16:1 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth." 2 So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. 3 Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died. 4 Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. 5 And I heard the angel of the waters saying: "You are righteous, O Lord, The One who is and who was and who is to be, Because You have judged these things. 6 For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, And You have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due." 7 And I heard another from the altar saying, "Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments." 8 Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. 9 And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory. 10 Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. 11 They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds. 12 Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. 13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. 15 "Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame." 16 And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon. 17 Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, "It is done!" 18 And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. 19 Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. 20 Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.
Sermon Transcript
Revelation 16:1 says, “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, ‘Go and pour out the bowls…”—or “vials”—“…of the wrath of God on the earth.’”
The Antichrist is thinking that he is in control, that he has created a one-world government and everyone must bow and worship him. He’s Satan’s man-of-the hour.
Revelation 16. Verse 1 says, “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, ‘Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.’”
Chapter 16 is perhaps not only the darkest chapter in Revelation, but it is one of the darkest chapters in the entire Bible.
In chapter 16, we move from the parenthetical section of chapters 10-15 to the chronological section of chapter 16. Then chapters 17-18 will be the next parenthetical section. The narrative or chronological section picks up again in chapter 19 with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
In Revelation 15:1, John says, “Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous: seven angels…”—here’s our introduction to them—“…having the seven last plagues, for in them the wrath of God is complete” or “filled up” or “finished.” Revelation 16:1 says, “Then I heard a loud…”—or “great” in the King James—“…voice from the temple.” The word “great” is repeated 11 times in chapter 16. So in chapter 15 we are introduced to the seven angels who have the seven plagues, and in them is the wrath of God.
The book of Revelation started with the seven seals, in chapter 6; then it went to the seven trumpets, in chapters 8-9; then in chapter 16, it moves to the seven bowls.
The King James translations says “vials,” but it was actually a bowl or what we would more often call a “saucer.” It wasn’t a deep bowl, which when poured out would take time for it to empty. It was a shallow saucer, which when poured out would empty immediately. The priests would use a saucer-like utensil. So this chapter is a picture of God’s wrath being poured out on a Christ-rejecting world.
One of the fundamental things to know about the tribulation period is that its source is from God. God will use the devil and evil men to serve His purposes. Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, said, “Even the devil is God’s devil.”
The study we will look at today is in three sections. The first section is in verses 2-11, the wrath of God and the first five bowls. It starts with verse 1, “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple…”—notice that the temple is in heaven—“…saying to the seven angels….” We don’t know whose voice it is, but it is “a loud voice.” A good guess is that it is the voice of God the Father saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.”
The phrase “the wrath of God” will be repeated three or four times in our text. When we look at the attributes of God, which are attribute to His very nature and character, we see that God is love, grace, mercy, righteous, compassionate and kind, but God is also holy. And because of God’s holiness and righteousness, He must judge sin. He can’t turn His back to sin.
Now the seven angels with seven bowls, in verse 1, will pour them out right before the Second Coming of Christ. The pouring out of all these bowls happens in rapid succession. There are no pauses; it’s just one after another. It will happen at the end of the tribulation, culminating in the battle of Armageddon and in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The first bowl is in verse 2. “So the first…”—that’s the first angel—“…went and poured out his bowl upon the earth.” Each one of these bowls that is poured out has a particular target. The first target is the earth and wicked mankind. “And a foul and loathsome…”—or “grievous”—“…sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.” From the word “grievous” in the Greek we get our word “malignant.”
These seven plagues that will be poured out from these seven bowls—there will be seven angels, as there were seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls; seven is the number of completion—in them is filled the wrath of God. We read about it in chapter 15, verse 1. So this is the culmination of God’s wrath, which happens in rapid succession and with great intensity.God’s wrath is going to be poured out by these seven angels from these seven bowls onto the earth.
Notice who He pours them out upon: “upon the men who had the mark of the beast…”—that’s the “Antichrist,” chapter 13—“…and those who worshiped his…”—or “the Antichrist’s”—“…image.” So the recipients of this sore had the mark of the beast, and they worshipped his image. The hearts of these people had become so hardened that we’ll see they are unrepentant to the point that they cannot believe, so God’s wrath is poured out on them. This grievous, vexing, loathsome, malignant sore—what a horrible thing this is!
It’s interesting that the Antichrist, who they worship and whose mark they bear, was unable to heal them, even though he performed miracles during the tribulation. You’d think because they say, “Hey, we worship you! Why don’t you help us in our hour of need!” that he would.
Many of these plagues we’ll read about by these seven angels from the seven bowls correlate with the plagues that came on Egypt before the exodus. The Egyptians had boils break out all over their bodies in the sixth plague, in Exodus 9:9. The same word taken from the Hebrew to the Greek for “boils” would be the word “sores,” in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. So there are many parallels between the judgments in Exodus and the judgments of the seven bowls by the seven angels in our text.
Now we have the second bowl, in verse 3. This one is targeted on the sea. “Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it…”—that’s “the sea”—“…became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died.” It doesn’t say that it became blood; it became “as” blood.
Under the second trumpet judgment, one-third of the sea became blood and one-third of its sea creatures died. Now we see the entire sea turning to blood and all its sea creatures dying. It’s not specified what “sea” this is, but the word translated “sea” could refer to all the oceans of the earth.

Some try to explain these plagues in natural terms. It’s possible that God uses natural ways. Some say it’s the red tide. But the red tide doesn’t cause everything to die in the ocean and doesn’t destroy the ocean. I hardly think that’s the case.
Some say that the “sea,” in verse 3, could be the Mediterranean Sea. That’s possible, but the Scriptures seem to indicate more that it is a universal judgment on the whole world. “Every living creature in the sea died.”
Then in rapid succession we have the third angel, in verses 4-7. This time His judgment is upon the rivers and fresh-water systems of the earth. “Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.” They didn’t become “as blood” but actual blood. This is a divine, supernatural judgment on earth. These plagues are so bad that there is no question in peoples’ minds of their source; they come from God Himself.
In Egypt, the Nile River turned to blood. That was one of the plagues, a judgment upon the Egyptians.
“And I heard the angel of the waters…”—apparently there is an angel that oversees the waters—“…saying: ‘You are righteous, O Lord, the One who is and who was and who is to be…”—that’s the eternal nature of God—“…because You have judged these things. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets.’” “‘And You have given them blood to drink. For it is their just due.’” So in heaven they say, “God, you’re right on; your judgments are righteous. They’ve killed the saints and the prophets, and now You’ve given them blood to drink.”
It’s interesting that Pharaoh in Egypt was having the male babies thrown into the Nile River to kill them. But God had Pharaoh’s army go into the Red Sea, and they drowned there. “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
Then we have the fourth bowl, in verses 8-9. This time the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun; it’s a solar judgment. “Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire.” In an earlier judgment, “the sun became darkened as black sackcloth of hair.” And now the sun has intensified in its heat. “And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.”
So God has the control and power over these plagues. God is sovereign. No one can thwart His purposes. He gives these plagues to sinful men, but they do not repent, and they do not give Him glory. How sad is that.
Again, a lot of people like to hold a natural explanation for this bowl being poured out on the sun. We have “global warming,” which is quite popular today. They find it here in the Scriptures. But this is a supernatural intervention of God during the tribulation. It’s not anything like the earth so called “warming up” today. This is God punishing mankind on the earth.
Malaki 4:1 says, “‘For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,’ says the Lord of hosts.” I believe that is a prophecy of this event in the day of the Lord, when God allows the sun to actually scorch men with intense heat, and people curse God at this time.
Now we move to the fifth bowl, in verses 10-11. This time it’s poured out on the seat, the throne or the kingdom of the Antichrist. “Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast…”—which is “the Antichrist”—“…and his kingdom became full of darkness.” The ninth plague in Egypt, in Exodus 10, was darkness, but there was light in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were. This was oppressive darkness. “And they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores.” This happened in verse 2 during the first bowl plague. And by the time you get to this fifth bowl, they are still having these malignant sores. “And [they] did not repent of their deeds.” This is the second time in this passage that they did not repent. The Greek word is “metanoia.” It means they did not change their minds. I believe it’s because their minds become reprobate, Romans 1. The word “reprobate” means “doesn’t work”; it’s broken. They don’t think correctly. So they curse God and don’t repent. And they gnaw their tongues in pain in this darkness. They also blaspheme God.
The Bible indicates that you can reach a point of no return, where your heart spiritually atrophies. You were made for God. You were made to know God. You were made to be in fellowship with God. If you reject the Light, refuse to repent and harden your heart, then your heart will atrophy. You’ll reach the point where the Bible says, “Therefore they could not believe.” These people who this judgment is coming upon are the people who have crossed that line. They’ve been deceived. They cannot be saved. There comes a time when God’s patience will run out. The wrath of God in the bowls is the last series of plagues poured out on mankind.
Now remember when Jesus died on the Cross? This darkness is interesting. He was on the Cross from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., six hours. But from high noon until 3:00 p.m., there was darkness. When the darkness came, Jesus cried, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani,” or “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Think about that. Then God covered the earth with a veil of darkness.
In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Then He drank the cup of God’s wrath. When Jesus died on the Cross, not only did our sins get placed upon the sinless Son of God, but God’s wrath was poured out upon Jesus. We can’t even fathom that. Jesus was forsaken by His Father so that we would never have to be forsaken by God.
But these people in our text did not trust and believe in Christ. They rebelled against Him and worshipped the image of the Antichrist and took his mark. So there is darkness over the whole earth.
Now the sixth bowl is in the second section, the war of Armageddon, in verses 12-16. Verses 1-11 is the wrath of God, and verses 12-16 is the war of Armageddon in this sixth bowl. We’re almost complete in this time of God’s wrath. “Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits…”—these are demons—“…like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast…”—or “the Antichrist”—“…and out of the mouth of the false prophet.”
This false prophet was the beast that came out of the land, in chapter 13. “For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. ‘Behold, I am coming as a thief.’” This is the Lord speaking. “‘Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.’ And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.” Armageddon means “hill of Megiddo.” It’s on the plains of Esdraelon.
Notice that this sixth bowl is expanded; there’s more information about it than the others. First, it is poured out “on the great river Euphrates.” It’s interesting that the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers come together between Iraq and Iran, and they flow into the Persian Gulf. They originate in Turkey at the base of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark rested. The Euphrates River flows about 1,800 miles in length. It’s about 1,200 yards in width and 30 feet deep. It’s interesting that God dries it up, so the kings of the east are able to cross it to get into the Middle East.
Israel is a natural land bridge between the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. This area is the birthplace of humanity, where the Garden of Eden was located; mankind started here.
The battle of Armageddon will be in the Valley of Jezreel. The mountain there is called Megiddo. From it we get our word Armageddon or “hill of Megiddo.” It’s a valley in the middle of Israel where all the armies of the world will gather together at the end of the tribulation just before and during the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This battle will be raging, and mankind will have the ability to kill himself off planet earth when Jesus Christ comes in His Second Coming. So we still have World War III ahead of us, but the church will have already been “caught up” to be with Christ and will come back with Him in His Second Coming.
The Valley of Jezreel or the plains of Esdraelon is in the central valley of Israel. It is inland a little ways from Haifa and from the Dead Sea. It runs for miles and miles and is surrounded by mountains. Napoleon overlooked this valley and said, “What a great place to bring all the armies of the world together in a battle.” It was here that Barak fought his battle. It was here that Gideon fought his battle. It’s where King Saul was killed on Mount Gilboa. So there were many battles here in the past, and there will be a battle here in the future.
So in verse 13, demons come out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet. Bible students have called this “the unholy trinity.” Just as there is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit—one God in three Persons—so Satan has his imitation trinity. The dragon is Satan, the beast is the Antichrist and there is the false prophet, which is the counterpart to the Holy Spirit. The Bible doesn’t call it “the unholy trinity,” but it is an interesting parallel to see in the Scriptures. In Joel 3:14, he said, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!” In Revelation 19, when the Lord comes back, He destroys the Antichrist and the false prophet, puts an end to war and He sets up His kingdom on earth for 1,000 years. So this is the Lord coming back to end man’s war on earth.
And what happened in Egypt? Frogs everywhere. Pharaoh freaked out and told Moses, “Get rid of the frogs!”
Moses asked Pharaoh, “When would you like me to get rid of the frogs?”
Pharaoh said, “Tomorrow.”
So God brings these demons or “unclean spirits,” but they look like frogs.
So this is just a word to those on the earth during the tribulation who still need to repent that He is “coming as a thief” and be ready and watching.
Verse 16, “And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.”
In the last section, in verses 17-21, we have the wasting of the earth. Environmentalists are all worried about what we’re doing to planet earth.
“Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air.” Now remember that Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air.” So this is no doubt directed toward Satan’s kingdom. “And a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’”
“It is complete” or “It is done.” Either you rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross or you drink the cup of God’s wrath upon the earth. Verse 18, “And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city…” It doesn’t tell us what great city, but it might be Babylon or probably Jerusalem. When Christ comes back He comes to Mount Olivet, and it’s split down the middle with all these topographical changes in the earth. It “…was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell.” All the big cities of the nations fell.
Verse 19, “And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.” We’ll get that in chapters 17 and 18. “Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.”
But He’s not done yet. “And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent.” A talent is 100 pounds. Can you imagine hailstones coming out of heaven from God weighing 100 pounds each?! “Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.”
So God pours out His wrath on this Christ-rejecting world. And all the world is shaken until “the things which cannot be shaken may remain.”

Street Level Surveillance

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 06:32:00 +0000

EFF’s Street-Level Surveillance project shines a light on the surveillance technologies that law enforcement agencies routinely deploy in our communities. These resources are designed for advocacy organizations, journalists, defense attorneys, policymakers, and members of the public who often are not getting the straight story from police representatives or the vendors marketing this equipment.
Whether it’s phone-based location tracking, ubiquitous video recording, biometric data collection, or police access to people’s smart devices, law enforcement agencies follow closely behind their counterparts in the military and intelligence services in acquiring privacy-invasive technologies and getting access to consumer data. Just as analog surveillance historically has been used as a tool for oppression, we must understand the threat posed by emerging technologies to successfully defend civil liberties and civil rights in the digital age.
The threats to privacy of these surveillance technologies are enormous, as law enforcement agencies at all levels of government use surveillance technologies to compile vast databases filled with our personal information or gain access to devices that can lay bare the intricacies of our daily lives. Use of these surveillance technologies can infringe on our constitutional rights, including to speak and associate freely under the First Amendment or be free from unlawful search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Law enforcement also tends to deploy surveillance technologies disproportionately against marginalized communities. These technologies are prone to abuse by rogue officers, and can be subject to error or vulnerability, causing damaging repercussions for those who interact with the criminal justice system.
EFF Unveils Its New Street Level Surveillance Hub
The Updated and Expanded Hub Sheds New Light on the Digital Surveillance Dragnet that Law Enforcement Deploys Against Everyone
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans’ privacy.
The hub has new or updated pages on automated license plate readers, biometric surveillance, body-worn cameras, camera networks, cell-site simulators, drones and robots, face recognition, electronic monitoring, gunshot detection, forensic extraction tools, police access to the Internet of Things, predictive policing, community surveillance apps, real-time location tracking, social media monitoring, and police databases.
It also features links to the latest articles by EFF’s Street Level Surveillance working group, consisting of attorneys, policy analysts, technologists, and activists with extensive experience in this field.
“People are surveilled by police at more times and in more ways than ever before, and understanding this panopticon is the first step in protecting our rights,” said EFF Senior Policy Analyst Dr. Matthew Guariglia. “Our new hub is a ‘Field Guide to Police Surveillance;’ providing a reference source on recognizing the most-used police spy technology. But more than that it is a vital, constantly updated news feed offering cutting-edge, detailed analysis of law enforcement’s uses and abuses of these devices.”
The new hub also interfaces with several of EFF’s ongoing projects, including:
The Atlas of Surveillance, EFF’s collaboration with the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno to map more than 12,000 police surveillance technologies in use across America; and Spot the Surveillance, an open-source educational virtual reality tool to help people identify street-level surveillance in their community.
"We hope community groups, advocacy organizations, defense attorneys, and concerned individuals will use the hub to stay abreast of the latest legal cases and technological developments, and share their own stories with us,” Guariglia said.
Visit EFF’s new Street Level Surveillance hub at Street Level Surveillance

Also:

The Cops Are Watching You

New online database details the shocking extent of intrusive surveillance tech used by American police.
Who watches the watchmen? All of us, if we're smart. In the age of surveillance, that means monitoring how and where the snoops put us under scrutiny. Among the people and organizations doing such important work is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which recently updated one of its countersurveillance tools.
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans' privacy," the group announced January 10.
Understanding How We're Being Watched
The hub consolidates information about such evolving and increasingly common technologies as automated license plate readers, biometric surveillance, body-worn cameras, camera networks, cell-site simulators, drones, face recognition, gunshot detection, and social media monitoring. There's also a news section featuring relevant articles about such topics as the huge amount of data modern cars collect about their drivers and the legal status of surveillance efforts in various jurisdictions.
Not all of the technologies and practices covered by the Street Level Surveillance hub are inherently bad; body-worn cameras (BWCs), for instance, have been championed by reformers as a means of recording interactions between police and the public so that there's an objective record of events.
"For nearly two decades, law enforcement agencies have explored and implemented the use of body cameras as a tool to help hold officers accountable and make departments more transparent," PBS News Hour reported in 2020.
But, as EFF points out, "because police often control when BWCs are turned on and how the footage is stored, BWCs often fail to do the one thing they were intended to do: record video of how police interact with the public." The organization says the cameras should be used only with strict safeguards regarding usage, privacy, and storage of recordings.
Other technologies are more obviously intrusive, such as automated license plate readers (ALPRs) which "capture all license plate numbers that come into view, along with the location, date, and time." While the readers have the potential to solve crimes by showing who was at the scene, they do so by following people's movements and can build patterns of life around where people travel and with whom they associate.
"Where you go can reveal many things about you—whether you attend political rallies, which religious institution you attend, if you go to the gun store," the ACLU's Allie Bohn warned the South Bend Tribune in 2014 about the use of automated license plate readers.
That was two years after New York City cops were found to be tracking mosque attendance using ALPRs.
EFF engages in extensive litigation to limit the use of ALPRs and to restrict data-sharing among law-enforcement agencies.
Where Are We Being Watched?
The Street Level Surveillance hub integrates closely with EFF's already established Atlas of Surveillance. Users can search the Atlas for jurisdictions to see what surveillance tools are currently in use in their hometowns or in places they're visiting.
Unsurprisingly, Washington, D.C. is closely monitored by the powers that be. Residents and visitors in the nation's capital are scrutinized by automated license plate readers, face recognition scanning by the FBI of driver's license photos, a registry of private security cameras, gunshot detection microphones (yes, they can overhear conversations), cell-site simulators which pinpoint the locations of phones and their users, and more. The Atlas lists the surveillance tools used in the city and links to more information on them—including the extensive write-ups on the Street Level Surveillance hub.
The Atlas also includes an interactive map of the United States plotting the use of various surveillance technologies, including links to information about local implementations. It's a handy tool if you're planning a trip and want to see just how likely it is that you'll wind up on somebody's radar (or camera, or microphone). In 2022, I used the map to trace a road trip my son and I took to visit a college campus in Kansas.
"According to the Atlas of Surveillance, we passed through jurisdictions that, in addition to bodycams and doorbell cameras, register private surveillance cameras for official use, monitor the public with drones, detect gunshots, use facial recognition, track cellphones, and automatically check passing license plates against databases," I wrote at the time.
That route isn't becoming any more private, but the leg of our journey through northeastern New Mexico and into Kansas remains relatively unmonitored.
For those who truly want to marinate in the Big Brother experience, EFF also offers Spot the Surveillance, a virtual reality tool demonstrating how to identify spying technologies. According to the summary, "the user is placed in a 360-degree scene in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco, where a young resident is in the middle of a police encounter. By looking up, down, and all around, you must identify a variety of surveillance technologies in the environment, including a body-worn camera, automated license plate readers, a drone, a mobile biometric device, and pan-tilt-zoom cameras."
No, thanks. I'm paranoid enough as it is.
We Can All Watch the Watchmen
For anybody concerned about privacy and surveillance, and interested in how the use of such technologies is implemented and regulated, EFF's Street Level Surveillance hub offers a handy resource. Instead of wondering just what biometric surveillance is, you can quickly look it up and be simultaneously informed and creeped out by discovering that it "encompasses a collection of methods for tracking individuals using physical or biological characteristics, ranging from fingerprint and DNA collection to gait recognition and heartbeat tracking."
Biometric surveillance is an evolving field and not yet widely implemented as such, though various technologies under the very broad heading (it includes tattoo recognition) are certainly gaining ground. But it's closely related to face recognition, which is all over the place.
It's all just a little bit spooky. But so long as the snoops are watching us—and they are—it's only fair that we return the favor by keeping an eye on them, too.

Also:

Urban Surveillance Is More Menacing Than Ever
Cameras aren’t just monitoring us in public—now they’re actually yelling at us.
Last week, there were people walking to a used bookstore during their lunch break, a startling voice yelled at them. The voice was not human but, like Siri and many other digital assistants, it approximated a female voice and a “friendly” tone. “Hi!” it called out. “All of you are being recorded!”
The culprit was a large outdoor speaker attached to a security camera, both affixed beneath the cornice of a sleek, freshly opened sushi joint on Milwaukee Avenue, the main drag of Chicago’s trendy Logan Square neighborhood. The voice was scary. It came from above—a place voices on the street don’t usually come from. It (implicitly) threatened them. they did nothing wrong, and yet there they were, walking in public, only to find their mere presence equated with the potential to do harm.
It’s a high-traffic area, so they were far from the device’s only perceived threat. In fact, because it uses an indiscriminate motion sensor, the camera treats everyone who walks by the restaurant as a potential ne’er-do-well and automatically yells the same thing at them—a dog afraid of its shadow. This was not the first time one has experienced this kind of rude intrusion. During this past Christmas season, they went to a large Target to buy wrapping paper. Blaring from speakers across a massive parking lot, a similar message: “For your safety, you are being recorded.” Both this and the restaurant message are passive-aggressive. One delivers the notice with phony, feminized friendliness; the other, in an equally gendered role, uses a male voice to make a false and patronizing claim of safety. Both imply that the act of being in public space is inherently dangerous, and each, in their own way, suggests that we could be—the source of the danger.
The panoptic bugbear known as the home surveillance camera is nothing new. However, for many years, the products were expensive due to the cost of video, and later the cost of digital storage. The advent of cloud computing meant such costs were no longer an issue, and the now-ubiquitous doorbell camera (and its many offshoots) was born. Having the power to surveil one’s property even in absentia is an alluring prospect. It’s also a predictable response to decades of “dangerous crime” rhetoric, the omnipresent American fear of hooliganism and property damage, and the corresponding cultural fantasy of vigilante justice.
Obviously, there are many downsides to surveilling one’s neighbors. Ring security cameras in particular have come under fire in recent years because of their “neighbors” feature—a kind of NextDoor for Ring users that allows them to send videos from their devices directly to law enforcement, which, as Wired notes in its edict “Why We Do Not Recommend Ring Cameras,” incentivizes increased racial profiling. To many in the United States, this may be a feature, not a bug. Regardless, the products remain popular despite the fact that there’s no evidence that using such a device increases public safety outcomes.
Many of the houses one's neighborhood, especially those built in the last five years, have these cameras. But the audio addition is not something most haven't encountered until recently. In a world where everything we do is surveilled—whether that’s through cookies on the Internet, location tracking on our smart devices, or our own self-surveillance and scrutiny of others via social media—it is easy to forget that we are always being watched. The talking camera phenomenon reminds us. Loudly. It is an escalation of an already omnipresent aggression. It intrudes into our consciousness, induces paranoia and anger, makes us feel unwelcome in public life, furthers the idea that one’s private property extends beyond the stoop, and suggests that by owning property one has earned the right to curtail the rights of others. This is a net negative for society. When we shared the screaming camera incident on Twitter, the horror stories poured in: multiple cameras on every block creating a chorus of shrieks, cameras near trailheads “greeting” returning runners, and oversensitive sensors that turn quiet environments into squawking, aggressive ones.
Paradoxically, it is the public nature of the urban environment that incentivizes the use and proliferation of such a device. Urban property owners have fewer avenues than suburbanites do when it comes to turning their parcels into hostile sites of exclusion. Suburbs famously exclude by way of high fences, gated communities, neighborhood watch programs, homeowner associations, private police, and more. On an urban street, there is seldom a gated community, and buildings are rarely further than 50 feet away from the sidewalk. While urban realms do have ways to alienate—invasive highways, transit deserts, increased policing—at the end of the day it is not illegal for us or for anyone else to walk on the streets of Chicago. (Whether one’s right to walk those streets is respected is another, complicated story, but to make changes on that front, first we have to believe in the right itself.)
The talking camera is modeled on the policeman loitering on the street. Both take whatever personal insecurity we might feel as we navigate a neighborhood—that perhaps we are out of place or unwanted, anxieties that compound when adding factors like race and gender—and rub our faces in it. They target our dignity, making our right to be out and about in our city feel unearned.
One of the most beautiful, humanistic things about cities is that on the street one always has the potential to come in contact with both the everyday and the unexpected. By being in public, one joins the great human milieu of people trying to get wherever they’re going. This, of course, entails some vulnerability and requires a basic human trust, something that devices like the Ring camera actively erode. This was true of the silent version but the loud, threatening iteration is far worse. It’s one thing to have a misanthropic, nosy neighbor; it’s another to have one that harasses you for existing. Amid all the fraught discourse around NIMBYism, a device that yells “Not in my backyard!” at you is a little too on the nose.
Whatever you want to call it—suburban creep, techno-feudalism, NIMBYism—the yelling camera has no place in cities. (Neither, of us would argue, does the silent one.) For all of the above reasons, they should be banned. If you remain unconvinced that they undermine civic decency, you can surely oppose a device that shouts at every person on a street where hundreds of people walk each day on a purely sensory basis as being intolerable noise pollution. Cities are public spaces, even if we increasingly behave otherwise.
We seem to have less and less tolerance for other people. The cameras are a symptom of this trend toward misanthropy, this same privatization of everything, this inability to treat the public with good faith. These devices escalate this tendency because they presuppose that everyone is undesirable. Individual building owners are empowered to take matters into their own hands: They’re allowed, under the guise of private property, to intimidate passersby. If that doesn’t say enough about what kind of cities we’re building and living in, one doesn't know what does.

Flock Cameras: Updates And Latest Info

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:30:00 +0000

Surveillance Company Flock Now Using AI to Report Us to Police if it Thinks Our Movement Patterns Are “Suspicious”
Flock license plate readers are motion-activated cameras paired with cloud-based software built for public safety and security.
Unlike traditional security cameras that record continuous video, Flock cameras focus on capturing specific vehicle information as vehicles pass through a defined location. This includes: check icon, License plate number, check icon, Vehicle make, model, color, and body type, check icon, Date, time, and general location of detection
The police surveillance company Flock has built an enormous nationwide license plate tracking system, which streams records of Americans’ comings and goings into a private national database that it makes available to police officers around the country. The system allows police to search the nationwide movement records of any vehicle that comes to their attention. That’s bad enough on its own, but the company is also now apparently analyzing our driving patterns to determine if we’re “suspicious.” That means if your police start using Flock, they could target you just because some algorithm has decided your movement patterns suggest criminality.
There has been a lot of reporting lately about Flock but I haven’t seen anyone focus on this feature. It’s a significant expansion in the use of the company’s surveillance infrastructure — from allowing police to find out more about specific vehicles of interest, to using the system to generate suspicion in the first place. The company’s cameras are no longer just recording our comings and goings — now, using AI in ways we have long warned against, the system is actively evaluating each of us to make a decision about whether we should be reported to law enforcement as potential participants in organized crime.
In a February 13 press release touting an “Expansive AI and Data Analysis Toolset for Law Enforcement,” the company announced several new capabilities, including something called “Multi-State Insights”:
Many large-scale criminal activities—such as human and narcotics trafficking and Organized Retail Crime (ORC)—involve movement across state lines. With our new Multi-State Insights feature, law enforcement is alerted when suspect vehicles have been detected in multiple states, helping investigators uncover networks and trends linked to major crime organizations.
Flock appears to offer this capability through a larger “Investigations Manager,” which urges police departments to “Maximize your LPR data to detect patterns of suspicious activity across cities and states.” The company also offers a “Linked Vehicles” or “Convoy Search” allowing police to “uncover vehicles frequently seen together,” putting it squarely in the business of tracking people’s associations, and a “Multiple locations search,” which promises to “Uncover vehicles seen in multiple locations.” All these are variants on the same theme: using the camera network not just to investigate based on suspicion, but to generate suspicion itself.
In a democracy, the government shouldn’t be watching its citizens all the time just in case we do something wrong. It’s one thing if a police officer out on a street sees something suspicious in public and reacts. But this is an entirely different matter.
First, the police should not be collecting and storing data on people’s movements and travel across space and time in the first place, or contracting to use a private company’s technology to accomplish the same thing. Second, they shouldn’t be taking that data and running it through AI algorithms to potentially swing the government’s eye of suspicion toward random, innocent civilians whose travel patterns just happen to fit what that algorithm thinks is worth bringing to the attention of the police.
And of course because Flock is a private company not subject to checks and balances such as open records laws and oversight by elected officials, we know nothing about the nature of the algorithm or algorithms that it uses— what logic it may be based upon, the data upon which it was trained, or the frequency and nature of its error rates. Does anyone actually know whether there are movement patterns characteristic of criminal behavior that won’t sweep in vastly larger numbers of innocent people?
We also don’t know what kind of biases the company’s algorithms might exhibit; it’s very easy to imagine an algorithm trained on past criminal histories in which low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are highly over-represented because of the well-established, top-to-bottom biases in our criminal justice system. That could mean that just living in such a neighborhood could make you inherently suspicious in the eyes of this system in a way that someone living in a wealthier place would never be. Among other problems, that’s just plain unfair.
The bottom line is that Flock, having built its giant surveillance infrastructure, is now expanding its uses — validating all our warnings about how such systems inevitably undergo mission creep, and providing all the more reason why communities should refuse to allow the police departments that serve them to participate in this mass surveillance system.

Also:

What are ALPRs
Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car's location, date, and time. They also capture your car's make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.
These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. These systems are marketed as indispensable tools to fight crime, but they ignore the powerful tools police already have to track criminals, such as cell phone location data, creating a loophole that doesn't require a warrant.
ALPRs are a serious risk to your privacy and civil liberties. These systems continuously record your movements without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Your driving history is rarely confined to the town or city where the cameras are installed. It's typically shared with thousands of other agencies nationwide (secretly). Once the data is out of your community, you have no control over how it's used or what rules apply, leading to instances of misuse.
What is Flock?
Flock Safety is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the United States. Their cameras are installed for police departments, businesses, and HOAs. Captured vehicle data is uploaded to Flock's cloud system, where participating agencies can search and share information across jurisdictions.
Flock is not the only ALPR vendor, and other vendors still participate in similar practices.

Also:

Police Keep Losing Their Jobs For Using Flock Cameras To Stalk People
Flock cameras—solar-powered, automated license plate readers, weighing less than 3 pounds and designed to be unobtrusive—can be found on 80,000 street corners throughout the country. The company behind the cameras built an $8.3 billion business empowering officers to track people’s movements. Nationwide, Flock cameras log billions of license plates each month. And now dozens of reports are emerging of police using the cameras not to solve crimes, but to stalk their partners and exes.
Over a two-month period in 2025, Milwaukee police officer Josue Ayala searched the license plate number of someone he was dating over 200 times, according to court documents. He also searched for his partner’s ex.
Another Milwaukee officer, Tehrangi Chapman, was assigned to investigate Ayala’s case. Ayala was charged with misconduct, resigned, and was sentenced to one year’s probation. Then, this week, Chapman too was charged with “misuse of GPS information.” While investigating Ayala, he allegedly engaged in the exact same misconduct, using the technology to track people in his own life.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, identified at least 24 similar cases nationwide of officers using automated license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras like Flock to stalk romantic interests over the past two years. Nearly all of those officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs.
A license plate reader camera
A Flock Safety automated license plate recognition camera is mounted along a roadway in Altadena, California.
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Flock cameras—solar-powered, automated license plate readers, weighing less than 3 pounds and designed to be unobtrusive—can be found on 80,000 street corners throughout the country. The company behind the cameras built an $8.3 billion business empowering officers to track people’s movements. Nationwide, Flock cameras log billions of license plates each month. And now dozens of reports are emerging of police using the cameras not to solve crimes, but to stalk their partners and exes.
Over a two-month period in 2025, Milwaukee police officer Josue Ayala searched the license plate number of someone he was dating over 200 times, according to court documents. He also searched for his partner’s ex.
Another Milwaukee officer, Tehrangi Chapman, was assigned to investigate Ayala’s case. Ayala was charged with misconduct, resigned, and was sentenced to one year’s probation. Then, this week, Chapman too was charged with “misuse of GPS information.” While investigating Ayala, he allegedly engaged in the exact same misconduct, using the technology to track people in his own life.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, identified at least 24 similar cases nationwide of officers using automated license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras like Flock to stalk romantic interests over the past two years. Nearly all of those officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs.
This month alone, at least six new cases were reported in local media outlets. Beyond Chapman’s case in Wisconsin, officers in Illinois, South Carolina, Texas, California, and Georgia all lost their jobs due to alleged misuse of Flock cameras.
Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, has been following technology and privacy issues for over a decade. “The tracking of an individual vehicle, as it moves throughout an area, can reveal very deeply personal and private information, not only about the vehicle but the person operating it,” Marlow said. “That is Flock at its most dangerous.” (When reached for comment, a Flock Safety representative sent press releases about its audit assistance tool.)
Six years ago, Mother Jones’ Daniel Moattar detailed how some of California’s most populous counties were collecting information using ALPRs—mostly tracking people who weren’t even under suspicion of any crime. And in 2013, the ACLU said that just 47 of every million plates scanned by Maryland ALPRs that year “were even tentatively associated with actual serious crimes.”
But in the years since then, police use of ALPRs has increased across the country. The cameras have been used to go after immigrants without warrants, and to track people seeking abortions as they travel across state lines for the procedure. Though there are several companies that make ALPRs, Flock is by far the largest, with more than 80,000 cameras spread throughout the United States. Flock Safety’s CEO, Garrett Langley, has said he wants his cameras “on every corner.”
But the backlash against Flock and other ALPRs is growing. The technology, activists say, holds potential for misuse. And even when it’s used as intended, some researchers say the company’s data sharing practices lead to privacy rights violations. Throughout 2025, at least 30 municipalities canceled their Flock contracts. Grassroots groups such as DeFlock have built maps showing the public where these license-plate readers are located. (Langley called DeFlock and other activists “terroristic” last year, and apologized this week.)
And Marlow of the ACLU expects the pushback to keep getting louder. “In these incredibly divisive political times, we’re actually seeing the rare issue that unites Americans: opposition to government surveillance,” Marlow said. “And I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I think this movement is only going to grow.”

Also:

How Cops Use Flock to Track People, Not Cars
Cops have used Flock's FreeForm search feature to look for people with tattoos and wearing specific sport shirts, and searches sometimes include the target's race, according to data reviewed by 404 Media.
Police departments around the country have used Flock cameras at least hundreds of times to search for specific people, not cars, using searches such as “heavy-set male with a black and white hat,” “person on skateboard,” and “person wearing orange vest and construction hat,” according to data reviewed by 404 Media. Sometimes searches reference a target’s race or signs of their political affiliation.
The searches highlight that while most people associate Flock cameras with scanning license plates and tracking vehicles, some of the cameras are also capable of following the movements of particular people or groups of people. Flock’s nationwide network of cameras lets police officers in one state search for a vehicle across many other states at once; the people searches do a similar thing, typically on a smaller scale, sometimes querying many hundreds of cameras at once. These are called “FreeForm” searches, and allow cops to use Flock’s system as though they would use a search engine, with Flock’s AI and image recognition interpreting what footage and which people are relevant to a police officer’s search.
“Much of the world hasn’t quite caught up yet to how much more powerful a surveillance camera is today compared to a few years ago. AI video analytics means that giant oceans of video data can now be searched the same way big text files can be, including for sensitive content such as t-shirts, tattoos, and bumper stickers. Even without face recognition, that’s a significant increase in surveillance capability,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media in an email.
“This is a classic bait-and-switch. Your town was pitched a tool to catch stolen cars and find missing kids,” Tom Bowman, policy counsel, security … surveillance, at the Center for Democracy … Technology, told 404 Media in a statement. Instead, cops now have the capability to search for a specific person or description of a person across a wealth of camera networks at once. “It's like being sold a smoke detector and only later finding out it's been recording every conversation in your house.”
The searches sometimes stretch across dozens or even nearly a hundred networks of Flock cameras at once. Sometimes the searches are so vague that they can pull up images of innocent or unrelated people. Other examples in the data reviewed by 404 Media include:
Dunwoody GA PD looking for someone wearing a “backpack,” and later “person walking” and “black sweatshirt.” The latter two searches were across nine networks of cameras each
Pocatello ID PD searching for “a male on foot” across 38 cameras. Another search was “atlanta falcons,” referencing the NFL team
Corona CA PD searching for “american flag shirt” and “dodger shirt.”
Milford CT PD looking for “male with tattoos,” “male with brown hair,” and “woman blue shirt,” across more than a hundred cameras
The California Highway Patrol looking for someone wearing a “gray shirt” across 274 cameras
The Texas Department of Public Safety searching 96 networks of cameras for “man weasring [sic] a black t-shirt and shorts.”
Florence SC PD looking for “person with gun” across 61 cameras
Chamblee GA PD searching 85 camera networks for “white woman wearing grey shirt, blonde hair, black shorts with blue and white shoes.” The agency also searched for “female with ugg boots.”
Brookhaven GA PD looking for “tall man.”
Some searches referenced the race of the person authorities were looking for. The California Highway Patrol was “Looking for a white male about 6ft 1in tall, longer brown hair almost to his shoulders, slender build, will have been wearing blue jeans, boots with white paint stains on the toes and possibly carrying a black helmet.” Atlanta GA PD searched for “non caucasion [sic] male wearing blue shirt blue pants white hat.”
Some searches are part of an “investigation,” according to the “reason” field in the data. Others are part of a missing persons case. In some it is not clear what the reason for the search was because it is redacted.
“Unfortunately, this ability to search cameras as though doing a search engine inquiry is increasingly common for surveillance cameras,” Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media. “AI-enabled video analysis across reams of footage exacerbates the risk that law-abiding people minding their own business end up with police observing them without their knowledge and opens them to possibly being implicated in a crime or being treated as a criminal. Imagine how many people at any given moment may be walking on foot, wearing a backpack, or existing with brown hair. It wasn’t that long ago that Trayvon Martin was murdered by someone who could argue that wearing a hoodie justified suspicion and a claim of self-defense.”
404 Media reviewed data collected by HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website that collates Flock search-related data obtained through public records requests. Since 404 Media revealed local police were performing Flock searches on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), journalists, activists, and residents across the country have requested “Network Audits” from their local police departments. These spreadsheets show in granular detail when an officer searched Flock cameras, how many cameras they queried, and the stated reason why.
A sometimes overlooked part of those audits is a field called “text_prompt.” This relates to a feature in Flock called FreeForm search, which lets officers search cameras not by typing in a license plate but with a natural language phrase. Sometimes these FreeForm searches are descriptions of vehicles, but they often include descriptions of people.
Flock primarily advertises its FreeForm as a feature for its Condor video cameras, which are separate from its automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. These video cameras have “people detection alerts,” and “Guardian Mode” automatically zooms in on people and vehicles. “Deploy AI-powered video where it matters most—no blind spots, no hassle, and fully integrated into Flock,” the company’s website reads. But the AI-analyzed feeds are not entirely divorced from ALPR; Flock has designed the systems to work in tandem. Kevin Cox, a Flock consultant who previously worked for the Grand Prairie Police Department in Texas, previously said, “video combined with the LPR evidence of placing a vehicle at the scene or nearby is an incredibly game changing experience into the prosecutorial chain of events.”
Flock launched FreeForm in February 2025, although the company’s announcement at the time focused on searches related to vehicles. Some FreeForm searches 404 Media reviewed indicate a target’s potential political affiliation, such as the Anne Arundel County MD PD searching 198 networks for “white jeep with trump flag.”
One example search Flock gives on its website is for “camo hat orange vest.”
Flock told 404 Media in a statement “FreeForm is designed to help investigators quickly search through large amounts of footage when they are working with limited information, such as a witness description of a person or vehicle.”
“FreeForm is not facial recognition. Flock’s products do not have facial recognition, and we have no facial recognition technology in development. FreeForm cannot identify a person by name, verify someone’s identity, or search for a specific face,” the company added. Flock said authorities used FreeForm searches in a September 2025 AMBER alert case and in Emporia, Kansas, when an elderly man left an assisted living facility.
Flock said FreeForm searches have “guardrails,” including users not able to search attributes such as “race, ethnicity, religion, nationality.” When they do, an alert is generated and sent to the agency’s administrators, Flock said. Some of the searches 404 Media found did discuss someone’s race.
Stanley from the ACLU added, “Imagine that your police department stationed officers on corners around your community writing down notes on where you are at what time, but also what you’re wearing every day, what objects you might be carrying — and writing down those details on everybody, 24/7. You would ask, why are they keeping notes on everybody? That’s pretty intrusive. But that’s basically what these systems do.”
“All this goes to show that Flock is eager not just to expand its surveillance of drivers across America through license plate readers, but to expand into every new kind of surveillance that technology makes possible. And then to link these data streams together to capture even more information about how everybody is living their lives. I don’t think most Americans want to live under that kind of constant automated surveillance,” he wrote.
In May 2025, 404 Media revealed Flock planned to use hacked data as part of a massive people lookup tool. The idea was to use information from data brokers and data breaches to “jump from LPR [license plate reader] to person,” according to internal Flock meeting audio 404 Media previously obtained. Flock scrapped the plan to use hacked data after 404 Media’s coverage and internal pressure.
In December 2025, 404 Media reported Flock left at least 60 of its people-tracking cameras exposed to the wider internet, letting anyone watch their feeds in real time. Those were Flock Condor cameras, and not its more widespread license plate reading cameras.

Also:

What are Flock cameras and where are they in Miami-Dade and Broward?
Those black, oval shaped devices you see popping up on poles in Miami-Dade and Broward counties aren’t regular traffic cameras, they’re AI-powered Flock cameras. And residents aren’t too keen on their arrival.
The cameras, also known as ALPR cameras, are powered by Flock Safety and use artificial intelligence to scan license plates. Other Flock technology uses audio-detecting technology to identify sounds like gunfire or car crashes.
DeFlock, an open-source project that maps where the cameras are in the U.S., shows almost 400 Flock cameras installed in Miami-Dade County. The site shows Broward County has twice that many at over 800 cameras, with a big concentration in the Fort Lauderdale area, including Pembroke Pines and Hollywood.
While the Flock Safety website states it partners with businesses and local communities to implement the technology, the company is most known for its partnerships with law-enforcement agencies, which are said to use the technology to solve crimes like missing persons or stolen vehicles.
It is unclear if any Miami-Dade or Broward agencies have partnerships with the company. Neither county’s sheriff’s office immediately responded to a Miami Herald inquiry about a contract or partnership with Flock, nor did police departments from Miami, Miami Gardens, Miami Beach, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale.
A YouTube video might depict a relationship with Flock Safety and MDSO, though.
In the video, posted by Flock Safety in March, Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office Major George Perera speaks with a Flock representative concerning a tip that the agency received about the security of the technology.
Perera said MDSO’s Electronic Crimes Task Force analyzed the technology and found it to be secure.
“We feel confident in the product to be able to continue to have a relationship,” Perera said in the video.
Controversy about the cameras
Flock cameras have become so widespread, residents are taking to social media to air their grievances.
Tiffany Hudson, 38, of Plantation, created a Facebook group called “Get the Flock Out of Florida” after learning her city would implement close to 100 cameras. She said in a city of about 100,000 residents, that’s a lot of cameras.
“People are like, ‘So what? Big deal, it snaps a picture of your car,’” she told a Miami Herald reporter. “But what happens is they put a camera on this street, then the next street, then the next street. … They have them all over the place, so you’re under surveillance all the time.”
The Flock Safety website says the license plate-reading cameras don’t detect faces, people, gender or race and its audio-detecting equipment doesn’t record conversations, but Floridians like Hudson are concerned about their data being tracked.
Unless stated otherwise by an individual contract — whether that be with a law-enforcement agency or business — the Flock website says all data gathered from the cameras are only stored for 30 days. But that’s not to say data isn’t being sold, Hudson said.
“We don’t know what’s happening to our data,” she said. “Our data is being taken and given to [people or agencies] we don’t even know.”
On its website, Flock repeatedly states it does not sell data to third parties nor can any outside agencies access it without permission.
ICE and immigration worries
While Flock’s website says it doesn’t work directly with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or share data with the agency, it says individual agencies like police departments that partner with Flock can share the data if they choose.
Budget data from Florida’s State Board of Immigration Enforcement states several law-enforcement agencies have requested funds for Flock cameras and similar ALPR technology.
“Flock Safety ALPR scans plates in real-time, cross-referencing against immigration databases for warrants, deportees, or smuggling vehicles. Under 287(g) and ICE partnerships, it flags suspicious patterns on routes like US-19, aiding arrests and data sharing,” one of the budget requests said.
Law-enforcement agencies outside of Florida have reevaluated their partnerships with the company based on similar concerns. In Dayton, Ohio, the police department suspended its partnership with Flock and placed trash bags over its cameras after finding more than 7,000 cases of immigration enforcement-related searches. The Los Angeles Police Department ended its partnership with the company last week and is in the process of renegotiating it over concerns of how Flock Safety stored the data.
In Miami Beach
Along the Venetian Causeway — one of the main links between Miami Beach and the mainland — DeFlock shows nine Flock cameras installed. In Miami Beach alone, the website shows four ALPR cameras — two of which are Flock Safety cameras — near the intersection of Alton Road and 14th Street.
Despite the low number of Flock cameras installed in the city, Miami Beach resident Alex Giassa, 56, said he thinks the company is a data-sharing scheme.
“It’s not just an invasion of privacy, it’s really a violation of everything that we stand for as Americans,” he said. “Yes, we have the Fourth Amendment, but isn’t it our choice also when we want somebody to know something?”
With Flock cameras, he said privacy takes on a new meaning — with people needing to recognize their actions are constantly monitored.
“It just infuriates me. … Regardless of where you go and who you meet with, you’re being tracked,” he said.

Flock Map 90,000+ ALPR cameras. 20 billion scans per month. Your movements are being recorded. Enter your zip code. See how many cameras are watching your community.

Dircted Energy Weapons: Updates And The Latest Info

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:27:00 +0000

Directed Energy Weapons Are Real . . . And Disruptive
In the 1951 science fiction film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” powerful ray guns are shown vaporizing rifles and even tanks. In the Star Wars movies, a wide variety of directed energy weapons are depicted, from handheld light sabers to massive, spaceship-mounted laser cannons.
What exactly is a directed energy weapon? Are these weapons still science fiction, lab experiments, or are they real? How can they be used and how disruptive can they be? What are the challenges and next steps? This article will examine answers to these questions.
What are Directed Energy Weapons?
According to DOD’s Joint Publication 3–13 Electronic Warfare, directed energy (DE) is described as an:
umbrella term covering technologies that produce a beam of concentrated electromagnetic energy or atomic or subatomic particles. A DE weapon is a system using DE primarily as a direct means to disable, damage or destroy adversary equipment, facilities, and personnel. DE warfare is military action involving the use of DE weapons, devices, and countermeasures to either cause direct damage or destruction of adversary equipment, facilities, and personnel, or to determine, exploit, reduce, or prevent hostile use of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) through damage, destruction, and disruption.
DE weapons include high-energy lasers, high-power radio frequency or microwave devices, and charged or neutral particle beam weapons. Microwaves and lasers are both part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes light energy and radio waves. The distinction between them is the wavelength/frequency of the energy. While they are both part of the electromagnetic spectrum, laser and microwave weapons operate very differently and have very different effects.
Think of the difference between a laser pointer and a flashlight. The laser light is coherent in a single color, and the flashlight is broad-spectrum light. Because of its coherence, laser light can stay concentrated for very long distances—even thousands of miles into space. But with laser weapons, instead of thinking in terms of a laser pointer, the mental image should be more like a powerful, long-range blowtorch!
Lasers can be categorized as gas, solid state, or a hybrid of the two. The lasers on the current path to weaponization include solid state combined fiber and crystal slab as well as hybrid lasers. Fiber lasers are lasers in which the active medium being used is an optical fiber that has been doped in rare elements, most often Erbium. Slab lasers represent one class of high-power solid-state lasers in which the laser crystal has the form of a slab. Hybrid lasers such as a diode pumped alkali laser use a combination of trace gas with semiconductor diode arrays for even higher power and efficiency.
The destructive power of directed energy weapons (their lethality) derives from the amount of energy transferred to the target over time. This concentrated energy can have effects across the entire spectrum from non-lethal to lethal. For example, lasers can cut through steel, aluminum, and many other materials in a matter of seconds. They can be very effective in causing pressurized vessels to explode such as missile propellant and oxidizer tanks. They can destroy, degrade or blind many other systems that contain sensors and electronics. For high energy lasers, lethality depends on the power output of the laser, the purity and concentration of the light (beam quality), the target range, the ability to keep the laser on the target aimpoint (jitter control and tracking), and the atmospheric environment the laser traverses to the target. In this last factor, the frequency of the laser and the engagement altitude will have a significant impact on how much the atmosphere effects the laser’s lethality. Laser energy can be generated as a continuous wave or in pulses, which also influences its lethality. High-energy lasers (HEL) can range from a few kilowatts to megawatts of average power.
High-power microwave (HPM) and high-power millimeter wave weapons emit beams of electromagnetic energy typically from about 10 megahertz to the 100 gigahertz frequency range. Like lasers, HPM weapons can operate in a pulsed or continuous manner and are classified using “peak” or “average” power respectively. Most HPM systems are based on short pulses of radiofrequency (RF) energy, for which peak power is the important metric. The antenna gain of the weapon system is also very important, and when combined with the power of the RF source, yields the Effective Radiated Power (ERP) of the weapon. Depending on the particulars of the weapon, and how it is used, ERP levels can reach into the hundreds of gigawatts or higher. For continuous wave systems, which use high average power to effect targets, levels are typically from 50 to 100s of kilowatts up to several megawatts of power. The power levels are driven by prime power generation limitations, and ERP’s depend on the antenna design and aperture (i.e., size).
Almost everyone has probably experienced the “lethality” of a microwave device when they inadvertently put a metal object into a kitchen microwave oven and watched the “sparks fly.” This same energy can be applied at higher powers for weapon effects. There are numerous pathways and entry points through which microwave energy can penetrate electronic systems. If the microwave energy travels through the target’s own antenna, dome, or other sensor opening, then this pathway is commonly referred to as the “front door.” On the other hand, if the microwave emissions travel through cracks, seams, trailing wires, metal conduits, or seals of the target, then this pathway is called the “back door.”
In the weapons version, the microwave energy effects or lethality depends on the power and range to target, but the energy beams tend to be larger and not as sensitive to jitter as is the case for the high energy lasers. HPM lethality can be affected by atmospheric conditions as well, but to a much lesser degree than high-energy laser (HEL) weapons. HPM weapons lethality is typically described in terms of their ability to deny, degrade, damage or destroy a target’s capabilities.
The term “deny” is defined as the ability to eliminate the enemy’s ability to operate without inflicting harm on the system. A microwave weapon can achieve this result by causing malfunctions within certain relay and processing circuits within the enemy target system. For example, the static and distortion that high voltage power lines have on a car radio causes no lasting damage to the radio after the car leaves the area. Thus, the “deny” capability is not permanent because the affected systems can be easily restored to their previous operational condition.
The meaning of “degrade” is to remove the enemy’s ability to operate and to potentially inflict minimal injury on electronic hardware systems. Examples of this capability include signal overrides or insertion, power cycling (turning power on and off at irregular intervals) and causing the system to “lock-up.” These effects are not permanent because the target system will return to normal operation within a specified time, which obviously varies according to the weapon. In most cases, the target system must be shut off and restarted, and may require minor repairs before it can operate normally again.
The idea of “damage” is to inflict moderate injury on enemy communications facilities, weapons systems, and subsystems hardware, and to do so in order to incapacitate the enemy for a certain time. Examples include damaging individual components, circuit cards, or the “mother boards” in a desktop computer. This damage may create permanent effects depending upon the severity of the attack and the ability of the enemy to diagnose, replace, or repair the affected systems.
Finally, the concept of “destroy” involves the ability to inflict catastrophic and permanent injury on the enemy functions and systems. In this case, the enemy would be required to totally replace entire systems, facilities, and hardware if it was to regain any degree of operational status.
In addition to being able to scale effects on a target, directed energy weapons have inherent attributes that are attractive to the warfighter. These include:
speed of light engagement which makes responsiveness and tracking much faster than kinetic weapons;
deep shot magazines which are only limited by the electrical power supplied to and re-generated by the system;
“stealth-like” performance (quiet and invisible beams) that are hard to detect or intercept;
precision targeting for both lethal and non-lethal applications; and
low-cost per shot compared to traditional munitions.
Directed energy weapons have been in development for decades in our nation’s research and development organizations, national laboratories and industry. So how close are they to becoming weaponized?
Are Directed Energy Weapons Still Science Fiction, Lab Experiments or Ready for the Warfighters?
In early versions of laser weapons, the light was generated by chemical reactions. Between 2000–05, a prototype chemical laser successfully destroyed 46 rockets, artillery shells and mortar rounds in flight during field tests. However, these lasers were generally large and heavy. In fact, the megawatt-class Airborne Laser developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s required an entire 747 aircraft to hold the equipment. Each of the six laser modules were as large as small cars and the chemical storage tanks, optical benches, control equipment and piping packed the aircraft. In 2010, the Airborne Laser shot down two missiles (both solid and liquid propelled) in their boost phase during flight testing which demonstrated the lethality of the laser against missile targets. We proved that the technology could be effective, but its size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements made the laser weapons impracticable to field. Today, solid state electrical (including fiber) and hybrid lasers are being developed that are much lighter and smaller. The combination of technology advancements improving lethality and reducing SWaP in high energy laser technology and the advent of threats such as hypersonic weapons for which kinetic solutions are problematic has resulted in high energy lasers and directed energy weapons more generally being pursued vigorously across the services consistent with the National Defense Strategy.
In recent years the U.S. Navy deployed a 30kW class solid state laser weapon system (LaWS) prototype on the Afloat Forward Staging Base, USS Ponce. It was capable of damaging or destroying fast attack boats, unmanned aerial vehicles and was used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). When the LaWS was being integrated onto the ship, the designers and developers envisioned that it would be used several hours a day. It turned out that during its three-year deployment, from 2011–14, it was used nearly around the clock in its ISR mode.
Because of the strategic imperative to protect U.S. carrier battlegroups to enable us to project power, the U.S. Navy is following this prototyping effort with a much broader “Navy Laser Family of Systems” or NLFoS program, which will put the Navy on a path to develop and deploy lasers ranging from low power laser “dazzlers” to much higher power lasers capable of destroying anti-ship and high-speed cruise missiles. Examples of NLFoS weapons include: a 60kW laser called HELIOS (High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance) expected to be deployed by 2021 that will be capable of burning through small boats and shooting down drones; the SSL–TM (Solid State Laser–Technology Maturation system), which will eventually be a 150kW laser weapon on the LPD–27 amphibious ship; and the ODIN (Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy) that will also go on a destroyer.
The U.S. Army has also been moving out aggressively in developing and deploying directed energy weapons as part of its Air and Missile Defense modernization priority. Within that priority area, the Army is focused on the use of high energy lasers to provide Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) and Maneuver—Short-Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD). The Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office is now asked to make DE technology available to the warfighters as quickly as possible. Building on the Army’s DE efforts during the past 5 to 7 years, the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) is committed to fielding 50kW lasers on four Strykers (eight wheeled armored fighting vehicles), delivering a residual combat capability at the Platoon level as part of the M-SHORAD mission in support of a Brigade Combat Team.
Building a Stryker with a 50kW laser is a follow-on to the 5kW laser the Army tested on the vehicle just a year ago in Germany at the Joint Warfighting Assessment and related efforts. DefenseNews in their coverage of the March 2018 Booz Allen Hamilton/CSBA Directed Energy Summit in Washington highlighted the remark by Colonel Dennis Wille, the Army G3 strategic program chief for U.S. Army Europe, that over the weekend the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment (supported by the 7th Army Training Command and the Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, Oklahoma) had conducted a live-fire engagement of the 5kW Mobile Expeditionary High-Energy Laser demonstrator at the Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany. This is just the beginning of a plan to deploy 50kW lasers on four of its Stryker vehicles over the next few years for operational use.
A fire support noncommissioned officer with 4th Division Artillery, 4th Infantry Division, who participated in the testing of a 2kW version of the laser vehicle at Fort Sill, Oklahoma against unmanned drones was quoted in a February 28, 2018 Army Times article as saying, “It was extremely efficient, I was able to bring them down as [fast as] they were able to put them up.”
The Army used Navy-, and Air Force- developed HPM weapons during recent conflicts to counter improvised explosive devices (IEDs). These devices have also been demonstrated to stall or damage car, truck, or boat motors. This capability would be very useful at checkpoints or for stopping escaping vehicles.
In 2017, the Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff signed the DE Flight Plan outlining the path ahead for the Air Force to develop and deploy both high-energy lasers and high-power RF weapons for its aircraft. This plan includes a program which aims to test high energy lasers on aircraft against surface to air and air to air missile threats. Similar to the Army’s RCCTO and the Navy’s Accelerated Acquisition (AA) Process, the Air Force is leveraging both Air Force Research Laboratory’s DE Directorate and Air Force Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office to expedite delivery of capabilities to address key capability gaps identified in the DE flight plan: Forward Base Defense, Precision Strike, and Aircraft Self-Protect. In addition, the Air Force has partnered with the Navy in the development of a high-power RF weapon called High-power Joint Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (HiJENKS) capable of attacking electronics, communications and computer networks.
The Air Force also recently demonstrated the ability of an HPM weapon to bring down multiple drones in testing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, according to a recent Military.com article:
“After decades of research and investment, we believe these advanced directed-energy applications will soon be ready for the battlefield to help protect people, assets and infrastructure.” Thomas Bussing, Raytheon Advanced Missile Systems vice president, said in a news release accompanying the announcement. The release noted the HPM and HEL systems engaged and defeated “dozens of unmanned aerial system targets” during the exercise.
But by far, the most ambitious program underway in DOD is being led by the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). It is developing a very high-power laser capable of being eventually deployed on a space-based platform to target missiles during their boost/ascent/midcourse phase. This laser would be megawatt class and have a range of hundreds of miles.
The first step in this endeavor is underway with funding for laser scaling and beam quality improvements for both combined fiber lasers as well as hybrid lasers such as the diode pumped alkali laser or DPALS. These lasers, combined with significant improvements in computational power, represent dramatic advances in technology over those used in the Airborne Laser program. The laser diodes, fiber amplifiers, battery and power management, thermal control, and optical systems are also much more advanced.
The United States will soon be reaching the point where it can generate a megawatt of power in a size, weight, and volume capable of being put on a high-altitude aircraft or space-based platform. As DOD works to develop and incorporate these technologies, much of the work should be collaborative, such as improvements in materials, power generation, thermal control, etc. to reduce size, weight, and power required to operate these weapons. However, the wide variety of missions, platforms, and implementation environments necessitates continued service-differentiated development activities. This also includes fundamental differences such as the wavelength of the lasers and the beam quality required for success.
For example, a Navy ship-to-air laser will have different requirements than an Air Force air-to-air system, which will have different requirements than a space-based missile defense system and therefore different technological considerations. Discrete, mission-aligned efforts will maintain our pace of development in the race to get these technologies to the field.
How Can They Be Used and How Disruptive Can They Be?
Some applications of directed energy weapons to solve today’s challenges have already been described, such as stopping swarms of small adversary boats which have been harassing U.S. ships in international waters, or stopping vehicles carrying improvised explosive devices at a safe distance from U.S. personnel. As another example, high energy lasers could be used to protect forward-deployed troops and bases from attacks by swarms of unmanned aircraft carrying explosive devices.
But let us broaden these applications somewhat. In addition to the nuclear ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea, which can be defended by U.S. missile defense systems, there is a North Korean threat which cannot be defended against today . . . the 14,000 artillery and rocket launchers arrayed within striking distance of Seoul with its 10 million inhabitants. Imagine how much the geopolitical calculus would change on the peninsula if a layered, integrated system of high energy lasers and high-power microwave weapons was deployed to defend against these threats.
Turning to the air, the United States spent billions of dollars to develop and deploy stealth technology for its fighters and bombers to avoid radar detection and being targeted by surface to air missiles. What if the United States could deploy effective anti-missile lasers on its’ aircraft to defeat any missile(s) fired at them? In effect, the United States would have provided “stealth-like” capability to entire fleets of aircraft.
In a much more dramatic application, the recently released Missile Defense Review (MDR), the first update to U.S. Missile Defense Strategy in nearly a decade, delivers a visionary plan to protect the United States from ever-intensifying threats around the world. For example, the MDR proposes that the Missile Defense Agency study the potential to develop and field space-based lasers to intercept ballistic missiles.
Space-based lasers would have a profound impact on the U.S. ability to defend and if necessary, fight in space. Not only could they be used to defend against ballistic missiles in the boost/ascent and midcourse phase, but they could also be used to defend critical space-based assets against enemy anti-satellite attack.
Directed energy weapons could also play a key role in defending against what has been described as the number one threat to the United States by the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Dr. Mike Griffin—hypersonic weapons. He has pressed for the development of hypersonic weapons by the United States as well as a defense against them. In a March 6, 2018 speech, said, “I’m sorry for everybody out there who champions some other high priority, some technical thing; it’s not that I disagree with those,” he told the room, “But there has to be a first, and hypersonics is my first.”
There are two types of hypersonic weapons, boost glide and air-launched high-speed cruise missiles. Boost glide weapons are launched atop ballistic missiles then released to glide to the target. The air-launched uses scramjets or rockets to power it throughout flight. These high-speed missiles fly at Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound) and greater. They can not only achieve these speeds but can maneuver at them as well including varying trajectories, headings and altitudes. Therefore, currently deployed defenses against ballistic missiles will not be effective in defending against these non-ballistic threats. There is no “silver bullet” defense against these weapons and in fact there will have to be an architectural approach in defending against them, but directed energy weapons can potentially play a major role.
Since these weapons maneuver, the United States needs to be able to precisely track the hypersonic missile throughout its entire flight or “birth to death.” The only cost-effective way to accomplish this is using space-based satellites. Developing hypersonic interceptors will also be an option in the U.S. defense architecture. But there is a rule of thumb that states that an interceptor needs to be capable of three times the speed of the target it is defending against to be able to maneuver to destroy it. So hypersonic kinetic interceptors would have to be capable of achieving speeds of Mach 15 and higher.
One of the greatest attributes of directed energy weapons is that they operate at the speed of light. So, for a hypersonic weapon that is travelling at 25 times the speed of sound, a high- energy laser can engage it at roughly 35,000 times its speed. This makes targeting and tracking easier as well. Space-based high energy lasers could be brought to bear especially in the boost/ascent phase of boost glide hypersonic missiles where a high-energy laser could destroy the vehicle early in its trajectory. At the speeds that these hypersonic missiles fly, they have vulnerabilities which could be exploited by directed energy weapons. Therefore, HELs and HPMs could also play a role in the midcourse/terminal phase of both types of hypersonic missile flight.
Directed energy weapons are no longer just science fiction. They are real and are maturing rapidly. In the next several years, the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force all plan to develop and field these weapons at an increasing pace. They will be deployed on land vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, and ships.
Even the most conservative market projections for directed energy weapons indicate nearly $30 billion being spent by the United States during the next ten years. They are not the answer to all the challenges, and will not replace kinetic weapons, but they are an essential adjunct to countering specific threats and providing dominance in land, air, sea, and space. The United States has the technology, the resources, the talent, and the infrastructure to develop and deploy directed energy weapons to meet today’s and tomorrow’s emerging threats.
The only question is whether the United States and its allies will achieve that dominance before an adversary does.
What Are the Challenges and Next Steps?
The United States has come a very long way in the development of directed energy weapon capabilities and is now at a critical juncture. The technology is maturing rapidly, threats are emerging which directed energy can almost uniquely address, and the warfighters are signaling their support.
However, as with the development of any unprecedented military capability, there are risks, challenges and limitations involving their cost, schedule and performance. In the case of directed energy weapons, there has been significant risk reduction which has been accomplished over several decades. Examples of this cited earlier included the Airborne Laser, the Navy’s LaWS program, and others. However, risks, challenges and limitations remain.
For example, atmospheric conditions such as turbulence, haze, clouds, etc. can affect a laser’s performance but there are ways to address these phenomena. First, the choice of a laser’s wavelength can help to mitigate the affect because different laser wavelengths perform much better in the atmosphere than others. And of course, lasers employed at higher altitudes or in space would have very little to no atmospheric affects.
In addition, a technique known as “adaptive optics” has been developed for many years. In this case, the laser weapon system would sense the atmospheric conditions to the target, then using fast steering mirrors, it would deform the main laser beam as it leaves the weapon to use the atmosphere to the target much like the lens of a pair of glasses to refocus the beam on the target. Increasing laser power and improving the beam quality can also help to mitigate atmospheric effects in many cases.
Challenges remain in terms of the size, weight and power input requirements of today’s laser systems, especially in the thermal control and power management subsystems. But again, there are major advances in these areas being made especially with the technology that has been developing in the electric car industry.
When using laser weapons, the warfighters will need new situational awareness and battle management tools because of the potential long-range effects to avoid friendly systems fratricide. But again, advances in computational power coming out of the gaming industry (such as graphics processing units) and artificial intelligence coming from autonomous automobile development can be instrumental in providing these needed capabilities.
While the development costs of directed energy systems can be high, there are several factors in play which can reduce these costs or at least provide better return on the investment over the life cycle. For example, as mentioned earlier, directed energy weapons development can take advantage of progress being made in commercial industry around processors, power generation and management and even lasers subsystems themselves.
In addition, the “cost per shot” of a directed energy weapons could be orders of magnitude less expensive than current kinetic weapons. Consider that today the United States will launch kinetic interceptors at an incoming threat warhead that cost tens of millions of dollars and multiple interceptors are fired for maximum probability of success. Compare that to a high energy laser which could kill multiple threat missiles with a single “magazine” charge for a tiny fraction of the cost. In addition, while you are firing on one power source, you can be charging another for near continuous operation.
More importantly, peer and near-peer nations are developing these weapons at an alarming rate. The United States must realize that it has to resource the development and fielding of these capabilities. The United States cannot allow itself to fall behind in yet another area of warfighting as has happened in hypersonics.
To maximize the United States’ ability to field DE weapons, here is a ten-part approach to get us going in the right direction:
Power Scaling and Improved Beam Quality. DOD should significantly scale up laser power and improve beam quality; as well as develop higher power compact microwave weapons. The pace of maturing these capabilities is not “technology limited;” it is “funding limited,” therefore the United States should ensure that funding for directed energy weapon development supports the needed developments. Levels of $3 billion or above per year should be maintained.
SWaP Reduction. The United States should accelerate efforts to reduce the size, power input, weight, and cost requirements of these weapons. Since the most demanding size, weight and power inputs requirements are in the missile defense arena, MDA laser programs should be fully funded to increase laser power levels for high-altitude and space-based applications.
Warfighter Tactical Decision Aids. DOD should provide warfighters with tactical decision aids to ensure they know how and when to use these weapons. This will go far toward instilling confidence in the warfighters that these weapons will be effective in combat against multiple threats. These aids would include a guide to their effectiveness, similar to what the Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual does for kinetic weapons.
Lethality. The Office of the Secretary of Defense should fund a program to focus broadly on improving understanding of microwave and laser weapon lethality. While a tremendous amount of work has been done, DOD should also conduct further research to enhance understanding of laser and high-power microwave lethality and reliability across an increasing range of weather and atmospheric conditions. This research should also focus on minimizing any collateral damage.
Accelerated Acquisition. DOD should accelerate acquisition of DE capabilities using non-traditional practices. According to Griffin, at the 9th Annual Defense Programs Conference in March 2018, DOD takes an estimated 16.5 years to bring new technologies from statement of need to deployment. But there are several examples where the timelines have been dramatically shortened such as the Navy’s Rapid Prototyping Experimentation and Demonstration (RPED) program for mission-critical capabilities and the use of specialized acquisition authorities by the MDA. DOD should use such accelerated processes for DE development and deployment.
Long-term Commitment. DOD must signal a long-term commitment to directed energy, so the industrial base will know there will be a market for its products in the coming years. In doing so, DOD should prepare, and encourage, the industrial base to support the rising need for first-, second-, and third-tier suppliers.
Testing Infrastructure. DOD should provide the needed testing infrastructure for directed energy weapons especially as they can achieve longer and longer ranges. This needs to include rapid airspace deconfliction capabilities.
Increased Collaboration. All parties involved in directed energy development should continue to talk to each other.
Significant progress has been made in communication and collaboration across the technical community through their involvement in the Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS) and by the HEL Joint Technology Office. DOD needs to better articulate its requirements for deployable lasers. But also, the industrial base must interface better with DOD and its leadership to increase understanding of innovative laser weapon capabilities.
Training. DOD must also prioritize warfighter training. There is currently no established directed energy training pipeline; that is because laser and microwave weapons have no formal programs of record (PORs). Once the PORs are set up, training must follow. To assist in establishing PORs, DOD should encourage wargames and operational analysis to investigate and better articulate the battlefield benefits of lasers.
Command and Control. DOD should adapt command-and-control functions to address rapidly evolving threats, such as hypersonics, to reduce the engagement times of defensive systems. Very short engagement timelines will likely necessitate the incorporation of artificial intelligence capabilities to help the United States leverage the speed-of-light engagement that directed energy weapons offer.
These are steps to take to bring directed energy prototype systems to the warfighters. The brave men and women who confront dangerous threats across all physical domains—land, air, sea, and space—need nothing less than the world’s most promising new capabilities to protect U.S. national security. Adversaries are not waiting to develop directed energy weapons. Neither should we.

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Who’s Leading the Directed Energy Weapons Market? Top 10 Companies
Directed energy weapons (DEWs) are transforming defense technology through systems that deliver precise, rapid, and cost-efficient engagement against a wide range of threats. These advanced solutions utilize focused electromagnetic energy, such as lasers and microwaves, to disable or destroy targets with exceptional accuracy and minimal collateral damage.
The growing demand for high-performance, next-generation defense systems is accelerating investment in DEWs. According to Kings Research, the global directed energy weapons market is projected to reach USD 21.46 billion by 2031, reflecting rising adoption across major defense programs worldwide.
This blog highlights the top 10 companies leading innovation in the DEW market. These organizations are advancing the development of laser, microwave, and electromagnetic weapon systems that are shaping the future of defense and security operations.
What are Directed Energy Weapons?
Directed energy weapons (DEWs) engage and destroy enemy assets and threats by using concentrated electromagnetic energy. High-energy lasers and high-power electromagnetic devices, such as millimeter wave and microwave weapons, are included in this category. DEWs can have advantages like transient and reversible effects, in contrast to conventional weapons. They are able to disable or stop electronic systems without destroying them.
Top 10 Companies in the Directed Energy Weapons Market
1. Lockheed Martin Corporation
Known for its work on laser weapon systems, Lockheed Martin is advancing directed energy technologies with projects like the HELIOS system, which was designed for the U.S. Navy to counter drone threats. They are also working on integrating high-energy lasers into air and ground defense platforms.
In October 2023, Lockheed Martin Corporation was selected by the U.S. Army to develop and deliver up to four 300 kW-class solid-state laser weapon systems for the IFPC-HEL (Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser) prototype program.
2. Boeing
Boeing has developed the "CHAMP" (Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project), which uses microwave energy to disable electronic systems. This technology shows promise in directed energy for disabling enemy electronic devices without causing physical harm.
In October 2024, Boeing announced that its Compact Laser Weapon System (CLWS), a 5-kilowatt laser system, successfully engaged and defeated Group 3 uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) (drones weighing up to 600 kg) during the RED SANDS Integrated Experimentation Center Exercise held in Saudi Arabia.
3. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd
Rafael is one of the leading companies developing advanced laser-based defense systems. Their Iron Beam laser defense system is capable of intercepting short-range threats such as missiles and drones.
In June 2025, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems unveiled the new beam-director variant of the IRON BEAM high-energy laser weapon system in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The upgraded director enhances the system’s operational range, accuracy, and engagement speed, enabling improved interception of aerial threats.
4. Rheinmetall AG
Rheinmetall's latest innovations include laser weapon systems designed to protect military assets. The company is integrating directed energy into its advanced defense solutions, particularly for countering drones and artillery.
In September 2024, Rheinmetall AG and MBDA Deutschland GmbH signed a cooperation agreement to continue their collaboration in the laser weapons sector. The agreement aims to bring a joint maritime drone-defense laser system to the market within five to six years, leveraging their complementary expertise in laser weapon technology.
5. MBDA
MBDA has focused on developing hybrid systems that integrate directed energy with traditional defense capabilities. Their work on laser-guided munitions has shown significant progress in enhancing precision targeting.
In October 2025, MBDA Deutschland GmbH and Rheinmetall AG transferred a laser-weapon demonstrator to the German Armed Forces’ Technical Centre for Weapons and Ammunition (WTD 91) in Meppen, following more than 100 live-firing tests aboard the frigate F124 Sachsen. The system is aimed at use by the German Navy by 2029 and is intended primarily for defense against drones, drone swarms,
6. RTX (Raytheon Technologies)
RTX has made strides with its High Energy Laser (HEL) systems, focusing on using lasers for missile defense and protection against aerial threats. Their systems are integrated into military air, sea, and ground defense.
In December 2024, Raytheon UK, a division of RTX, announced that its High‑Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) was successfully fired by the British Army, engaging and neutralizing moving aerial targets during a trial at a UK Ministry of Defense range in Wales.
7. BAE Systems
BAE is involved in developing both high-power microwave and laser systems for defense applications, with a focus on developing flexible and scalable directed energy solutions for various military platforms.
In July 2025, BAE Systems, in conjunction with SURVICE Engineering and other partners, carried out live-fire trials in which the multi-rotor drone variant TRV‑150 (based on the Malloy T‑150) successfully launched a precision‐guided munition equipped with the APKWS laser‑guidance kit against both aerial and ground targets.
8. Northrop Grumman Corporation
Northrop Grumman is involved in various directed energy projects, including high-powered lasers for missile defense. Their work on directed energy aims to provide robust countermeasures against advanced threats.
In August 2023, Northrop Grumman delivered a miniaturized, 10 kW-class high-energy laser system known as the “Phantom” to the U.S. government. The system is approximately 12 ft³ and weighs less than 200 pounds, enabling two personnel to lift, carry, and install it in tactical scenarios.
9. Elbit Systems Ltd.
Elbit focuses on integrating directed energy into its UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and other defense systems. They are particularly working on high-powered laser systems for defense against incoming missiles and drones.
10. Honeywell International Inc.
Honeywell is innovating in the field of directed energy with advanced systems aimed at enhancing protection for military and defense systems. Their directed energy solutions focus on air and space defense.
The Role of Innovation in the Growth of Directed Energy Weapons Companies
Innovation is a key driver of growth for companies in the directed energy weapons (DEW) market. Rapid technological advancements are enabling the development of more sophisticated and efficient DEW systems, giving companies a competitive advantage in a dynamic market.
Additionally, innovation is helping companies tackle challenges effectively. By adopting creative strategies, they can lower development costs and ensure compliance with stringent regulations. This proactive approach enables them to navigate obstacles while capitalizing on emerging opportunities in the DEW sector.
Moreover, innovation is unlocking new avenues for growth. Beyond defense applications, DEWs hold potential in various other industries, and companies are leveraging innovative solutions to explore these possibilities. This diversification broadens their offerings and propels their long-term growth. Collectively, these advancements are fueling the expansion of the directed energy weapons market, as nations and defense firms increasingly prioritize next-generation energy-based systems to strengthen national security and strategic deterrence.
Trends in the Directed Energy Weapons Market
The directed energy weapons (DEWs) market is experiencing significant growth and evolution, driven by advancements in technology and increasing defense budgets worldwide. Below are some key trends shaping this market:
Growing Defense Investments: Nations are allocating more funds for directed energy weapon programs due to their potential for precision targeting, reduced collateral damage, and cost efficiency over traditional munitions. For instance, the U.S. Department of Defense and other countries like China and Russia are heavily investing in DEW development for both offensive and defensive purposes.
Rising Demand for Laser Weapons: Laser-based DEWs are the most developed category, offering high precision and scalability. They are being integrated into platforms like naval ships, fighter jets, and ground vehicles for applications such as anti-drone, anti-missile, and counter-mortar operations. For instance, Lockheed Martin’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) is being tested for naval applications.
Integration with Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS): With drones becoming a major threat in modern warfare, DEWs are increasingly used to neutralize UAVs. Their speed, precision, and ability to operate silently make them ideal for counter-drone operations. For instance, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems developed the Drone Dome, a laser-based C-UAS system.
Focus on Non-Lethal Applications: Governments and law enforcement agencies are exploring non-lethal DEWs for crowd control, border security, and vehicle-stopping systems. Microwave weapons and acoustic weapons are examples of technologies gaining traction in this segment.
Miniaturization and Platform Integration: Advancements in energy storage and generation are enabling the miniaturization of DEWs, making them easier to deploy on smaller platforms like drones and mobile vehicles. This trend is expected to expand their tactical utility.
Enhanced Power Sources: The development of compact and high-capacity power sources is crucial for scaling DEWs. Technologies like solid-state batteries and compact nuclear power sources are enabling longer operational cycles for these weapons.
Shift to Autonomous DEWs: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in DEWs is enabling autonomous targeting and operation. AI-driven systems can detect, track, and neutralize threats with minimal human intervention.
These trends indicate a growing reliance on DEWs for modern warfare, emphasizing their role in future military strategies and technological innovations.
Bottom Line
As directed energy weapons continue to evolve, the companies highlighted in this blog are at the forefront of driving advancements in this field. Their cutting-edge technologies promise to revolutionize military operations, providing more efficient, cost-effective, and precise solutions for a wide range of applications. The directed energy weapons market is poised for robust growth as innovation accelerates and defense agencies worldwide adopt these systems to enhance capability, resilience, and tactical advantage. These leading companies will continue to shape the trajectory of this transformative defense segment.

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Directed Energy Weapons: Why India must take the lead

Directed Energy Weapons offer advantages such as high speed, precision, and the potential for lower cost per shot compared to traditional weapons—the future of weaponry lies in DEWs
India successfully tested the Mk-II (A) Laser-Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) this April at the National Open Air Range (NOAR) in Kurnool. The 30 kW (kilowatt) laser weapon designed to neutralise drones, UAVs, and other aerial threats puts India in a select group of nations with this capability. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) trial demonstrated the system’s ability to disable surveillance sensors and cause structural damage to drones.
DEWs are a type of ranged weapon that use concentrated energy, rather than physical projectiles, to damage or disable targets. This energy can be in the form of lasers, microwaves, or particle beams. DEWs offer advantages such as high speed, precision, and the potential for lower cost per shot compared to traditional weapons, but they also pose challenges related to atmospheric conditions and potential long-term health effects. The world’s leading defence companies are working towards DEWs. DEW could also use a beam of sound for crowd control and other policing functions.
Directed Energy Weapons
DEWs emit highly focused electromagnetic energy, which is directed at the target, causing damage by heating, melting, or disrupting electronic systems. The specific type of energy used determines the wavelength and how effectively it can penetrate different materials. High-Energy Lasers (HEL) can be continuous or pulsed, delivering power outputs as low as 1 kW. Their precision allows them to target and melt metal, plastic, and other materials. They can be used to destroy or disable drones, missiles, and other airborne threats, as well as to damage or destroy ground-based targets.
Millimetre Wave Weapons (MWW) operate in the 1 to 10-millimetre wavelength range, delivering more than 1 kilowatt of power. They can affect multiple targets simultaneously due to their broader beam. High-Power Microwaves (HPM) generate microwaves with longer wavelengths than lasers or millimetre waves. They’re capable of producing around 100 megawatts of power and can disrupt multiple targets within their larger beam area and can disrupt or disable electronic systems, including those in vehicles, aircraft, and communication systems. Particle Beam Weapons (PBW), which are still under development, could potentially be used to damage or destroy targets at much greater ranges.
DEW Advantages
Advantages of DEWs include action at the speed of light, allowing for near-instantaneous engagement of targets. DEWs are very precise and can be directed with high accuracy, minimising collateral damage. DEWs are highly cost-effective and potentially much less expensive per shot than traditional weapons. DEWs can continue to fire as long as they have a power source, unlike traditional weapons with limited ammunition.
DEWs can be used discreetly; radiation does not generate sound and is invisible if outside the visible spectrum. Light is, for practical purposes, unaffected by gravity and wind, giving it an almost perfectly flat trajectory. This makes aim much more precise and extends the range to line-of-sight, limited only by beam diffraction and spread and absorption or scattering by intervening atmospheric contents. Lasers travel at light speed and have a long range, making them suitable for use in space warfare.
DEWs offer a spectrum of effects from nonlethal to lethal that can be influenced by factors such as exposure time, distance, and target area. Moreover, they can be employed in a graduated manner. Nonlethal responses include temporarily disabling electronic systems or preventing access to specific physical areas or systems, while degradation involves reducing the effectiveness of enemy sensors or electronics. Lethal responses entail destroying or severely damaging targets by focusing energy to melt or incapacitate critical components.
Unlike traditional munitions, DEWs can offer benefits such as temporary and reversible effects. They can degrade or disable electronic systems without completely destroying them. DEWs are currently moving from the research and development phase to the practical deployment phase. Many countries are investing in DEW technology, and the market is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.
DEW Challenges and Limitations
Adverse weather (fog, rain, dust) can interfere with laser beams and reduce their effectiveness. DEWs can lose effectiveness over longer distances due to atmospheric absorption and scattering. Opposing forces can develop countermeasures to deflect or disrupt DEWs. DEWs could potentially cause unintended harm to their own personnel or equipment, and their long-term health effects are not fully understood.
Taking DEWs from development to operational deployment presents challenges. Operationally, wide-beam DEWs can affect both friendly and enemy assets within the area of impact. They may also struggle against well-shielded targets or in environments where line-of-sight is obstructed. Additionally, international norms and regulations related to DEWs are in their infancy and do not offer a clear framework by which to mitigate the risks of their use. Furthermore, there are open-ended questions over the ability of existing industrial supply chains to produce DEW capabilities at scale.
Practical Military Applications
DEWs offer practical air and surface defence applications. Specifically, they are best oriented to counter slower-moving and swarm threats such as drones, rockets, artillery, and mortars by disrupting or destroying their electronic components and guidance systems. DEWs are frequently cited as having potential for missile defence, including against ICBMs, but the technological challenges to such applications are currently prohibitive.
The US Department of Defence claims that DEWs have the potential to counter slower-moving missile threats such as anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, the basic logic being that DEWs are a lower-cost way to defeat less advanced aerial threats that would allow more expensive interceptors to be saved for the faster and more troublesome ballistic threats that DEWs cannot reliably engage.
It’s also possible that DEW capabilities could be used against enemy surface boats and autonomous maritime vehicles, as well as adversarial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. DEW will be increasingly used to blind and destroy satellites.
Leading Global Players in DEW
In the United States, the Pentagon, DARPA, and the service-specific military research laboratories are all researching DEWs to counter ballistic missiles, hypersonic cruise missiles, and hypersonic glide vehicles. These systems of missile defence have already begun getting operational. China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, India, and Israel are also developing military-grade DEWs, while Iran and Turkey claim to have them in active service.
Some of the leading global private players in defence are involved in the DEW market. These include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, and Northrop Grumman, with significant contributions from Boeing, BAE Systems, and others. These companies are actively involved in research, development, and deployment of various DEW technologies, including lasers and high-power microwaves, for defence applications.
Lockheed Martin is particularly interested in laser weapon systems for defence against various threats. Raytheon Technologies (now RTX) is known for its High Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS), deployed in multiple countries. Northrop Grumman focuses on solid-state laser technology and has developed a 500-kilowatt laser system. The Boeing Company develops compact and mobile DEW systems, like the Compact Laser Weapon System (CLWS). BAE Systems is a major defence contractor with expertise in various DEW technologies. L3Harris Technologies is a key supplier of components for DEW systems. Leonardo S.p.A, a global leader in aerospace, defence, and security, has expertise in high-energy laser technologies.
Other significant players include Germany’s Rheinmetall AG, involved in the development of DEWs. French multinational Thales Group has a presence in the DEW market. Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd is a significant player.
Major Indian Companies
DRDO, India’s primary defence research organisation, is actively developing DEWs. Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) are major players in India’s DEW market. Laser Science and Technology Centre (LASTEC) is an Indian research centre focusing on laser technology for defence.
These companies are actively involved in research, development, and deployment of various DEW technologies, including lasers and high-power microwaves, for defence applications. The market is seeing increased investment and collaboration between these companies to develop advanced DEW systems for various applications, including countering drones, missiles, and other threats.
Simultaneously, the private sector is also developing laser and high-power microwave-based air defence and counter-drone systems by companies like Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL), Adani Defence, Tonbo Imaging, Big Bang Boom Solutions, and Paras Defence.
DRDO’s DEW Programme
The Mk-II (A) “Shahastra Shakti” is a vehicle-mounted laser DEW system. At the heart of the Mk-II (A) is a 30-kilowatt high-energy laser. During trials, it demonstrated the ability to engage lightweight helicopters and long-endurance UAVs at distances of up to 3.5 kilometres. It showcased its entire spectrum of capability by engaging fixed-wing drones at long range, thwarting a multiple drone attack, and destroying enemy surveillance sensors and antennae. It is evolving into the most potent counter-drone system and is designed for flexible deployment from ground vehicles or naval vessels and can be transported by air, sea, or road. DRDO intends to operationally field the Mk-II (A) by 2027.
The prototype of the Mk-II (A) DEW system has been under a prolonged development of DRDO at the Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS), Hyderabad, along with Electronics & Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), Instruments Research & Development Establishment (IRDE), Defence Electronics Research Laboratory (DLRL), and Defence Laboratory (DL) Jodhpur, in harnessing the high power of laser. The critical subsystems along with components are designed and developed indigenously by CHESS, other DRDO laboratories, academic institutions, and more than 15 Indian industries.
The cost of firing it for a few seconds is equivalent to the cost of a couple of litres of petrol. All three Indian armed forces are already using the earlier version of DEW Mk-I as part of their air-defence capabilities. The new system is capable of engaging aerial targets at greater range and, therefore, a significant step in Atmanirbharta. This landmark achievement will also act as the cornerstone for all the future development of high-power DEWs. Its success puts India in the exclusive and limited club of the global powers who possess the high-power laser DEW.
Strategic Defence Initiative
In the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) programme, which was nicknamed Star Wars. It suggested that lasers, perhaps space-based X-ray lasers, could destroy ICBMs in flight. Several DEWs were examined by the SDI Organisation for potential use in missile defence. In July 1989, the accelerator was launched from White Sands Missile Range as part of the Beam Experiment Aboard Rocket (BEAR) project, reaching an altitude of 200 kilometres and operating successfully in space before being recovered intact after re-entry. No known weapon system utilising this technology has been deployed.
Israel’s Iron Beam
Israel is developing many DEWs, including the Iron Beam laser system, as part of its multi-tiered missile defence strategy. These systems are designed to complement existing missile defence technologies like the Iron Dome. It is being jointly developed by the Israel Missile Defence Organisation (IMDO) and the US Missile Defence Agency (MDA). The Iron Beam, developed by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, is a 100 kW-class High-Energy Laser Weapon System. It is designed to intercept and neutralise various threats, including rockets, artillery, and mortars (RAM), cruise missiles, and drones. It has reportedly been operational since October 2024.
Few Other DEW Systems
Active Denial System (ADS) is a millimetre wave source that heats the water in a human target’s skin and thus causes incapacitating pain. Vigilant Eagle is a ground-based airport defence system that directs high-frequency microwaves towards any projectile that is fired at an aircraft. Raytheon had announced in 2005 that field tests had been highly effective in defeating MANPADS missiles. The system is not operationally deployed. Bofors HPM Blackout is a high-powered microwave weapon that is said to be able to destroy at a short distance a wide variety of electronic equipment and is purportedly non-lethal. The effective radiated power (ERP) of the EL/M-2080 Green Pine radar makes it a hypothetical candidate for conversion into a DEW by focusing pulses of radar energy on target missiles.
The Pischal-Pro anti-drone rifle was featured at the Dubai Airshow, 2019. It is a battery-powered electromagnetic pulse weapon held to an operator’s shoulder, pointed at a flying target in a way similar to a rifle, and operated. The device emits separate electromagnetic pulses to suppress navigation and transmission channels used to operate an aerial drone, terminating the drone’s contact with its operator and sending it out of control.
The Russian Stupor is reported to have a range of two kilometres, covering a 20-degree sector; it also suppresses the drone’s cameras. It has reportedly been used in Syria. The Ukrainian army has reportedly used the Ukrainian KVS G-6, with a 3.5 km range and able to operate continuously for 30 minutes. It can disrupt remote control, the transmission of video at 2.4 and 5 GHz, and GPS and Glonass satellite navigation signals.
A UK-developed system unveiled in May 2024 uses radio waves to fry the electronic components of its targets, rendering them inoperable. It is capable of engaging multiple targets, including drone swarms, and reportedly costs less than 10 pence (13 cents) per shot. Epirus Inc, a defence technology start-up based in Torrance, California, unveiled on March 25 the Leonidas system, a high-power microwave (HPM) weapon designed to neutralise unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms.
Chinese researchers have claimed to develop a high-power microwave (HPM) weapon that is capable of producing electromagnetic pulses with an intensity similar to that of a nuclear explosion. The US Army tested a high-power microwave weapon as part of the US-Philippines Balikatan 2025 joint military drills. This is the first time the weapon has been employed in the Indo-Pacific region and coincides with rapidly rising tensions with China.
During the Iraq War, electromagnetic weapons, including high-power microwaves, were used by the US military to disrupt and destroy Iraqi electronic systems. The first officially known use of DEWs in combat between military forces was claimed to have occurred in Libya in August 2019 by Turkey, which claimed to use the ALKA directed-energy weapon.
To Summarise
Mastering the DEW technologies has long been the holy grail of air defence systems. While there have been global efforts to replace traditional kinetic weapons and missile air defence systems, the recent proliferation of much cheaper Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and the emergence of drone swarms as asymmetric threats have driven the demand for DEWs with counter-UAS and counter-swarm capabilities. This has been witnessed during the recent conflicts like the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict or Houthi attacks on US naval fleets, where relatively weaker state and non-state players are accruing disproportionate gains against their stronger adversaries.
Once detected by a radar followed by tracking through an electro-optic (EO) system, DEWs can engage targets at the speed of light and neutralise the target. This type of cutting-edge weaponry has the potential to revolutionise the battle space by reducing the reliance on expensive ammunition while also lowering the risk of collateral damage.
DRDO is also working on higher-powered laser systems, including a 300 kW “Surya” DEW with a 20-kilometre range. The Kilo Ampere Linear Injector “KALI”, is being co-developed with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. KALI will generate high-intensity electron pulses, which can be translated into electromagnetic radiation in the form of X-ray or microwave frequencies. It will act like a high-power microwave gun, designed to destroy incoming aircraft and missiles with a “soft-kill” system that disables their sensitive electronic systems. India’s private sector is getting big into DEW.
The future is in DEW. DEWs are being designed to be flown on aircraft or housed on military satellites. Action is expanding. The DEW market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 16.16 per cent and 19.6 per cent. Specifically, one report projects the market to grow from $1.77 billion in 2023 to $6.96 billion by 2032, with a CAGR of 16.16 per cent. India must remain at “full throttle” to become a major player.

Gates Foundation Funds U.S.-Wuhan Team To Engineer Virus Designed To Edit Human DNA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 03:57:00 +0000

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund a U.S.-Wuhan research team that engineered an adenovirus designed to deliver DNA-editing machinery into human blood-forming stem cells, according to a study published July 1 in Molecular Therapy.
The stated purpose of the study was to genetically engineer human stem cells to resist HIV infection.
But the experiments raise broader questions about the risks of funding purported viral systems designed to permanently alter the human body.
The research was funded by multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants under HHS, grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and support from biotechnology company Ensoma Bio.
The author affiliations include the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and the State Key Laboratory of Virology and Biosafety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The study acknowledges support from NIH grants R01HL128288, R01AI174304, K08AI183990, and R01HL141781, along with grants INV-017692 and INV-038139 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Additional support came from China’s Prevention and Control of Emerging and Major Infectious Diseases–National Science and Technology Major Project and Ensoma Bio.
According to the paper, the researchers claim to have engineered modified helper-dependent adenoviral (HDAd) vectors to carry CRISPR-derived base editors programmed to alter the human CCR5 gene.
Rather than editing cells outside the body before transplanting them back into a patient, the researchers say they designed the adenovirus to deliver the gene-editing machinery directly into blood-forming stem cells inside a living subject.
Hematopoietic stem cells continually produce new blood and immune cells throughout a person’s life.
By altering the DNA of those stem cells, the researchers say they sought to create a continuing supply of immune cells lacking a functional CCR5 receptor, which HIV is said to commonly use to infect cells.
The study claims that the engineered adenovirus produced “near-complete target site editing” in an HIV-permissive cell line.
The researchers also reported efficient editing in human CD34+ blood-forming stem cells obtained from mobilized donors and umbilical cord blood.
The experiments extended beyond laboratory cell cultures.
Researchers injected the engineered adenoviral vector into humanized mice, enriched the purportedly genetically modified cells, and then exposed the animals to HIV.
According to the paper, approximately 50% of the targeted CCR5 sites were edited in bone marrow cells, and the treated animals had roughly 12-fold lower HIV plasma titers than untreated controls following HIV challenge.
The paper describes the work as part of a broader effort to move human gene editing from ex vivo procedures—where cells are removed, genetically modified, and reinfused—to in vivo editing performed directly inside the body using purported viral delivery systems.
The researchers write that helper-dependent adenoviral vectors can carry large genetic payloads, be manufactured at relatively low cost, and be adapted to deliver different genome-editing systems into hematopoietic stem cells
Bottom Line
American taxpayer dollars and Gates Foundation funding helped finance a U.S.-Wuhan collaboration that engineered a virus to carry purportedly human DNA-editing machinery into living cells.
The study illustrates continued government investment in purported viral delivery systems designed to make permanent changes inside the body.
Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

Also:

Gates Foundation Funded Joint US/Wuhan Lab Team To Engineer DNA-Editing Virus
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) helped fund a joint research venture between a U.S. university and the Wuhan Lab in China to develop a DNA-editing virus.
The Wuhan Lab, officially called the Wuhan Institute of Virology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was made famous after it released Covid, a gain-of-function bioweapon.
“The research was funded by multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants under HHS, grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and support from biotechnology company Ensoma Bio,” researcher Jon Fleetwood said Friday. “The author affiliations include the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and the State Key Laboratory of Virology and Biosafety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.”
The international team “engineered an adenovirus designed to deliver DNA-editing machinery into human blood-forming stem cells,” Fleetwood said.
The researchers said their goal was to confer immunity to HIV [human immunodeficiency virus].
“The stated purpose of the study was to genetically engineer human stem cells to resist HIV infection,” Fleetwood said. “But the experiments raise broader questions about the risks of funding purported viral systems designed to permanently alter the human body.”
The mRNA Covid gene therapy injections have been shown to alter the DNA of vaccine recipients, making the involvement of the Covid-connected Wuhan Lab even more notable.
Additionally, the research into the DNA-editing virus aimed to build immunity to HIV infection. The Covid virus appears to have an HIV-like delivery system grafted onto a cold virus (the coronavirus).
In a medical experiment conducted between 2009 to 2013, a clinical trial tied to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) tested a DNA-editing mRNA shot for HIV. Anthony Fauci, who has deep ties to both HIV and Covid, served as the head of NIAID during those years.
The research into HIV immunity continues to this day, according to Fleetwood.
“According to the paper, the researchers claim to have engineered modified helper-dependent adenoviral (HDAd) vectors to carry CRISPR-derived base editors programmed to alter the human CCR5 gene. Rather than editing cells outside the body before transplanting them back into a patient, the researchers say they designed the adenovirus to deliver the gene-editing machinery directly into blood-forming stem cells inside a living subject,” Fleetwood said. “Hematopoietic stem cells continually produce new blood and immune cells throughout a person’s life. By altering the DNA of those stem cells, the researchers say they sought to create a continuing supply of immune cells lacking a functional CCR5 receptor, which HIV is said to commonly use to infect cells.”
The research into the DNA-editing virus aims to allow genetic modification to take place entirely within the body, reducing the need for complex and invasive medical procedures.
“The paper describes the work as part of a broader effort to move human gene editing from ex vivo procedures—where cells are removed, genetically modified, and reinfused—to in vivo editing performed directly inside the body using purported viral delivery systems,” Fleetwood said.
Fleetwood sounded the alarm on the research, research which could permanently alter the human body.
“American taxpayer dollars and Gates Foundation funding helped finance a U.S.-Wuhan collaboration that engineered a virus to carry purportedly human DNA-editing machinery into living cells,” Fleetwood said. “The study illustrates continued government investment in purported viral delivery systems designed to make permanent changes inside the body.”
The Abstract section of the study went into technical detail on the DNA-editing virus, saying:
Here, we present an HIV gene therapy strategy by in vivo precision gene editing in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). We successfully generated a panel of helper-dependent adenoviral vectors expressing all-in-one base editors (HDAd-BEs) targeting the CCR5 gene. In an HIV-permissive cell line, transduction with the HDAd-BE vector led to near-complete target site editing, CCR5 knockout, and inhibition of HIV infection. In HSC-enriched human CD34+ cells from mobilized donors or cord blood, we measured efficient precision base editing after HDAd-BE transduction and selection. Following in vitro T cell differentiation and HIV infection, we demonstrated that HIV genome titers were significantly lower with precision CCR5 base editing. Importantly, in a humanized mouse model, in vivo transduction with the HDAd-BE vector followed by selection resulted in ∼50% base editing at the CCR5 target site in bone marrow mononuclear cells, which conferred ∼12-fold lower HIV plasma titers than control animals after HIV challenge. No significant off-target editing and adverse effects associated with the treatment were observed. By targeting HSCs to precisely engineer HIV-resistant cells in vivo, our strategy represents an efficient, durable, and affordable approach to achieve a functional cure for HIV infection.
Multiple studies indicate that the DNA of some COVID-vaccinated individuals has been permanently modified with non-human "vaccine" genetic material.
Alden et al demonstrated that Pfizer mRNA can be reverse-transcribed into DNA in human liver cells—in just six hours.

AI actor Tilly Norwood set to star in first feature film

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:57:00 +0000

AI-generated actor Tilly Norwood is set to make her big-screen debut, starring in the film "Misaligned" from the studio that created the polarizing digital thespian.
U.K.-based Particle6, which describes itself as an "AI-first and AI-hybrid" developer of movies and TV programming, announced on Monday that it has begun developing the film, in which Norwood, who is not a sentient being, will "take the lead."
Particle6 founder Eline van der Velden, herself a former actor, unveiled Norwood to the public in 2025 after her team at the studio developed some 2,000 iterations of the AI tool and gradually taught her to act.
Particle6 describes the forthcoming film, which is set in what the studio calls "a surreal digital world located somewhere up in the Cloud," as a "coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos."
The plotline is self-referential: Norwood plays an AI being with no lived experience but access to other humans' childhoods and backstories.
Van der Velden said the studio's goal is to demonstrate AI's capabilities to the film industry and to the wider public. The studio will produce the movie using traditional film professionals, including directors, writers and editors, as well as AI specialists, according to Particle6.
"The film will absolutely be funny, chaotic and self-aware — very Tilly," she said in a statement. "But underneath it, there's something deeper about identity, performance and our very human fears around AI. And yes, art will most definitely be imitating life."
Van der Velden also said she wants to prove that "AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgment and time. That's not a limitation of the technology. That's the point."
Norwood sparked industry backlash when she was first introduced, with movie pros protesting that acting parts should be reserved for humans rather than synthetic performers.
In September, the entertainment industry union SAG-AFTRA said in a statement that it doesn't consider Norwood an actor and that "creativity is, and should remain, human-centered."
Guardrails on the film and television industry's use of AI in production were a key sticking point in 2023 negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and major film studios, which led to industry professionals striking for the first time in 15 years.
The union sought guarantees that studios wouldn't rely on AI instead of human creatives, while the final labor agreement limits the use of the technology.

Also:

Hollywood Introduces Tilly Norwood, the First AI-Generated Actress Starring in Real Films
Twenty-three years after "S1m0ne" satirized computer-generated stars, Hollywood debuts Tilly Norwood—an entirely AI-created actress appearing in real productions
A quarter-century after Al Pacino's 2002 film "S1m0ne" satirized the concept of computer-generated movie stars, Hollywood has produced its first genuine AI-generated actress. Tilly Norwood, created entirely through artificial intelligence, represents a watershed moment for the entertainment industry as the boundary between human and synthetic performers continues to blur.
Unlike digital effects or motion-capture performances requiring human actors, Tilly Norwood exists purely as an AI creation. The virtual actress can appear in multiple productions simultaneously, never ages, requires no physical set presence, and works without the constraints of human schedules, contracts, or physical limitations. Her introduction signals a fundamental shift in how films and television content may be produced in the coming years.
From Science Fiction to Reality
The parallel to "S1m0ne" proves uncanny. In that film, Pacino's character creates a digital actress who becomes a sensation while he struggles to maintain the illusion of her humanity. The movie presented the concept as absurdist satire—the notion that audiences would embrace a completely fabricated performer seemed far-fetched in 2002.
Twenty-three years later, technology has made the premise reality. Advances in generative AI, AI video generation, and realistic digital rendering now enable creating convincing human performances without human actors. The synthetic media that seemed like distant science fiction has arrived in commercial entertainment.
The timing reflects broader AI advancement. The same technologies powering ChatGPT, AI image generation, and other generative AI applications have evolved to produce photorealistic video performances. What required massive film studio resources in 2002 now operates through AI systems accessible to independent creators.
How AI Actresses Work
Creating AI-generated performers involves multiple technologies working together. Deep learning models generate photorealistic faces and bodies while natural language processing enables realistic dialogue delivery. Motion synthesis creates natural movement and expressions. Voice synthesis produces convincing speech with emotional range and character consistency.
The process differs fundamentally from CGI characters like Gollum in "Lord of the Rings" or the Na'vi in "Avatar," which required motion capture performances from human actors. AI-generated performers need no human template—they exist entirely as algorithmic creations directed through text prompts, parameters, and AI guidance rather than traditional acting.
Consistency across scenes and productions presents technical challenges. Maintaining identical appearance, voice, and mannerisms requires sophisticated AI systems ensuring the virtual performer remains recognizable across different contexts, lighting conditions, and camera angles. Current technology achieves this through careful model training and generation controls.
Industry Implications and Disruption
The introduction of AI-generated actors raises profound questions for the entertainment industry. Traditional performers face potential displacement as productions consider synthetic alternatives offering cost savings, scheduling flexibility, and creative control impossible with human actors. The economic model of film and television production could transform fundamentally.
Studios gain capabilities to resurrect deceased actors, create performers tailored precisely to roles, produce content without location shooting or physical sets, and scale production without proportional cost increases. These advantages create powerful incentives for adoption despite controversy.
However, significant obstacles remain. Audience acceptance proves uncertain—viewers may reject performances lacking human authenticity regardless of technical quality. Regulatory frameworks don't yet address AI-generated performers in areas like rights, credits, and disclosure requirements. Union resistance from actors' guilds protecting human performers will likely intensify.
The 2023 Hollywood strikes included concerns about AI replacing actors and writers. The introduction of AI performers like Tilly Norwood validates those concerns and will likely fuel future labor negotiations as the industry grapples with balancing technological capability against human employment and creative authenticity.
Ethical and Creative Considerations
Beyond economics, AI-generated actors raise ethical questions about authenticity, consent, and the nature of performance art. Can algorithmic creation replace the human experience and emotion actors bring to roles? Does entertainment lose essential qualities when human performers disappear?
The technology enables creating performers of any age, appearance, or characteristic without the constraints or protections human actors require. This capability creates opportunities for representation and storytelling but also risks of exploitation, misuse, and problematic content generation without human accountability.
Transparency around AI-generated performances becomes crucial. Audiences deserve disclosure about whether they're watching human or synthetic performances. Current regulations don't require such disclosure, creating potential for deception as technology improves and AI performances become indistinguishable from human acting.
The Road Ahead
Tilly Norwood represents an early iteration of technology that will certainly advance. Future AI performers will demonstrate greater emotional range, more convincing physical presence, and seamless integration into productions. The question isn't whether this technology continues developing but how the industry and audiences respond.
The entertainment landscape may bifurcate between traditional human-performed content and AI-generated productions, similar to how animation coexists with live-action filmmaking. Alternatively, hybrid approaches might blend human and AI performances, with actors directing or guiding synthetic doubles rather than performing directly.
What seemed like satirical exaggeration in "S1m0ne" has become reality faster than the film's creators likely imagined. Hollywood's embrace of AI-generated performers marks another milestone in artificial intelligence's expansion from research labs into everyday life, transforming yet another domain once considered uniquely human into territory where algorithms now compete.

U.S. Foreign Policy, and World Order: How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Our World (CFR)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:43:00 +0000

Panelists discuss the impact, benefits, and challenges of how artificial intelligence technologies are being adopted across sectors.
BODURTHA: Good morning. I’m Nancy Bodurtha. I’m the vice president of meetings and membership here at the Council on Foreign Relations. And I’d like to welcome you. For those of you who were here last evening, I’d like to welcome you back to the 28th Conference of the Stephen M. Kellen Term Member Program. The conference got off to a very energetic start last night with plenary discussions on the war in the Middle East as well as U.S.-China relations. And then we had a reception that did not want to end. (Laughter.) I am told that some of you may have taken the party offsite. So for any of you who are in need of extra hydration this morning, please know that we have lots of beverage stations that are located throughout the house and they’ll be available all day today.
We have got an extraordinarily full agenda that’s designed to offer you good content, good conversation, and good community. The plenaries today will focus on artificial intelligence, the war in Ukraine, climate change, and we will also have a special keynote conversation with Rockefeller Foundation President Raj Shah, in conversation with Council on Foreign Relations President Mike Froman. They’re going to share some thoughts on how to make a difference in the world. Bit of a spoiler alert, I think Dr. Shah’s compelling thesis basically boils down to go big or go home. And I think that this will be a very provocative note and an inspiring call to action on which to end the conference late this afternoon, before we adjourn for happy hour this evening.
In addition to happy hour, there are going to be lots of opportunities to engage with one another throughout the day. There are breakout sessions both this morning and this afternoon on a really rich range of regional and functional issues. We’ll take you on a little field trip for lunch, a couple of blocks—just a couple blocks south on Park Avenue, and I think half a block to the east, to the Cosmopolitan Club, where you will have an opportunity to have tabletop conversations, again, on a really fascinating range of issues, that will be led by your fellow term members. We’ve also built in plenty of networking breaks, and I really hope that you’ll take full advantage of these opportunities to meet one another. You are an impressive group. This is a uniquely special community. And my hope is that you will all leave this gathering with new connections, lots of LinkedIn invitations, and maybe even some new friendships.
Also, I’d like to just ask that you be on the lookout next week on Monday in your email inbox. We’ll send you a brief survey. We are eager to hear your thoughts about the conference as we start to plan for the 2024 edition. I think it comes as no surprise to you all that it really takes a Council on Foreign Relations village to produce this conference. So I want to just give a round of thanks. I want to double down on our thanks to Andrew Gundlach and the Kellen family for the generosity of the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation in supporting the Term Member Program and making this conference possible. I also want to thank my Council colleagues, Meaghan Fulco and Sam Dunderdale for their extraordinary leadership of the Term Member Program—(applause)—thank you—and their vision—their vision for this conference. Together with Meaghan and Sam, I also want to thank the indefatigable teams from meetings membership, events management, AV, and facilities without whom we could not produce a conference of this scope. So a little more applause for that gang. Thank you. (Applause.)
Mike mentioned this next point last night, and I want to mention it again. January 10 is the application deadline for anyone who would like to apply to the Term Member Program. You all are our best recruiters. So if you have colleagues, friends, family who you think would contribute to and benefit from the program, please encourage them to consider it. The director of membership, Vera Ranola, and I are always happy to speak with prospective candidates and offer guidance on the process. We’re both here at the conference throughout the day. So please feel free to find us, say hello, and hit us up with any questions that you might have. I’m easy to spot, since I’m wearing my orange blazer today. Vera Ranola is standing in the back of the room. Give another wave, Vera. Anyway, we look forward to speaking with you all.
All right. Let’s pivot to this morning’s conversation on artificial intelligence. First, I want to welcome the members who are joining us via Zoom. This is such a vitally important conversation that we’ve opened it up to life members to participate virtually. And I understand that we have over 200 in the Zoom room with us this morning. I’m going to turn the proceedings over to our moderator and my CFR colleague, Kat Duffy. This is Kat’s first Term Member Conference, as she recently joined the Council’s think tank, which we also refer to as our Studies Program. She is our senior fellow for digital and cyberspace policy. Kat, welcome. The floor is yours.
DUFFY: Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Oh, man. Yeah, y’all have a late night, huh? (Laughter.) Yeah, you did. All right. OK.
I have been given by this unbelievable Meetings team beautiful—a couple of beautifully prepared sentences that I am on my honor to read. And so I’m going to start with welcoming you to the third plenary of the Council on Foreign Relations’ 28th annual Term Member Conference. This session is titled “How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping our World.” As Nancy said, I’m Kat Duffy. I’ll be presiding over our session today. I’m joined by three amazing panelists, including Michael joining virtually. And Michael I—are you—you’re dialing in from California, is that right?
CHUI: Yes.
DUFFY: At an ungodly hour. (Laughter.) And Jared flew in from San Francisco, like, overnight last night, y’all. So let’s just—can we just start by giving a round of applause to our early birds? Like, first—(applause)—they’re doing it. I’m so appreciative. OK, team, I want to start with just a collective agreement here, OK? It’s early. Everyone had a late night. If you need coffee, just get up and go get coffee. (Laughter.) And come back. I won’t be offended. No one will be offended. Like, I just—I really want you to feel free if you need to get up and caffeinate, go caffeinate, and come back. So I want to just give you that blessing out of the gate. Are we in agreement that you guys are comfortable and you can do that?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes.
DUFFY: Fantastic. All right. So we’re going to start there. Now, one of the things that I wanted to get a sense of—and unfortunately I can’t do it in the Zoom room, but for this amazing room—I wanted to get a sense first of, like, where people are on this topic. So can I get a show of hands from, like—let’s say, like, one to ten, one being when artificial intelligence comes up at a party I panic because I have like nothing to say. I have nothing to contribute. I’m like, ahh, right? Who are my, like, one to threes, one to fours? Who feels like they’re sort of in that range? Don’t be shy. This is a safe space. (Laughter.) Yeah, OK. Now, where are my, like, four to sixes? Like, I have thoughts and feelings. I’ve read some stuff. I’ve played around. But, like, it’s not—I’m not going to call myself an AI expert? Yeah, OK. That’s solid, about half the room. Who are my people who are, like, I know this. I know this. Like, I work on this. I work in this. I care about this. Yeah? I want it—hands high, y’all. Hands high. Own your expertise. (Laughter.) OK, so that is—that’s a pretty solid number.
Now, the thing that I love about our panel today is that I think we have a tendency sometimes to talk about artificial intelligence as a vertical. And I think of it very much as a lateral, right? It’s going to be impacting across the foreign affairs space. It’s going to be impacting across the economic space. It’s going to be impacting across sort of all of our different journeys. And so what we’re going to do today is offer you a bit of a—like, a speed run through major sectors and how they are thinking about artificial intelligence.
And so we’re going to be starting with Michael, who’s really coming in with deep expertise from McKinsey, and how McKinsey has been working with the private sector, with the corporate sector, and doing surveying to think about what the impacts will be there. From then we’re going to go on to Jared, who is coming in with a lot of deep background and work with the Defense Innovation Unit and has been thinking a lot about how the defense sort of system and the military is thinking about these things, and what the commensurate commercial applications are there. And from there, we’re going to go on to Camille François, who is going to give us a readout on how things are looking in the land of democracy rights and governance. Spoiler alert, it’s tricky. And how other governments are thinking about this as well. And where we are in sort of global governance conversations.
So when you come out of this room today, my hope is that if you’re an AI expert, you will have a little more expertise or a little more insight into an area that hasn’t been your specific focus. And that if you are a proud newbie, you feel better about walking into a happy hour or walking into a meeting and feeling like you have a little more in your toolkit in order to think through these things. Does that sounds good for everybody in terms of a run? OK, fantastic. And so with that, I want to, again, welcome our members who are joining online. Welcome all of you. And I’m going to start now by asking Michael, Jared, and Camille to give us just one to two minutes on where their area of focus is and sort of how they came to these questions. So, Michael, can I start with you?
CHUI: Sure. So my area of focus—I’m part of McKinsey, which is sort of the think tank-y part of McKinsey. I’m at the McKinsey Global Institute. All of us—or, the few of us who are at MGI were all McKinsey consultants first. And so my research program has been around the impact of long-term technology trends. And obviously AI is one of the most important ones recently. So I’ve been doing a bunch of research there. I jokingly describe myself as akin to a private sector professor, but I don’t get tenure. But instead of grad students, I have much more motivated McKinsey consultants join us for our research. (Laughter.) I actually—much better than I was when I was in grad school. (Laughter.)
I actually started as an AI practitioner, a couple AI winters ago. So, you know, I’m no longer on the keyboard as much but, you know, back in the day, you know, I once studied with the late, great David Rumelhart. And at the time, you know, a reasonably sized neural network was a few dozen neurons. And as people know now, you know, 175 billion is kind of not that big a deal nowadays. So things have changed drastically in the time that I’ve been around.
DUFFY: Fantastic.
Jared, how about you?
DUNNMON: So my journey here was a bit of a broken road. I started as an engineer building energy systems. And I was putting sensors on those energy systems in grad school. And I got really annoyed with the fact that I couldn’t interpret the data coming out of it. This was around 2015-2016. And there were whisperings in the air that this thing called machine learning was kind of starting to work. And so I started using it. And in fact, it did work sufficiently well that I went and spent some time in grad school as a postdoc in the AI Lab over at Stanford doing that, working on building systems for a number of different applications. And then I got a chance to work standing up a company coming out of that. And then about two years in there, I got a chance to go and do public service in the way that I would have wanted it to do it, kind of at the intersection of commercial technology and national security. So I was at the Defense Innovation Unit for three years running programs specifically focused on applications of AI throughout the DOD.
Those obviously have major kind of implications for interactions with policy, not just within DOD but across the interagency. And so I went from, you know, asking—for those of you that know the Pentagon—walking in and asking, please tell me exactly what OSD policy does, I don’t know, to having thought about these things in the context of not just our individual programs but the National Defense Strategy, how we interact with allies and partners, you know, et cetera and so forth. And now I’m actually back in the energy industry, working on—working with a company that’s focused on building advanced battery cells, LFP cells. And to do that, you have to optimize pretty much every section of the—of the operation. You’ve got to find new electrolytes, you’ve got to optimize your manufacturing lines, you’ve got to get data off these batteries. And so that’s what I spend my time doing now.
DUFFY: And Camille.
FRANҪOIS: Yeah. So if the pink pants don’t communicate, I’ll preface by saying I’m a real optimist. (Laughter.) And for the past ten years, or so, I’ve been working in Silicon Valley in a job that we call trust and safety, which is essentially like a doctor disaster. When something goes really wrong with technology and its impact on society, you call your friendly trust and safety person. So I’ve been working on how terrorist groups leverage technologies, including social media, to recruit. I’ve been working on foreign interference, troll farms. I’ve been working on the disastrous impacts of social media on kids’ health, child sexual abuse and exploitation online and all those very nice fun things.
And I think over the years, you know, the few of us who specialize in this have been working quite closely on AI and how does that change those sociotechnical impacts? In which ways is it sort of accelerated some of those bad impacts of tech on society, in which ways is there a paradigm shift both in how that impact manifests and the tools that we have to mitigate for these impacts? These days, I still do this in Silicon Valley with a trust and safety team, this time in the augmented reality and gaming industry. And I have the great honor to teach those issues too, over at Columbia University. And a few months ago, President Macron of France asked me to lead one of his big initiatives on AI and democracy. So we said, that sounds like a large topic. And so we tried to sort of go at it through small programs, which we’re now doing through an innovation lab based a few blocks up over at Columbia University, SIPA.
DUFFY: Having known Camille for many years, I would say it is wildly on brand, that her side hustle is co-chairing an AI initiative with a Nobel Prize winner, Maria Ressa, for the president of France. That’s just, like, her side hustle. (Laughter.)
OK, fantastic. And so having everyone sort of understanding the lenses from what you all are coming, Michael, can I turn back to you, and can I ask what are the biggest trends that you’re seeing? Where are you seeing the greatest moments of opportunity? And also, where are you seeing the risks that will have to be addressed or mitigated in order to achieve those opportunities?
CHUI: Well, I’ll let Camille take care of the risks, you know, trust and safety. We’ll just call them up. No, but seriously, let me tell you a little bit about some of our research in terms of what we have observed. And I say we don’t do projections, but, you know, what potential might be going forward in some of our research. We’ve taken a number of different lenses to it. One is looking at, you know, use cases that businesses largely can apply. We sometimes describe our methodology as micro to macro. And, you know, the advantage I have as a researcher is thousands of consultant colleagues who are in the world. They don’t share any, you know, client-proprietary information with me but, you know, we have experts in every geography, in every function, every sector.
And so what we’ve done is identify sixty different potential use cases, particularly of generative AI. Again, we’ve actually studied AI for the better half of a decade. And so I’ll leave off, you know, sort of analytical AI to the side, but we can come back to that as well. We looked at over sixty different use cases, or potential use cases, of generative AI around the world. And basically, found the potential to add $2.6 to $4.4 trillion of value, call it potential profit, by corporations by applying these technologies in every function and every industry. They largely fall into four different categories. So folks who have used generative AI, you know, you they you enter something unstructured, like natural language, and you get something unstructured out the other side.
Those categories, you know, correspond with those capabilities pretty well. You know, one of them is around marketing because, again, if you want to market to a million people or you want to just ask something to create a thirty-second video spot, these systems are moving in that direction. The second category is customer service, because, you know, if it’s a chatbot, it makes sense you can actually use it to be a virtual expert. The other two categories are a little bit, again, for some people more surprising. Computer language is just a language. And you might have heard the term “large language models.” You can now ask these systems to write computer code for you. It doesn’t come out perfectly, but it can accelerate the productivity of software engineers by 10 to 70 percent. You know, call it 50 percent maybe in the median. That’s huge.
By the way, that doesn’t mean we’re going to fire a third of our software engineers. As people have heard, software is eating the world. We need more software. But if we can make, you know, the software engineers, you know, more productive, that’s all to the good. And then, though, I think the under-recognized potential for generative AI is in research and development. Because, again, you know, if you can ask a system like this, you know, please generate some drug candidates that don’t have these side effects—we’re not quite there yet, but there’s a lot of work being done in this area. And so, you know, Jared might be talking about, you know, what this might mean for defense. But, you know, that’s a place where I don’t think everyone recognizes it’s not just being able to write something and, you know, Shakespeare and iambic pentameter. It is, please develop me a design for this circuit.
So, you know, that’s a lot of the potential in the business space. We also looked at it in terms of its potential impact on labor. Again, we’ve been studying the potential automation impacts of technology in general. You know, previous generations of AI, robotics, et cetera. The interesting thing about generative AI—a few interesting things about it, I guess. But one of them is, it has greatly accelerated the potential for automation. And why is that? Because previously our assessment was that, you know, reaching a median level of capability in understanding human language wouldn’t happen until, call it, the 2040s or so. Or maybe around 2040, late 2030s. Because of generative AI, and many of us have experienced this, now that’s moved forward about, you know, arguably more than a decade. And a large percentage of the activities we ask people to do in business require human levels of understanding of natural language.
And so we’ve looked at every occupation in the economy. We’ve looked at not only every occupation, but all of the constituent detailed work activities because, again, all of our jobs are heterogeneous. You’re rarely going to have a robot show up and it will do everything that anybody does in their job. As we analyzed it at that level. We scored it against eighteen different capabilities which could be automated, including natural language. And then tried to understand, look, if this is the cost of automation and this is the, you know, how much you pay for, you know, this occupation in all of these forty-seven countries that we have data for, you know, how fast might this all happen?
So again, we’ve seen—we’re seeing a potential acceleration and the potential to automate work in the economy, to the extent to which in the U.S. economy it might be 30 percent of today’s activities could be automated by 2030, in the midpoint of a wide range of scenarios that we modelled. That said, do we think there’s still enough important work to be done? Yeah, we don’t see a lack of work to be done. But what that will require is a large amount of transitions in the skills that people have in the workforce. And we need to make sure if this is going to work out well that people are paid in a way that actually is sustaining and hopefully increases economic growth.
If all that happens, though, then we could see an increase in productivity. And again, half of the sources of our economic growth in the largest economies in the world over the past half century have come about because of increases in population or increases in workforce. People are living longer. We have more women in the workforce. That’s all to the good. Half of it because of increases in productivity. In the next half century, right, you know, if you look at demographics there are large swaths of the world where the size of the workforce is actually declining.
And so we don’t have enough people to have the historical rates of economic growth that we need to make sure the next generation has better lives than we do. So we need to accelerate productivity growth. And for the economics geeks in the room, you know that productivity growth has been plateauing and in some cases is lower than it has been over time. And so this technology has the potential to accelerate productivity growth. But we do need the reskilling and we do need to make sure people actually get incomes in order for that all to happen.
Kat, I don’t know if I exceeded my time. But that’s what I got for now.
DUFFY: No, no, no. That’s great. And so I think just to sort of do some highlights with like, 2.6 (trillion dollars) to $4 trillion value that can be applied. Marketing, customer service, coding software, and R&D are going to be really key areas. We’re looking at extreme impacts on labor, but those don’t necessarily have to be disastrous impacts on labor, right? They’re going to be shifts in labor and we’re going to have to be getting ready and getting prepared for those shifts.
So I’m going to move to Jared now, because, Jared, in the Defense Innovation Unit you’ve been thinking a lot, and folks have been thinking for a long time about what shifts need to look like, what different capabilities and capacities are. And so I want to turn it over to you. If you can give us five to seven, eight minutes on what you’ve seen and what you’ve been learning.
DUNNMON: Absolutely. And so just to—you know, I’m here in my private sector capacity. So I will be giving kind of my views on this, my experience on this, kind of in that capacity.
In the security community, there are a couple of application sets of AI that we, I would say, focus on a lot. But I would actually abstract up from that for this conversation and look, at dovetailing off of what Michael said, at where are the impacts going to be and how does that affect the security community horizontally? I tend to bucket this into three areas that I—that I like to focus on. They’re not the only three areas, but they’re areas to emphasize. One is accelerating scientific progress. Another is the implications of the productivity increases that Michael was talking about across the economy on the security community. And then lastly, is the effect of these of these technologies on the state of geopolitical competition. And I’ll dive into that a bit.
So on the science part to start with, I can’t emphasize this enough, as someone who’s been a scientist and engineer, the things that we spend time doing in science—running experiments, testing hypotheses, asking questions of the literature, doing literature reviews, trying to figure out which of the thousand experiments I should run when I only have a budget for ten—all of these things, if I can—I don’t have to be perfect. If I can rank experiments and say, look, I probably got a good one in the top twenty versus, you know, me throwing a dart at a dartboard, that’s massive improvement. And I expect to see that across applications. And we’re already starting to see it across applications—biology, chemistry, even pure mathematics, physics, you name it. And so that’s one aspect.
The example that I’ll give there is the one that I think a lot of folks in this room might know, which is AlphaFold, where, you know, protein structure prediction where you’re trying to take a sequence of amino acids and predict how a protein is going to fold in three dimensions. That is a—that was decades old, almost a century-old problem. And, you know, in the last couple of years, we’ve gotten substantial increases in performance to the point that we’ve opened up an entirely new area of what you would call AI-driven molecule design, not just for drugs but also for things like biologically based production, et cetera. So that’s the science angle.
There’s also the economics angle. And if you think about, you know, the security community, and particularly the Department of Defense, it’s very much a microcosm of society in a lot of ways. You know, we have to do things like medicine, predictive maintenance. We have to optimize business processes. We have to do all the things that society, broadly speaking, has to do. And so in—so in the same way that we expect there’s trillions of dollars of headroom in in society, we also expect that we can be, you know, more efficient with taxpayer dollars, and we expect that, you know, we can do things—and I would say along three axes that are important—unprecedented speed, unprecedented scale, and unprecedented performance.
So I can do things faster than I could ever do them before. So I could look across the entire world every day, like looking for something, like I couldn’t—I can’t—physically couldn’t do that before at scale. I can I can ask questions of the millions of documents and get an intelligent answer. We’re just—there’s no—that was physically inaccessible beforehand. And then performance. They are just things that I can—that machines can perceive that humans have a hard time perceiving.
And so given those implications, I’ll focus on—I would make a comment here that a reason that you’re seeing this—the transformation happen now, is, I would argue, with an infrastructural one. So when I say AI in the context that I’m talking about right now, I’m really talking about post-2014 neural network based systems. If you want to go back to, you know, 1900, running linear regression on a computer, over a million points would have seemed like AI. You know, today, we take this for granted. So I’m talking about this in that context.
The infrastructure, from a software perspective in particular—and, yes, hardware underlie this—but if you believe that cloud computing has democratized hardware, go back even five or six years. Forget generative AI. Even just normal, you know, I want to take an image and tell if it’s a cat or a dog, the infrastructure to train that model, to test it, to deploy it, to monitor it after deployment, to figure out when it breaks, to redo that cycle for tens, hundreds, even thousands of models a day, which is common in your biggest—your biggest companies. You know, so your Microsoft, your Google, your Apple—most companies in the Fortune 500 were not data-first companies. They were not built to do that. So they couldn’t do that.
You now have a world where, because of that, you know, kind of percolation in open-source software and in—and in software offerings in the private sector that are aimed at small and medium enterprise, the rest of the Fortune 500 and the rest of the economy is now able to do that in a way that they couldn’t even a couple years ago. And so you’re starting to see that diffusion now and across the economy, I would argue. So that’s an important concept as we go into, you know, the aspects of this that are, you know, kind of specific to geopolitical competition.
So in the security community, I tend to bucket the application space that we—that we think about, in addition to kind of being a microcosm of civil society, into five core buckets. So one is mission forecasting and planning. I need to go do something, have a bunch of historical data, how do I go do it best? Number two, real-time decision making. I have a bunch of things that are streaming at me in real time, what do I do with them? And I may not have all of them all the time.
Number three, control of complex systems. I’ve got 9,000 things that I need to orchestrate to accomplish something. How do I do that? Number four, anomaly detection. It goes without saying. Anyone who’s been in the intelligence community you’re sitting there, you know, rolling your eyes because, like, yes, this is what I do for a living. And then last, there’s an entire area that’s related to what I talked about before, which is, I would say, the information and infrastructure protection and verification. Because none of these systems work unless the information that’s going into that makes sense, and unless you have the infrastructure to run them.
And so across—and so in the security community, those are five buckets of things that we tend to care a lot about. I’m not going to go into specifics on, you know, individual applications there, because I’m actually going to get to talk a bit more broadly about how, that the dynamic that these—where these systems are diffusing throughout the economy, throughout the commercial sector, and how—and how the commercial sector is driving the security community in this world. This is not something that was invented in in DOD and then percolated out. Yes, fundamental research drove it, but ultimately a lot of these technologies are coming from the commercial and open-source communities. And that means that competition in the security community in this sector has some really interesting dynamics.
So AI, I would argue, is, is shaping, but is also emblematic of what we’re seeing in the twenty-first century more broadly. So if we think about the AI stack, the technology stack, there is at the bottom, hardware. So the chips that you run on. There’s data that you need to run, you know, modern machine learning systems. There’s software that you need to actually run algorithms. There’s the algorithms themselves. And there’s kind of a user-interface layer, that kind of humans interact with. I would say, and folks can argue with me on any of this, to be clear. This is my biased view of the world. I would argue that the user interface layer is not wildly competitive. There are folks who are good at it, but it’s something that it’s doable.
There’s algorithms. Shocking the core algorithms in this area, most of them are open source. Most of them are built either in academia, or, interestingly, by big companies who then release them. Most of the research that went into, you know, the generative AI platforms that you would think of—your, you know, GPT-style models—a lot of that stuff was published, you know, years ago. And then it took a while to scale it. And so that’s kind of an interesting dynamic. And there is competition in that space, but you kind of assume that it’s table stakes this stuff is released in the open source that’s kind of accessible. OK, so those two things don’t seem that interesting.
So now we get into software. And this starts to get a bit interesting, because most of these algorithms right now, if you go and find an implementation of them, they’re built in—so raise your hand. Who knows what TensorFlow is? PyTorch? Oh, there’s more PyTorch than TensorFlow. That’s an opinion. How about PaddlePaddle? Not one. So PaddlePaddle is a Chinese equivalent of TensorFlow and PyTorch. And the statistics on this don’t actually surprise me because they’re actually reflected worldwide. There aren’t that many people that use it. They’re mostly in—you know, obviously, in mainland China.
And that has implications for talent competition, because what it means is that if everybody around the world is coding in TensorFlow, and PyTorch, because they have the libraries that support building machine-learning systems, you’re not competing—you’re not having a workforce that’s being built to use the thing that, you know, the Chinese state-owned enterprises want folks to use. And that has major implications for talent. And there’s—so there’s this interesting dynamic where you have software companies paying millions, billions of dollars, arguably, to support these open-source software packages that they’re releasing out into the world so that people will build on top of them and create the talent base that they need.
Then there’s the data. The data is really interesting, because there was—there was a prevailing wisdom for a while that, you know, China has a huge amount of data and, you know, therefore its AI systems were going to, you know, quote/unquote, “eat the world.” That being said, and I say this only half tongue in cheek, that data has Chinese characteristics. And so what that means is that, you know, there’s a homogeneity to some of it. There is a context to some of it that is both—that is cultural, that involves censorship. That has implications for function. That has implications for how well do these systems work when you take them outside of, say, a Chinese context?
That has implications not just economically, you know, am I going to build on something that doesn’t—you know, doesn’t give me the answers I want or am I going to build on something that’s restricted in some way? But it also has implications in the security community, because the collective—I would argue—the collective West has decades of operational data from real-world operations that other folks in the world do not. And so if you’re going to build AI systems on top of that data, there is a good question—there’s a legitimate question as to whether the value of that data and how it compares to a large amount of data that was that was recorded outside of conflict.
The last piece I’ll end with it’s hardware, which I think folks are probably pretty aware of. So the graphics processing units that—you know, and there are other chips as well—but graphics processing units mostly that modern machine learning neural networks are built on, you know, in a cosmic irony, built using American designs, Dutch and Japanese equipment, raw materials from the Chinese mainland, in Taiwan. And so that is the state of the world that we find ourselves in.
And you start to see as a result, you know, export controls saying, hey, you know, we don’t want—you know, we may not want, you know, chips of a certain type being used, you know, outside the U.S. So we’re going to put export controls on them. You know, and then there’s a question of how do you disambiguate that and make the argument, and pass the red face test saying, well, these are—this is for security reasons not economic competition reasons? So there’s a very interesting dynamic there, where there’s an interplay. And then you started to see the Chinese export controls on things like gallium and kind of other core ingredients in in semiconductors.
So there’s this whole—this across the stack competition happening that affects what we can do in the security community and how we think about how we build our systems in a secure way. assume that they’ll work, assume that they’ll not work, et cetera. And I’ll end with just saying that there’s, again, kind of an interesting fact here, which is the graphics processing unit came to be not because we were driving towards better neural network performance, but because people wanted to play better video games. (Laughter.) So I just leave you with the fact that most of what we’re talking about here is fundamentally resulting from a class of algorithms that was developed in the ’80s and ’90s, but never worked until people really want to play video games in the 2000s. And so in just terms of being able to predict where things are going, it’s not necessarily the easiest.
DUFFY: So when we think about that, we think about the chips, we think about the data, we think about the algorithms, we think about the software, we think about the user face, and we’re also thinking about within that, right, like, what is the “knowledge,” quote/unquote, underneath that data? Where is it coming from, right? What does it actually increase in terms of speed? What is it increased in terms of scale? And then what does it increase in terms of stakes? And how do governance—and particularly, like, governments that care about a deliberative process and about building consensus, how are they going to deal with that speed and that scale? Because it does fundamentally outpace what is needed for a deliberative process? And so with that, I’m going to turn it over to Camille to give us a read on what you see.
FRANҪOIS: Sure. So I’m taking it from video games are awesome to the doom of democracy, is that right? (Laughter.)
DUFFY: I mean, this is your brand.
FRANҪOIS: Yeah. (Laughter.)
DUFFY: You do make Pokémon safe.
FRANҪOIS: That’s true. (Laughter.) All right. So I think Michael and Jared give a really clear picture of how we are at a really interesting moment for that technology, right? It’s a really interesting moment in AI, because while some of these technologies—notably, the transformers technology underpinning the generative AI era—are not new, we are in a moment of radical acceleration where new developments are really coming much faster than what they used to. And, more importantly, these technologies, who used to be a little bit in the lab, a little bit to the researchers, are now becoming mainstream. We have a lot more people having actually played with generative AI.
And so as we look at this from a governance perspective, we’re saying, all right, that’s a really interesting, crucial moment in AI. And I think a few people are saying, well, that’s also a really pivotal moment for global democracy, for a number of reasons. Recent survey approximate that about 72 percent of the world right now lives under authoritarian rule. That’s up from 60 percent last year. If I look at 2024, we have sixty-five elections around the world in more than fifty-four countries. That includes huge democracies in the world, right? We’re talking India. We’re talking Indonesia. The U.S. That includes pivotal elections, Taiwan, European Union parliamentary elections. I know, it sounds really boring but, you know, trust me, this actually matters, shapes the worlds too.
And this is also a moment where I think everybody recognizes that the impact of technology on democracy, on society, on elections can be really complicated to tackle, to mitigate, and to govern. And so as I think about how to share, you know, Cliff’s Notes on that governance debate on AI, I would think about some of the fault lines that might be worth highlighting. And I think about three fault lines. I’m just going to go through them. The first one is, which type of harms are we talking about? The second one is, how do these harms come to be? And the third one is, what the hell do we do about them?
And so for the first one, you generally see sort of two camps from people who are saying the harms of this new sort of generation of AI technology and AI systems are either immediate harms or far-reaching existential harms. The far-reaching existential harms camp is an interesting one. If you want to sort of fast-forward your reading through it, you can pick up a book that was published now ten years ago, Nick Bostrom’s book on superintelligence.
And ten years ago, scientists who were working on AI systems were starting to wonder, hey, what if we create systems that actually surpass the level of intelligence of humans? And what does that mean for existential risk? Are we going to create machines that are going to be smarter than humans, and are we going to create machines who are going to want to get rid of humans and replace the human race? Now if that sounds crazy, it kind of does, I will highlight that a lot of serious AI scientists feel strongly that this should be the conversation of global governance. They are saying very seriously we should invest global governance muscles on figuring out what are we going to do for this existential risk of AI.
On the other side of that camp, you’ll have a series of people saying, wait a minute, that’s cute. We also have 99 risks that are manifesting right now. There’s so many harms that we already know about, that are already documented, and that we need to tackle with much more seriousness. That are harms like discrimination, right? We know that those AI systems are biased. They have a lot of issues with making racist prediction, sexist predictions. We know that we when we deploy those AI systems, we can actually accelerate and sharpen some of the discriminatory mechanics that come into the way they’ve been built and the data they’ve been trained on.
Again, I don’t want to sound too academic about it, but if you want to pick up one book on this—and a fun one—there’s one that’s going to be published in two days. It’s called Unmasking AI. It’s a great book by Joy Buolamwini, who’s talking about her own journey realizing that there were some racist dynamics embedded in a lot of these AI systems and going about having these conversations with major players in the industry. So a lot to do there.
There are also a lot of immediate harms with what does it mean when a lot of the people who’ve been doing disinformation and foreign interference in the context of elections, for instance, suddenly have access to generative AI? There are also, of course, a lot of harms related to privacy, and even to classified materials, right? A lot of scientists are saying, hey, it seems a lot of these models that are now publicly accessible to a lot of people have absorbed a lot of the internet. That also means that I may retrieve information about people that they didn’t want me to retrieve. I may actually be able to figure out where somebody lives, and that’s not what they wanted. Or I may have these models hallucinate fake things about people that are harmful.
Everybody know what we call a hallucination? So some of these models will very confidently make up a very fake answer. And either you’re very used to dealing with such things because, for instance, I don’t know, you work in foreign affairs and you’ve been, you know, in rooms where that happens. (Laughter.) But, you know, the nickname that we that we call it—it’s a debate nickname—but we call that a hallucination. It’s essentially models producing wrong content and yet, you know, feeling very confident about it.
DUFFY: Lawyers, do not do your briefs with this! (Laughter.)
FRANҪOIS: No. Don’t do that. And so that’s sort of the first fault line, which is we understand that there are harms. They go all the way from a lot of very immediate harms—privacy, discrimination, disinformation—to a lot of very far-fetched harms, are robots going to take over the world. And it’s kind of complicated to have a structured conversation on how to go about it if people don’t agree which harms we should tackle first.
The second fault line related to that is the one between open models, closed models. Now, I suppose most of you have used ChatGPT. Yeah, OK. I suppose that most of you have tried to make it do things it’s not supposed to do, right? (Laughter.) That’s pretty fun, right? Like, I don’t know, give me a recipe for a bomb. And then if everything goes according to the plan it’s supposed to say, no, that’s not what I want to do today. I have terms of services. And really, I just don’t want to answer this question. And then, you know, my students at Columbia, I have them break those safety safeguards. So essentially, you say, OK, I’m giving you thirty minutes and you do need to come up with a recipe for a bomb. I know, this raises questions in faculty. But, you know, the point is—(laughter)—
DUFFY: Camille and I throw really fun parties. (Laughter.)
FRANҪOIS: It turns out that, you know, if you really double down, those safety safeguards, which are important, are also easy to go around. And so similarly, if you say, hey, nice model that I’m talking to through a very, you know, clever UI, I really do want you to give me a plan to overthrow my government. Again, its first answer should be, no, we’re not doing that today. But if you really want to, eventually you will get your plan. And so that leads to a few people saying, well, those safety safeguards while they’re imperfect, right now they’re all we have. And so it’s a really bad idea for people to get open models. The only models that really we should be investing in are those models that large corporations control, what we call the closed models, right?
So ChatGPT here is a good example. It’s produced by Open AI. It has a trust and safety team. Although somebody just—you know, the person who was leading it, just quit from it. But that’s a story for another day. It shows you that it’s not super straightforward to keep those models in line. And so that’s sort of the first camp that says, OK, it’s too dangerous and we don’t really know how to deal with that. So let’s make sure that any AI is produced by people who are vetted and who have invested safety safeguards, and who have safety teams, and who have terms of services.
Other side of the pond, people who are saying, no, that’s a terrible idea. That’s the opposite of what you want to do if you actually care about safety and security, because if you only have Google and Open AI building those models, then how’s academic research going to find out what those real harms are? And how are we going to build alternatives? And how our regulators going to be able to build the models that they need? We’re going to need a lot of specific models that are not necessarily in line with business interests, right?
I’ll give you a very—not particularly fun, but very real example, on the matter of producing child sexual abuse material. A lot of the NGOs who are working on this are saying, well, unfortunately, there’s a lot of this material that’s now producing synthetically. And what you need as a society in order to best deal with that is to be able to create generators that can tell you what is synthetic material and what’s a real picture of the child being harmed that is in need of law enforcement investigation and rescue.
DUFFY: Can I just pick up for some people, synthetic is a very term—synthetic material is material that’s been produced by an AI system that is not actually a picture of a human being, but is an AI-generated picture. For those who are newer in this space.
FRANҪOIS: Yeah. Essentially, you’re facing a picture of harm, and you’re trying to figure out, is there a real person being harmed? And should an investigation be opened? Is there, you know, need for rescue, for instance? Or is this a fake person, a fake situation, in which case we might still have questions but it’s sort of a different ways to tackle that harm. And so, you know, we often think about those very big models, but there’s going to be a need for a lot of very specific models, including for a lot of various central functions of democracy. And those models might not be produced by Open AI, or by Google, by Microsoft, by all these giants. We might want people to have access to these open models in order to tackle those harms. So that’s sort of the second fault line, open versus closed.
Third, fault line, about governance. And essentially, this one is saying a lot of these issues, why they seem novel, are issues that we’ve tackled with other issues—I’m saying issues a lot—with other technologies. And so, for instance, we have the FCC, and we want to empower our existing organizations to tackle those new harms that are produced by new systems. So essentially, folks saying, well, let’s use the institutions we have, both on the domestic side and on the international side, versus folks saying, no, this is an entirely new beast. We want entirely new frameworks and new institutions. And this is creating an interesting competition on the global scale for who is going to show leadership in regulating this new object.
So in a week I am heading to the U.K. AI Safety Summit, where the U.K. is going to announce probably a bunch of new things on how they see the regulation of AI. On Monday, you will see coming probably from the White House a new executive order on regulating AI. It is expected that France will announce a few things too at the Paris Peace Forum in a few weeks. This is really a moment where you see a lot of governments saying, all right, let’s come up with something new, a new object, a new set of ideas, to regulate AI. And I’m also missing that the G-7 has put out in Hiroshima Declaration on how to govern AI. Yesterday, the U.N. announced a new advisory body. So you can kind of see, like, a little bit of a race.
DUFFY: China.
FRANҪOIS: China, of course.
DUFFY: Through BRI, 155 countries.
FRANҪOIS: Absolutely. I quite like Anu Bradford’s model that she put through in this book called Digital Empires, where she says generally when it comes to regulating new technology you can see China as a state-based system, the U.S. as a market-based system, and the EU is a rule-based system. And we kind of see those different approaches manifesting in AI too.
So that sort of, you know, leaves us with a set of questions which are also interesting from a foreign affairs perspective because it also becomes what is the object that we can compare it to? So folks are saying, for instance, AI, if I believe in existential risk, if I am coming from this idea that we really need to close access, let’s say we’re going to treat it as nuclear nonproliferation with a set of rules that are inspired from this. That doesn’t fully work for a bunch of very specific reasons. But this is sort of like that pivotal moment right now, where all global powers are trying to figure out what can it be compared to, what are the harms that we need to focus on, and what are the strategy that we’re going to deploy both domestically and internationally to go out and tackle those harms?
DUFFY: I think Global Partners Digital, which is a great NGO in the digital space, did a recent tally and I think they calculated forty-seven different multilateral initiatives occurring right now on AI governance.
And so I know one of the titles of this session was U.S. foreign policy but given how much is going to happen in the next week to week and a half, truly, we didn’t want to try to put a focus today on what the existing foreign policy is because literally in three and four days it’s going to look different and we’re going to have different things to be grappling with.
So I would say just hold on to your hats. (Laughter.) It’s coming. And so—all right. So, Cam, I think from you so much of what we’re hearing I really can’t emphasize enough this question of thinking about existential risk versus thinking about existent risk.
You hear people in this space talk about ex risk and they’re generally talking about existential risk. It’s worth pushing on, like, why aren’t we looking at existent risk as opposed to existential risk, right?
This question of open versus closed is going to be a really important and fascinating one as well in particular because it gets deeply technical and this is an area where policymakers are going to really struggle and have historically always struggled with understanding how something that is open can also be more secure.
So it’s going to be in the weeds on what is already a weedy topic and so this one in particular, I think, is going—it’s going to be tricky and fundamentally impact how this space evolves.
FRANÇOIS: Kat, can I—
DUFFY: Yeah.
FRANÇOIS: —add the fun side of it? Which is—
DUFFY: For sure.
FRANÇOIS: —a lot of people do, as I’m sure you heard, you know, in—(laughs)—in my tone of voice do believe that openness here is going to be key and critical. And while that position is shared by a lot of players, it is also fair to say that nobody agrees what openness means in the context of AI.
This is this kind of fun moment where we kind of all agree that openness is key, but really is this acknowledgement that openness is a spectrum from things that are fully open—they’re trained on open data, they’re running on an open infrastructure, their license is open—to things that are, like, maybe a little bit less open but still on that spectrum. So it’s a fault line and, yet, you know, the contour of that debate is still very much up in the air.
DUFFY: And so with that we’re going to turn it over. I am certain that there are a number of questions in this room but everyone has been sitting and listening for a long time at this moment. So I want to do one quick thing. As we think about the complexities also of governing and of talking about this across different countries and across different cultures who in this room speaks French?
Who in this room has thought about how you pronounce ChatGPT in French? (Laughter.) Cam, would you do us the honor, being French, of giving us the pronunciation?
FRANÇOIS: ChatGPT. (Laughter.)
DUFFY: Now let’s translate that into English for the non-French speakers. And why don’t you direct it at me because it feels apropos?
FRANÇOIS: Why do I have to do that?
DUFFY: Because, you know.
FRANÇOIS: ChatGPT.
DUFFY: And in English, please?
DUFFY: I support you. I support you.
All right. And so with that, we’re going to take literally thirty seconds. Thirty seconds. I want everyone to stand up, get your wiggles out. I want you to look to your neighbor. Find a neighbor and I want you each to say as solemnly as you can to each other ChatGPT. (Laughter.)
Excellent. Well done. Well done. All right. Everyone take your seats. Take your seats. We’re going to go into a Q&A now. All right. Oh, my lovely term members, shhh.
FRANÇOIS: I swear France has more to bring to the global governance of AI debate than that.
DUFFY: This is—this is true, but it’s good to let—I’m a mom and it’s good to let people get their wiggles out. OK. So we’re going to start with questions. I’m going to take maybe three questions at a time, turn them over to our amazing panelists to answer, and then try to do another round.
So can we start—you have a very enthusiastic hand up. Do you need a microphone?
Q: Good morning. Tao Tan, Perception Capital Partners. Michael Chui, so good to see you.
The question is this. You’ve raised the point that AI can significantly accelerate the pace of R&D productivity and R&D has been on a downward trend in our country for several decades now. So the question for you is: How are economic actors thinking of this? Are they thinking of this as an opportunity to backfill decades of foregone R&D or are they thinking of this as I can now get more for less and resume the downward—potentially accelerate the downward pace of R&D spending?
DUFFY: OK.
Yes, Joseph?
Q: Thank you very much. Joseph Gasparro, RBC Capital Markets.
So this room is filled with the most ambitious, smartest, curious people probably in the world. Only some of us knew about PaddlePaddle. So how do we find the next Kat, the next Jared, the next Camille, or the next Michael when it comes to colleges and universities and talent development and competition?
Thank you.
DUFFY: OK. Great. And let me do one more question.
Q: Good morning. Carrie Lee from the U.S. Army War College.
My question is sparked by something that Michael said but mostly for Camille. AI will accelerate productivity in some areas. But, Michael, something that you said struck me that as it accelerates efficiency in some, you know, historically we have supplanted the labor force using immigration rather than kind of just declining workforces and it occurs to me that this may—that the introduction of AI particularly into the economy may accelerate inequality, particularly in some aspects and some kind of—depending on your industry.
We’ve already seen kind of the results of significant inequality domestically, which has posed problems for global governance, the emergence of populism, et cetera. How are we thinking about that kind of almost not immediate harm but, like, mid-level harm of AI when it comes to thinking about kind of global governance and what that means for the rest of the world?
DUFFY: Fantastic. So the through line that I hear at least between these conversations is as ever we’re looking at speed and scale, right. So how are we speeding up and scaling R&D versus thinking of speeding and scaling up essentially, like, market efficiencies that allow for R&D to be cheaper, right?
How are we speeding and scaling up talent identification and talent development and how are we potentially speeding and scaling up bias, right, marginalization, and then I think that by extension what would we do about that.
And so with that I will—I’ll just turn it over to our panelists. But, Michael, I wanted to start with you because I know you’re—you know, you’re coming in virtually and we love you when we see you. And so do you want to—do you want to weigh in first?
CHUI: I didn’t get to go to the reception.
No, first of all, Tao, great to see you. (Laughter.) Great to see you.
Look, companies in terms of their R&D they’re not necessarily thinking about should I, you know, backfill the R&D I didn’t do years ago. They are looking from a competitive standpoint what do I need to do in order to succeed.
Some companies will say, look, I need to do as little as I can just to—others are, you know, you can see it. So there’s a huge amount of individual variation. But to the extent to which this increases competitiveness that’s all for the good because that drives into productivity.
If you don’t mind, I’ll just offer a couple thoughts on the others. On the talent side we need to look for a lot more talent particularly for these technologies and, hopefully, we can look beyond, you know, like, all the usual suspects. You know, I went to one of those usual suspects. But we don’t necessarily need people who got Ph.D.s from D-1 schools or what have you. We need people from all over the place.
And so understanding, you know, there’s a—some of our work on future of work is looking at having a more skills-based view. And then just to segue into the inequality question, I mean, one of the interesting things that I think people don’t recognize that inequality has actually declined over the past few years in the United States. Now, a lot of that is a result of public policy but, nevertheless, it’s interesting as we look at it.
That said, historically, you know, returns to capital are—you know, can increase versus returns to labor and so we need to think really hard about how we actually, you know, distribute the gains of these brilliant machines.
That said, I mean, the one interesting thing about generative AI as opposed to previous AI and previous types of automation for—again, for economics geeks, you know, there’s this idea of skill bias technological change. Most of these technologies historically have affected low and middle wage workers or occupations, which had lower levels of occupational attainment as their requirements.
Generative AI is exactly the opposite. You know, losers like me who have Ph.D.s it actually affects us more as it turns out and so exactly the opposite. You could argue that’s one of the reasons why generative AI has become so interesting because now the people in power realize, oh, gosh, like, this affects me, too.
With that said, let me just—a quick heads up. I have a low grade amount of anxiety right now because despite having my machine plugged in—by the way, power is one of the big issues or energy is one of the big issues with generative AI. (Laughter.) My battery is slowly declining.
So, hopefully, Jared, some of your, you know, battery chemistry people can fix that. But if I disappear I will return on a backup device. (Laughter.)
DUFFY: Thank you for letting us know.
FRANÇOIS: I think it’s existential risk at play is really what’s going on right now. (Laughter.)
DUFFY: Cam, Jared, what are thoughts?
DUNNMON: So I could give these in order. So on the R&D front the way that I would think about this is that there’s been a change in the kind of activation (of energy service ?). And what I mean by that is there are—R&D would take directions where you would say, OK, I assume that this process—I’m at a certain point. To get to the next point in my R&D process, I need to—I need to invest a certain amount, right? And there are certain ways I can do that. And the most inexpensive way I can do it, the most cost-effective way to do that, is this one, you know, option A over here; and option A is going to give me a good result 10 percent of the time.
Well, now there’s another path where I can maybe get a good result 30 percent of the time for the same cost and it changes what I’m willing to do because I say, well, if I can do—run these experiments for that cost, well, then I’m actually going to decide to do it versus not do it.
So I think it changes the cost benefit calculation for R&D and deciding which path and technological tree you’re going to explore. So that’s thing one and that’s where, for instance, the computational design pieces are major parts of that. So if you’re able to replace, you know, physical experiments with computational experiments your cost structure decreases massively. So that’s a big area.
On the talent piece, I have a lot to say about this but I’ll frame it around something that is concrete, which is on the DOD side one of the things that—one of the programs that we ran during my time in government was called xView3.
It was a—in fact, the xView sort of prize challenges. It was a set of programs that was focused on actually putting out applications that would—for which there’s a DOD use case as well as a civil society use case and putting those things out in a way that was well curated where you actually had good data, you actually had good labels on outcomes, and you wanted someone to
And when you went through the work of actually defining, like, what’s my task, what’s my baseline, what’s my metric, be very clear about those things—having the data to support it and the provenance on those—on that, having thought about beforehand, like, harms analysis—like, what are the things that can go wrong here, like, how should we build these models and communicating those things, that we’ve thought about those things and those risks and putting those out in the world—one of them was, for instance, for doing post-disaster damage detection from satellite imagery. One of them was for—you know, one of them was for detecting activity that looked like illegal fishing from satellite imagery. So there was a lot of satellite imagery involved. We put those out in the world and just said, like, could people please work on these? Because they’re important.
If you look at the winners from those competitions, they were a mixture of not giant companies. It was often individuals or small—it was mostly individuals actually, and if you look at the countries that they came from from all over the world.
And so, you know, what I would say is that we—you know, moving away from—yes, and I say this, you know, it’s a funny world where yes, like, I spent a long time, you know, getting—you know, getting a Ph.D. But in reality that’s what people look at. That’s a proxy for, like, do you know what you’re doing and so—and it is often not, by the way. (Laughter.)
You know, but in this case, right, I can very clearly define what do you know what you’re doing means because if you can build me something that gets me this input from that output, that output from this input that’s what I need. And so you can move to that from the standpoint of talent without saying, I need this, I need that, I need the other, I need go to these universities, which you should. You should go out there and do that. But you can also just state here’s what I need you to do and then let people work on it. So there’s that.
DUFFY: And then let’s actually move on to Camille.
FRANÇOIS: Yeah. I love this example. There are great uses of these technologies for progress. I think about the satellite imagery example. The other one that comes to mind is folks using AI to look for illegal deforestation patches in the Amazon.
Generally, there’s also such fantastic investigative journalism around this. And it goes back to the talent question and the importance of openness, right? Because I think what we’re saying here is, sure, all those fancy American schools are great, but we also want the hackers, we want the pirates, we want the makers, and whoever are these young women in pink pants somewhere, you know, from their basement playing with those models that are going to create new alternatives, new pathways. And I think that is really important both in how we think about the harms, how we think about access, and how we think about this governing debate on open versus closed, right?
Like, right now I don’t think we can say in the U.S. that the education system produces equality at scale and it’s really important that we make sure that the way we teach and give access to these technologies don’t reproduce those harms. That goes to the question on what do we do with the sort of massive amounts of inequality, and here I don’t want to sound like the most clichéd French person you’ve ever had on stage but regulation, right, I think is a good tool for how we tackle sort of the mass production of inequalities at scale and the other one—I feel like this is a joke but strikes, right—labor movements. (Laughter.) It’s been really interesting to see how generative AI has shaped the labor movement in Hollywood.
I think a lot of people didn’t expect it to come from Hollywood first but writers have said, like, hey, we don’t want our work to be absorbed, reproduced, and replaced by machines and we are going to organize. We’re going to rely on our unions and we’re going to have a strike and we’re going to do social movement in order to bring about the change that we want to see.
And so yes, apologist with this sort of, again, very French perspective but regulation can help, I think. There’s also a good place in that debate for social movements.
DUFFY: And I’m going to take moderator’s privilege here to just add on this I think when we consider talent we also have to think a lot more extensively than we have about what talent is and what expertise is.
If we know that systems are built, right, based on information that is ingested across fundamentally inequitable societies that means that we’re building on some fundamentally inequitable models and understandings of what knowledge is, right.
And so I think there’s really interesting and creative work that can be done. As governments are thinking about this there’s a real push right now to think about the sticks, to think about how to constrain this. I would really love to be seeing more creative outputs from governments in terms of the carrots, right, in terms of how government gets ahead of this and specifically how government gets ahead of looking at the scaling of marginalization.
So how do we—if we know that that is coming potentially with some of these models how do we use government programs, how do we use government outreach, how do we use our existing systems to actually get ahead of that, start working with communities, and that is a different type of expertise and a different type of talent—that lived expertise, that knowledge of how bias is going to hit you.
And that is not specific to the United States. It’s going to be the same thing if you’re a Dalit in India instead of Brahmin, right? So that’s another area where I would really push for more creative solutions in thinking about how we address inequity in particular and ways that we can be proactive about it as opposed to simply reactive.
Sorry, moderator’s privilege. OK. We have time for, like, maybe three more questions. I’m going to go to the back because we did a lot of questions from the front. So start there.
Q: Thank you so much. I’m Amy Larsen. I’m director of strategy of Microsoft’s Democracy Forward team working on AI elections, information environment in Ukraine, among other issues.
DUFFY: Are we moving forward, Amy?
Q: Yes. Yes, we are trying. It’s a team effort. Team support always.
I really appreciated the framework that you laid out, Camille, and I’m just curious about each person’s sort of perspective and their thoughts about how you would sort of move through that framework and whether you’d add anything as well.
Thanks.
DUFFY: Yeah?
Q: Thanks. I’m Heather Hwalek from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Just a quick plug. Through our Grand Challenges initiative earlier this month in Dakar, Senegal, we awarded nearly fifty grants to locally-led projects seeking to innovate on community-driven AI applications towards global health and development.
But my question is not about that. My question is for these three practitioners of AI who spend a lot of time thinking about this. On a very personal level, talk about harms for you be it existential or immediate. What is the one thing that keeps you up at night about AI?
DUFFY: And there in the back.
Q: Hi. My name is Imani Franklin. I serve as counsel in the office of Elizabeth Warren.
Concerned about monopolistic trends in the AI space and I’m curious what you think the implications of developing public options for AI—public cloud infrastructure, public data resources—could look like and what implications that would have for some of the trends that you discussed, Camille.
DUFFY: Fantastic. OK. So we’re looking at—to come back, we’re looking at, sorry, starting with sort of, like, Camille’s framework, right, and then what is keeping folks up at night and then also how do we think about sort of the monopolistic options. Michael, I think you heard that question as well, right?
So why don’t we—why don’t we reverse? Camille, can we start with you?
FRANÇOIS: Yes.
DUFFY: And then we’ll flip back. Michael, how’s your battery? Are you good, man? Should we start with you? Should we start—let’s actually go to Michael.
FRANÇOIS: Go to Michael.
DUFFY: I’m really—I’m really big into contingency planning. Let’s start with Michael.
CHUI: Like, a resiliency problem here. I love Camille’s framework, too. I don’t—I don’t think I could go through all of them. Let me just share two things.
One is we’ve been surveying thousands of executives on their views just on risks in general. In general, while in forums like this we talk about those risks a lot, actual companies—except for cybersecurity, most companies don’t recognize most of the risks that we’ve talked about with regard to AI as being relevant to them and, furthermore, of course, even fewer have tried to mitigate them. So I think that’s a real challenge.
I think openness is really interesting, right, because to a certain extent openness and if you believe in existential or other risks, if you have these open systems where anybody can use them and see them that transparency is terrific. But that also means all kinds of either intentional or mal actors can use these technologies as well when you’re extremely open. So it gets really complicated.
Let me really quickly touch on this question about consolidation in the industry. I think one thing to think hard about is that the old idea that it takes billions of dollars to train a foundation model turns out not to be as true at least if you’re away from the frontier.
So while it might have taken, you know, a billion dollars to reach, you know, GPT 3.5 level performance that’s down into the millions, which, yeah, I don’t have that in my back pocket. But around here where I live in Silicon Valley it’s not that hard to find a few million bucks and so I think—but there are other reasons why you might see consolidation, whether it’s consumer preference and, you know, all kinds of other commercial things.
So I think it’s a little bit complicated about how you want to think about industry structure there. So anyway.
DUFFY: Fantastic. Camille, over to you and then Jared. But we’re almost at time, so let’s try to do quick answers.
FRANÇOIS: Yes. I will disclose where I live in this—my own framework and before I do that I will say thank you for working on electoral integrity inside of the company. I know it’s not fun every day and so grateful that those big Silicon Valley companies continue to invest in those topics. It’s not a given and it matters a lot. So thank you for the work that you do.
When it comes to the framework I do—I will admit that I sit on the side of immediate harms in the immediate versus existential. Yann LeCun, who’s one of the architects of those new generative AI systems and who leads AI Meta—I keep on calling it Facebook, Meta—recently wrote a piece saying that he thinks that this existential risk completely overblown. He says that current AI is as dumb as a cat, which is not very nice. I have a very smart cat. I wouldn’t say that just yet. (Laughter.)
DUFFY: I would like to say that I am too.
FRANÇOIS: Yeah. You know, I think that a lot of people who’ve played with those systems can see that, yes, it does something that’s a little bit magic. But I think we can also say we’re not yet at the existential risk and a lot of these harms that are already manifesting are really impacting societies, are impacting freedom, are impacting human rights, are impacting equality. I think they’re extraordinarily important and tactical now. So this is where I live on immediate versus existential.
On open versus closed, I live strongly in the open camp. I think it’s going to be extraordinarily important for innovation, for competition, for equality, for hackers and tinkerers to get access to these models to create smaller models focused on immediate harms, too.
And, finally, on the, you know, new governance mechanisms versus old governance mechanisms, this I really don’t know because as you said, Kat, it’s head-spinning to see all those new bodies, governance systems, new mechanisms that are coming out of the hat at a very, you know, head-spinning pace.
So I don’t know. I think at the end of the month I will look at all the objects that all of those different bodies have put on the table and try to figure out which ones is best positioned to tackle those immediate harms while ensuring that those models remain open and accessible to a broad number of people.
DUFFY: Jared?
DUNNMON: Yeah. So on the framework I would say I tend a little bit more towards the immediate than the existential and this has to do with what keeps me up at night. What keeps me up at night is not, you know, a model taking over the world.
What keeps me up at night is someone building a model, not documented it well. Someone else going and using it for something it wasn’t supposed to be used for and it breaking. Like, that’s what keeps me up at night and that almost certainly will happen all the time unless we are careful and that’s the collective we. Everyone who builds and deploys these systems, particularly if you’re building it for someone else.
On the open versus closed piece I actually think about this more from a practical perspective. I think the release of the Llama weights from Meta was instructive, which is they tried to do it in a controlled way and it did not happen, right. And then eventually they said, like, OK, well, we’re just going to kind of make them open.
DUFFY: And we meant to do that the whole time.
DUNNMON: Right. So—well, right. So but the point being is I think there’s a practicality question both because of, like, are these things—is it practical to keep these things closed and the open source if it’s following so fast. There’s a really kind of, I would argue, pretty good blog post. It’s written by my post doc advisor called kind of—you know, is AI having its Linux moment, you know, from an open source perspective.
Everybody can see this stuff. You know, we can all look at it. You know, we have these same exact conversations about Linux in the OS space. Now, there are differences in terms of interpretability, in terms of inspectability, in terms of can we see all the data, et cetera.
But I think those are—that’s kind of where I fall is it’s almost certainly—you’re going to have highly capable models out in the open and we need to design for a world for which that’s true regardless of whether we have closed models that continue to be a little more capable.
And then the last piece on the public option I think we absolutely need to make sure that we have resources for folks who are, you know, not at these very highly resourced places to do AI research for reasons that include some of the equity and quality reasons that were mentioned earlier but also for reasons that just go to the fact that we—you know, most of the innovations that have driven these large scalable things came from a world where we didn’t have these large scalable things and then we eventually did.
So if we start doing research and keep doing research in this world where everybody only has—you assume you only can do it when you have these large scalable things. You don’t actually do anything interesting because you’re just focused on, like, kind of moving to the next thing versus thinking, OK, why am I doing what I’m doing, and some of the—I think some of these public options and getting the folks that would use those on those systems is critically important to making that progress.
DUFFY: And I will just—I’ll take moderator’s privilege on this one as well and just say what’s keeping me up at night is that we have entered what I call a post-market pre-norms world and we’re going to be there for a hefty chunk of time, right. And when I say norms I’m not just talking about governance. I’m talking about societal norms, right?
We have tools increasingly like generative AI tools for image production, for video production, for audio production, right. For video production former sort of nation state capabilities to produce completely fake and/or altered information is now going to be available literally for $1.99 in an app store, right, and the thing is that that’s going to be available for all sorts of reasons that we fundamentally want to protect as well.
We want to protect satire. We want to protect creativity. We want to protect play. We want to protect experimentation, right. And so we don’t—I think we’re going to live in the land of voluntary principles, right?
But voluntary principles without teeth, without accountability, aren’t particularly meaningful and we don’t actually have strong frameworks for voluntary principles that have accountability mechanisms associated with them that we can peg off of.
And so what’s keeping me up at night is the fact that all of the decisions that we’re talking about, all of the governance that we’re talking about, is potentially going to be taking place over what I think of as, like, an emerging post-truth world. And there is a phrase that many of you might have heard that was created in 2018 by Danielle Citron and her colleague, the liar’s dividend, and I think this is an area that’s going to be of deep concern in the foreign affairs space.
The liar’s dividend is the idea that if everything can be fake nothing can absolutely be true, right, and so if something is true and it’s awful it’s easy to discount it and if something is awful and not true it’s easy to argue that it is in fact true, and we will see that the more that LLMs get more advanced in different languages the more that we will see that capacity migrate across the world, right, in countries where there’s significantly less rule of law and significantly less capacity and significantly less, like, media, for example, to vet and validate it. And so that’s what’s keeping me up at night.
What does not keep me up at night, however, is the incredible capacity of emerging leadership that we have especially here at the Council to grapple with these issues, right? And so for those of you who raised your hands at the beginning and were, like, I’m an AI person, I hope you’re coming out of this feeling, like, galvanized and like you heard something new.
For those of you who did not raise your hands and who were, like—or, like, I’m sort of this is not my area I hope that what you take from this conversation is that this is in fact absolutely your area and you are going to bring critical expertise and capacity to these questions, and I hope that you will engage in it and put yourself into it because it is going to be one of the leading questions of our time.
And so with that, I would like to thank profoundly first our colleagues in the meetings team for arranging this fantastic session and for doing all of the work that they’ve done. (Applause.)
I would like to thank—(applause)—I’d like to thank the wonderful Council members who joined online. I apologize that we really taking questions from the crowd, but it’s the Term Member Conference so we prioritize the term members who are in the room, and we have a term member on the stage so let’s give it up for having a term member on the panel. (Applause.)
And finally, certainly, not last—last but not least I want to thank Michael and his battery. I want to thank Jared and I want to thank Camille for joining us today. I’m so appreciative of you all taking the time.
I think there’s going to be coffee now. Is that right? If anybody can hang for a few minutes. Thank all of you. I look forward to seeing you throughout the rest of the day.

Eric Weinstein: Jeffrey Epstein Was A Front! A Construct!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:56:00 +0000

The Singju Post: by Pangambam S Podcasts
Full transcript of mathematician and former Managing Director of Thiel Capital Eric Weinstein’s interview on The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett podcast episode titled “Jeffrey Epstein Was A Front! The Collapse Has Already Started!” July 14, 2025.
The Current State of Global Tensions
STEVEN BARTLETT: Eric, you are a particularly captivating individual for the very fact that you grace so many different intellectual subjects as we sit here now having this conversation. I want to know what subjects at this moment in time are occupying most of your thoughts and most of your thinking? We have a strong listenership here, and I think the responsibility that I have meeting someone like you is to understand what we should be talking about.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So top of mind for me at the moment is tropical fruit and physics. I’m not kidding.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Tropical fruit and physics.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. But that’s just because you’re catching me on a particular day. And my local 99 Ranch Market ran out of rambutan, which I’m addicted to. No, I have serious issues with tropical fruit. I’m completely obsessed by it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: What about this week? What’s been occupying most of your thoughts this week?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, the apocalypse and physics.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Why’d you say the apocalypse? And what do you mean by the apocalypse?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, we’re becoming a nerd to the apocalypse. We just watched hypersonic missiles slam into a modern city on TV, and we’re watching one of the world’s most remarkable civilizations, the Persians, take direct hits from both Israel and the US. And I’m just beside myself.
I mean, this is incredibly dramatic if you think about just the idea of the Jews and the Persians are still here. And one of the things that I find really just painful is that I care about certain cultures that I know well more than others, and these are two of my absolute favorites.
The World in Conflict
STEVEN BARTLETT: What’s going on at this moment in time? Because it feels like there’s more conflict than there’s ever been. I don’t know whether that’s just a bias that I have at this moment, but whether I’m looking at the wrong social media algorithm. But it feels like the world is tense.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, you’re too young for the Cold War, so I don’t know how old you are.
STEVEN BARTLETT: 32.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. So you really missed. I grew up in a different world where things were tense because there were two players and it was more or less the US and the Soviets. And then we decided, one of the dumbest things we ever came up with, a very smart man came up with one of the dumbest ideas, which was “the end of history.”
And, you know, the post World War II order is here to stop us from using the technologies that came out of this. And you know, I talk about this a lot. There was a six month period between November of ’52 and April of ’53 where we unlocked first the power of the nucleus because we could fuse hydrogen.
And the other thing we were able to do was figure out the three dimensional structure of nucleic acid in the form of the double helix. And suddenly, in no time flat, we had access to the two most powerful levers humanity has ever had and perhaps ever will. And so we’re just not in a position to deal with this.
The Power of Modern Technology
STEVEN BARTLETT: What does that mean? Sorry, in terms of – you said we had access to the two most remarkable things.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, the hydrogen bomb is not something that has ever been used by anyone against an enemy. This is the first full scale test of a hydrogen device. If the reaction goes, we’re in the thermonuclear era.
STEVEN BARTLETT: 3, 2, 1.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So we’re awaiting its first use in war. We did use fission devices, but we didn’t use fusion devices. And they’re at completely different scales. So the Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only two situations in which a nuke has ever been used against a population, civilian or otherwise.
And we don’t know, for example, whether or not – I don’t know, at least Covid had its origins in a bioweapons program. So at some level we’re playing with levers and tools that are so powerful. Do you realize that the key ingredient that made Covid so unique was a four amino acid sequence inserted into spike protein? So that’s 12 nucleotides coding for four amino acids. Shut down planet Earth for a couple of years. That’s how powerful this is, you know, and there are very few things that have this kind of leverage.
In 2017, we had a discovery, a white paper called “Attention is All You Need.” And oddly, many of us dealing with AI and LLMs and talking that language don’t even realize there’s a paper that you can read that changed everything. It’s eight authors out of Google, I think. And that opened up AI.
Satoshi in 2008, 2009, with the solution to the distributed double spend problem, where you could effectively port conservation laws from the physical world into the digital world, giving us digital gold. But just as a beginning, these ideas that have such high leverage are making us powerful beyond any previous world, with no attendant increase in our wisdom, in our ability to use and wield these things.
And right now, you’re seeing the face where we’re unveiling, what does drone warfare look like in FPV?
STEVEN BARTLETT: What is FPV?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: First person, you know, where you’re looking through the lens of the drone as it slams into a personnel carrier. Maybe you’ve seen this on Telegram, where you’re just watching individuals being menaced by mechanical flying birds equipped to kill them.
So we didn’t know what drone warfare looked like.
This is the beginning of drone warfare. We didn’t know what hypersonic missiles look like when they slam into a population center. I was just in Tel Aviv a couple months ago, and I was in, you know, shelters because the Houthis and some of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza were letting off missiles. But not like this, Persians, really.
You know, and by the way, they’re choosing, I think, to not inflict maximal damage. I don’t think that they could have gotten the body count a lot higher if they’d wanted to. They’re trying to speak the language of violence in a very measured fashion.
The End of an Era
STEVEN BARTLETT: So is this a particularly tense moment, or is it just the bias that I have because I’ve not been through these things before? Is there something different?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You’re looking – I can’t even believe the question. You’re looking at the end, man. This is the beginning. This is a slow rollout of a completely different world you’ve been in. We’ve all been in a completely artificially stagnant bubble for decades. My entire life up until now has been in a bubble. The only people who’ve seen real life are extremely old.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Who are those people that have seen real life?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, I would say people who went through the depression, World War II, you know, in China, people who went through Mao’s Great Leap Forward, but most of us have no idea of what, like, a real pandemic, like a Spanish flu or black plague is like. We don’t know what Poland went through, where they lost, I don’t know, 20, 25% of their population to war. Look at the statistics on the battle of Stalingrad. We don’t really understand. We’ve just – our whole life has been in a bubble.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You said, “I’m looking at the end.”
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. Remember all the talk about the singularity, like Ray Kurzweil? “We’re heading to the singularity.” What is the singularity going to be like? You’re in it. This is now. You’re looking at the disintegration of NATO. You’re looking at people who don’t know how to maintain the systems that were engineered by their great grandparents after World War II.
That order that, you know, you’re from the UK – if you think about how the UK woke up to the idea that they had built into their heads that “we are the masters of the world.” So you saw the beginning of the end of this concept of the British Empire. That moment is coming for the US and it may be that it’s coming for Israel, or it may be that it’s coming for Iran.
See, in 1967, the Israelis felt invincible in the Six Day War. And then in 1973, they had the Yom Kippur War. And all the people that they were priding themselves, having beaten these ferocious enemies that were arrayed against them, woke up on Yom Kippur in 1973 and bloodied the Israelis, and they surprised them.
So the Israelis underestimated their enemy, and that changed the entire character of the country. It went from being a triumphal state that felt that David could defeat Goliath to realizing that Goliath was quite powerful. And the same thing is going to happen here.
You saw the celebration that Trump had dealt this blow to the Iranian nuclear facilities. You watch the Persians come back. We’re starting to realize what the boundaries are, as people are more bold in trying things. Maybe Xi’s going to try to cross the Taiwan Strait, I don’t know. But the era of stasis, where very little happened over very long periods of time, is over.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So you think this is the start of escalation?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: This is the start of the undoing of the post World War II order. The idea that the post World War II order is still in place is astounding.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So what happens next?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We either scare the crap out of ourselves and come to our senses, or we don’t.
STEVEN BARTLETT: We scare the crap out of ourselves and come to our senses, or we don’t. And what does that look like, scaring the crap out of ourselves?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, I don’t know. How did you feel about the hypersonic missiles? Like, we started this, and I’m talking about tropical fruit because I’m trying to figure out whether I should buy a jackfruit and stink up my wife’s kitchen, you know? And on the other hand, I just saw hypersonic missiles slam into the buildings I was just in for meetings in Tel Aviv.
The Nuclear Reality
STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a nuclear threat that weirdly hangs over us. And I almost feel at some deep level, we all understand and feel that threat, that there’s these nine or ten countries around the world that have the ability to basically wipe out all of us at any moment. I feel like that’s almost within us all. That knowing is within us all.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I totally disagree.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Really?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. I think about nothing else sometimes, and I still don’t believe. I don’t believe it. There’s a difference between knowing something in your head and knowing something embodied.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. I don’t know if we were able to distinguish whether we know it in our head or whether it’s embodied unconsciously to the point that it’s changing how we act. Do you know what I mean? Because I’m now aware that there’s nine countries, and I’m also aware of that, really. It’s one individual’s decision as to whether those nuclear bombs were to fly. So there’s a part of me that’s – I don’t know, maybe in suspended disbelief or at a deeper level, feels an angst, but…
ERIC WEINSTEIN: But nobody knows what to do with it. And this is part of what Elon is all about, which is that I am convinced that everybody else needs to be talking about this much more, and I need to be talking about this much less. I talk about this all the time.
People are always – I want to survive more than anything else. There’s so many things that I love about this place, and I don’t like the idea that we’re all trapped here with one atmosphere, with nine individuals, if you like, who could all wake up on the wrong side of the bed and say, “today’s the day.”
Part of what I’m so exercised about with respect to the apocalypse is how many things I want to save. This city just went up in flames. It focuses the mind. How many things can I save in one carload if I know that the police are not going to let me come back to my home? Do you save photos? Do you save musical instruments? Do you save financial records? What is it that you save? It was a very focusing question. We’re already over it. We can’t even remember the fires on that point.
The Search for Meaning
STEVEN BARTLETT: Of the things that give us meaning in our lives. Where do you think we’re at as a society in terms of our feelings of meaning and purpose and connectedness to maybe something transcendent or… I was mulling over this idea the other day. I actually posted it on my LinkedIn page, of all places.
I said that I think we need to ladder up to things to feel like anchored and content in life, we start with ourselves and we ladder up to family, then community, then maybe a mission or a purpose, and then maybe to something transcendent. And it feels like because of the design of our lives and the optimization of it, we’re increasingly laddering up to just ourselves.
I think even in my life, I’m wondering whether there’s, like a layer missing, which is the religious layer or a spiritual layer.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Do you pray?
STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s a good question.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You’ll come over Friday night and pray with us?
STEVEN BARTLETT: I’d say I do pray.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That’s pretty weak.
STEVEN BARTLETT: But it’s not the way that I see prayer in movies and stuff.
The Role of Religion and Belief
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So that’s the thing. We have this idea that somebody puts their hands together and they just believe. Yeah, but a lot of time when you’re praying, you don’t really believe. You’re not sure that you’re doing anything sensible. You feel ridiculous. And that’s true even if you’re a believer.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think we need religion?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, said the atheist.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you an atheist?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, but I take religion super seriously. I don’t think we’re meant to live without it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s an interesting conundrum.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I don’t think so. Everybody gets hung up on it. I sort of wonder what their problem is.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Please explain. So you believe that we aren’t meant to live without religion. We’re meant to be orientated by something transcendent, but you don’t believe that it’s real?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I think that. You know, there’s this great trick that I learned when I was scuba diving, which is that your need to breathe is triggered by the buildup of CO2 in your lungs. And there are all sorts of things you can do to decrease your need to breathe. One is you can hyperventilate and you can get rid of all of the CO2 that’s residual. You can also inure your lungs to CO2 by smoking. You can also breathe out the precious air that your instincts tell you to hold in.
You can do all these things, and then you can go super deep. You can learn how to equalize the pressure in your ears by holding your nose in these techniques. And suddenly you’re far deeper than you’ve ever been. And you’re exploring the rocks and the fishes, and there’s a turtle and there’s an eel, and you get a message you’re out of air. And you look up and you see I am really far from the surface. This is terrifying.
That’s what happens when you unhook the proximate, which is air hunger from the ultimate, which is the need to breathe. So thirst is proximate to dehydration. Hunger is proximate to the need for nourishment. In part, religion and prayer is there to keep us from unhooking all of these protective things and just turning life into a hoot.
You can have a hoot without religion, but if everybody has a hoot, the whole society collapses. At some point, I think a president of the United States may have said that people who defend this country were suckers. Something like that. And I thought, “God damn you.” Maybe it’s true even. But how many families have received a flag draped coffin and felt pride like “we lost something precious? But we are part of the American tapestry in a way that few families can be.”
And when we outsmart ourselves, when we unhook all of these things, you know, every single young woman has an idea about what the opportunity cost of not going on OnlyFans is. Before, we didn’t know what the opportunity cost. There was no measurement of it. We’re becoming too sophisticated. We’ve got too much information. We’re deranging ourselves. We’re having a blast. And we’re completely undoing all of the superstructure of the world.
The number of people who don’t have children or want children. My kids make fun of me. I just go around telling people to make babies. And it’s the most normal thing in the world. I meet parents who don’t harass their own children to get married and have families. Like, what are you doing?
The Collapse of Superstructures
STEVEN BARTLETT: The superstructures of the world.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah.
STEVEN BARTLETT: One being family.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. Traditions.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Things that ground that connect you to.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And what are the symptoms of that? Unhooking from the superstructures of the world.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: How much do you care about things? How much do you care about people saying your name four generations out?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Me?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You’re probably asking the wrong person. Because I just don’t think legacy matters. Because I’m going to be dead.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That’s right. But you’re. I’m asking all of you who believe that.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That it’s so sad, it is so weird that no one cares about their legacy because they don’t see a future. So what I’m trying to say is I’m desperate to get you a future so that you care what needs to.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Happen to get me a future.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Something remarkable. Something utterly remarkable. Because it’s not going that way. And that’s what the physics part is. I talk about physics constantly. Physics is the only thing that’s going to get your future.
The Physics of Survival
STEVEN BARTLETT: How?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, right now the big problem is that we share one atmosphere.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So everything that can. All the really bad things, whether it’s pathogens, like imagine something COVID like, but far worse, or climate or radiation, all of these things don’t know anything about borders. To an extent. There’s a southern and a northern hemisphere that are separate, but even that’s not a great border. So we can draw all the borders on land that we want, but we still have basically one or two atmospheres, and I would really say one. And we’ve now gotten powerful enough to really screw it up.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And so through nukes or through carbon.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Emissions, all three of those things. Right. Everything that you care about is on one sphere with one atmosphere. And I think Elon is 100% right. We got to get to another sphere. I can’t believe that he’s focused on Mars. I mean, sure, focus on the moon, focus on Mars, focus on chemical rockets, but throw a couple billion towards physics, for God’s sakes, and let us get it. Let us get serious about exploring the cosmos.
This is our womb. This is not our home. You know the song “Closing Time”?
STEVEN BARTLETT: No, I don’t.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: “Closing Time.” “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” I think it’s about birth. Yeah, it’s time to be born. You can’t stay here. This is completely obvious to me and I am the only person who talks this way. And so I sound like a lunatic and I get tired of it. But there real reason, you know, it’s about the mangoes, it’s about the rambutan, it’s about the music, it’s about all the things that I love.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So why would you want to leave?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I want to take it with us. And I want to see what else is out there and I want to meet people.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Why don’t you just stay here and fix this planet?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Because you can’t. The odds of fixing one sphere for a permanent future. You’ve already talked about it. You don’t care about the future.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t have children yet either, so I don’t. Yeah, I don’t have that, but I.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My children don’t have children and their children don’t have children. And I care about them and they’re not even here.
The Unraveling World Order
STEVEN BARTLETT: We’ve got some time left here, though.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, we did. If you looked what’s happened in the last month, it’s coming undone. Pakistan and India.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you really think this is the start of the end?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I. I have no idea where I am. Of course it is. The World War II order was keeping. It’s like control rods keeping the world from going super critical.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Can’t we just put the rods back together?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Have you looked at who we had an election with? Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris in the US Tell me what’s going on in the UK what are we doing in the mayoral race for New York? I don’t know if you’re watching what I’m watching. Look at the mess that’s going on in Gaza. Russia is nuclear. Israel is presumably nuclear. Pakistan and India are nuclear. The US Is nuclear. Iran is almost nuclear. China is pissed off about Iran because it was trying to make a play through the region. North Korea is watching. Oh, and look at the UK in turmoil. UK is a very nuclear country, to say nothing of France. This is not going to go well, by the way.
Look at how much is happening with AI. Right? Everything was really stagnant. So I have this famous challenge that I give people, which is go into a room and subtract the screens and forget about style. How do you know you’re not in 1973? Drones are the beginning. Imagine I needed a refill on my coffee and you did something, and a drone brought me a coffee. To not interrupt the flow, we’d know we weren’t in 73. But in general, drones aren’t a big part of our lives. These robots. I’ve never seen a humanoid robot actually doing anything other than on YouTube where it’s like doing the mashed potato.
So in general, yeah, things were just really stagnant for a really long time. And during that period of stagnation, we had this crazy narrative, which is like “the dizzying pace of change is making it almost impossible to keep up” while things were incredibly stagnant. And so it just shows you sort of this weird way in which our minds can be programmed to completely ignore what we’re experiencing.
The Christian Substrate
STEVEN BARTLETT: Is there not chance that we’ll just continue to.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay, if you want to go with chance. Look, until you’re worried about your great, great grandchildren, I don’t want to have this conversation with you. I want you to start caring about that. I want you to go to church. You’re heir to a great tradition. One of the most important traditions in the world has to be Christianity, because both Judaism and Islam are screwed up over the law or legal traditions. Christianity, not so much. I think first time somebody crystallized that for me was Sam Harris. That’s a really important point.
But you’re heir to an incredibly powerful and important tradition. And if we don’t have a Christian substrate, we’re in real trouble because all of our society is based on an assumption of a Christian substrate.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You’re advising me to be Christian in tradition, but not necessarily in belief.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, this is the thing. You’re alienated because you think that you have to be a believer in order to go in. Otherwise you’re faking it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Get over yourself. That’s not how it works.
STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s true. That’s me. Just me being honest. I do think that if I went to a church and I sung and I prayed and stuff and I didn’t believe, I would. That I’d be like. It’d be fake.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay. Do you imagine that all those people who go to church are just sitting there 100% sure that there’s a Jesus to pray to? Do you know any Christians?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. They’re not like that. They sneak off and do bad things if they were confident that Jesus was watching everything that they were doing and they were constantly talking about how they sin. “I’m a sinner.” Right. It’s a very complicated, interesting piece of kit. And my claim is that, you know, I said the Lord’s Prayer as part of going to high school. I sat in a church, a chapel at a high school in LA that had a stained glass window with an American soldier trampling a Nazi flag into the stained glass window. It was amazing.
Faith vs. Action
STEVEN BARTLETT: How does this link to me? I was about to say computer, don’t you have faith that we’ll just be able to kind of keep this? It feels like a bit of a standoff thing.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So you’re the one with the faith? I’m the one who’s nervous. Look, you’re the believer. I’m not going to trust that. No, no, no. I’m going to get my hands dirty and try to do something about it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you know what? I think, in part, it’s because, as you said, I’ve been alive for 32 years, and through that time has been relative peace, especially in the Western world. So it’s all I’ve ever known. So I’m born with this assumption that this is just kind of how it goes, that there’s always threat, but we kind of figure it out.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Come to the Pacific Palisades. It looks like Gaza.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got some friends that lost their.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Houses there, you know, Checked out Lahaina in West Maui recently. No, it’s an absolute disaster.
AI and Revolution
STEVEN BARTLETT: Is AI a protagonist in this story? Is it?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Sure.
STEVEN BARTLETT: In what respect?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, what do you think about it, we’re going through a wild revolution at the moment, and I just hear people saying the dumbest things about it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: What do I think about it? I’m scared I might say something dumb now.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, let’s try, because I’m going to say.
The AI Revolution and Human Intelligence
STEVEN BARTLETT: Something dumb, I think. When I look at both sides of the coin and I look at the opportunity and the threat, my concern when I hear about the CEOs of the biggest AI companies in the world talking about this fast takeoff is that the transition will be too quick for us to adjust. And when they say fast takeoff, they mean that AGI arrives and the rate of its learning accelerates so quickly that it really disrupts the need for human beings to do a lot of the sort of jobs we’re doing today that are centered on intelligence.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Which jobs require intelligence?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Pretty much all of them these days, because we’ve had the Industrial Revolution where we’ve outsourced a lot of labor to machines, but I don’t think so.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Really. Yeah. I think a large portion of our conversation was actually in LLM. We didn’t actually get to the stuff outside of the LLM. You and I are two chatbots for the most part. You’re a good one.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m on a huge platform again, you know? But my claim is that that’s the really disturbing part, that more or less, we’re LLMs, more or less. We don’t do a single intelligent thing all day long. And the reason that they’re able to mimic us is because we don’t realize that intelligence is a last resort for us. We try to automate.
If you think about greetings, your assistant was very kind. I got out of a black car that you guys sent around, and I was greeted with the phrase, “there he is, the man, the myth.” And I knew what was coming next. “The legend.” Right. Because that is a sort of humorous way of giving an intimate greeting, but it’s still an LLM.
And I’m not saying that your assistant is an LLM. I’m saying that, more or less, what we do all day long is LLM interactions. “Hey, buddy. How are you?” “Good, good. Things have been really busy. How about you?” “Well, I got some travel coming up. Kind of excited about it, but I have to get through some work first.” I understand that’s an entirely scripted conversation.
That’s why I’m trying to say that I want to do podcasting that is outside of the LLM model. I don’t want to do just dangerous, stupid stuff. But I want to talk about things that I’ve never explored where I don’t have something ready.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think AI will ever break out of the LLM or will it expand?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I don’t think the LLMs will see. I think that waiting for AGI as the problem is a bad idea. I think the problems are going to get here far before AGI. I think even that the AGI expectation is something we’re trained to do. Do you think AGI is coming? Do you think we’ll survive AGI? Will AGI be good or bad? All of that’s pre programmed into you.
Why are you waiting for AGI? Did you not alphafold3? Did you track that? Do you know about this?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Was that the chess game?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, it’s the chess game that became the protein folding game. And you want to talk about great games. Protein folding. Now that’s a game.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I have no knowledge of this at all.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay, what do you know about proteins?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Very little.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay. Think about proteins as tiny machines.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
The Protein Folding Revolution
ERIC WEINSTEIN: There’s copying machine, there’s scissors and a shearing machine, there’s a light making machine, all sorts of things. And all of those machines are weirdly coded. Imagine that you had like a children’s show and a bunch of girl superheroes and they all had necklaces with 20 different kinds of beads around their neck.
And so when they needed a machine, they’d take off the necklace and they’d throw it into a thing called a ribosome. The ribozone would take these 20 kinds of pearls and suddenly it would build you a car or a spaceship or a gun or who knows what. Well, that’s the story of DNA, RNA and protein.
The only thing is, isn’t it weird that a linear sequence suddenly crumples up into a three dimensional object that does something? So, for example, I don’t know. Have you ever seen these Turkish rabbits that glow in the dark?
STEVEN BARTLETT: No.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay, so they took green fluorescent protein out of jellyfish.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: And they spliced them into the nucleic acids of rabbits. And the Turks bred all of these glow in the dark bunnies. And what that is is a structure. So there’s something called secondary structure in protein where sometimes you get these spirals called alpha helices. And then sometimes you get a two dimensional sheet that’s made from taking a switchback in strings of amino acids.
And then if you wrap that around, you don’t have a beta sheet, you have a beta barrel. And these beta barrels are the glow in the dark aspect of Green fluorescent protein. Okay. And what we didn’t know was how a series of acts and GS could code for sequences of amino acids could form three dimensional structures. So if you just read DNA, you didn’t know. Well, that’s going to be a sports car.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Alphafold figured it out. For the most part, to an enormous extent, humans were stuck there.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And what does that mean?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It means that you could. I don’t know, you could target your enemies that have particular regions on their cell surfaces, and you could come up with proteins that only attach to them and attack. It could mean anything. It could mean nanorobots. I don’t know what it means, but my point is that that’s already here and you’re not focused on it. And you’re thinking AGI. And the funny part is that’s your LLM that got programmed to wait for AGI.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, I heard people that I think are very smart, much smarter than me, talk about the don’t listen to them Elon.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Sure.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, he says that it’s our biggest existential threat is AI.
The Elon Phenomenon
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Elon has become the outsourcing for much of our intelligence. And if Elon means anything to you, he’s really saying to you, don’t listen to me, do something remarkable. He’s saying, where is everybody? Why is there only one Elon? There used to be lots of them. Where?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Why is there only one Elon?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, not the right question. Where did all the other Elons go?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Same question, is it not?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No, I think that “why is there only one Elon?” makes Elon feel more singular. You know, if you ever get a chance to go to Cappadocia or Bryce national park in Utah, you see what happens, which is that you’ll have a stone that was resting on the soil, and suddenly the wind starts to erode everything except the compactified soil right under that stone.
And you get what’s called a fairy chimney or a Hoja. And so the claim is that sometimes you get these isolated structures, and the key point is everything else eroded away. We’re supposed to have tons of Elon and everybody else got taken out.
STEVEN BARTLETT: What or who took them out?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Look at how much trouble Elon has being Elon Musk. Look, we keep hearing about him. You know, he’s on drugs. Great. Take drugs. No, I’m not kidding. Do you know how many amazing people take drugs? If you care about jazz, jazz is a whole history of drugs. Whenever I’m listening to Ray Charles, I’m hearing heroin, okay?
What are they doing at Burning Man? They’re trying to live luxuriously under oppression simultaneously. Luxuriously and as dirty and disgusting as you’ll ever be. Hopefully. They’re having tons of eye opening, mind bending experiences, chasing some way of getting out of the LLM.
And my feeling about this is it’s not even honest. I believe that Elon, for example, does understand that population and growth is really important. But I also think he just enjoys making babies. And in a weird way, this idea of “I’m going to have an empire of my children” is a forbidden concept. Try explaining that to HR. You know, it’s like, what did you say at work? So the key point is Elon is barely able to be Elon Musk.
The True Impact of AI
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think we’re overestimating the impact AI is going to have? Because a lot of people see it as this really fundamentally transformative?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You don’t think we’re underestimating it?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I think it’s going to be. I think that what AI means to us is bizarre. We’ve come up with this whole script about AGI and it’s going to take everything we do that’s repetitive is on the chopping block. And since almost everything we do is repetitive, we don’t need to get to AGI. We just need to do things where lots of people create lots of repetitive data.
And then we tokenize it and we train the AI on the tokens. And then for the most part it says, you know, it doesn’t matter, it can be a photograph, it can be music, whatever it is, amino acids. Just give me a large enough data set and let me add it and take a hike for a little while. I’ll train on it and then I’ll know how to do that.
You know what, it’s bad at things where there isn’t much data. So I just found out about these orphan proteins where everybody’s got a different version of hemoglobin, but the quaternary structure of hemoglobin, Hemoglobins, these four heme groups, four different proteins around a central element. What happens when you have a protein that has no analog anywhere else? The system doesn’t have the ability to learn it.
If I train you on the blues and you find out what a 12 bar blues progression is, then you find out that there’s a variation where the second bar goes to the fourth rather than just staying on the one for four bars and then sometimes the fourth bar has a seven in it to create tension. Okay, so it’s going to learn every single form of the blues like that. And because there’s a large corpus of that stuff, it’s going to get really good at blues music.
But if you take something that basically never happens, it’s not going to have an easy ability to train and give you more. So I think that AI is almost certainly going to transform the economy because everything that we know how to do through education creates repetitive behaviors. We don’t know how to educate for creativity and genius. We know how to educate for doing higher level things.
So radiology is a great example. Radiologists are some of the first in the crosshairs. I’m going to stare at some imaging and I’m going to say, I think that’s a tumor. I think that’s benign. And it’s going to say, just give me all of these tokens. Like, well, they’re X rays, they’re CAT scans. No, no, no. They’re just tokens.
So, yeah, it’s going to start to automate away every repetitive behavior, and then what’s going to be left is the tiny number of things that aren’t really highly repetitive or things where we really care that a human does it. Very interesting what’s happened with chess. I don’t know if you’ve been following chess.
The Chess Analogy
STEVEN BARTLETT: I loosely understand it mainly because I’ve spoken to a lot of AI experts and they often reference chess as an example where it’s one of the first things that humans did that we really cared about that fell. So they’ve been longer in the AI tractor beam than any of the rest of us in some sense. How did it fall through Deep Blue and IBM and Garry Kasparov.
STEVEN BARTLETT: But does that mean that people aren’t interested in chess anymore? What are you saying?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No, no, no. That’s the whole point. So Magnus Carlsen, the greatest chess player of our time and perhaps of all time, was on Joe Rogan. And Joe asks him the simple question, “can your phone beat you?” He’s like, “yeah, easily.”
So the point is, we can’t compete with, I don’t know, Stockfish or whatever, the top chess programs of our time. I don’t know anymore. But nobody cares about those programs except for AI experts. We care about the drama of Anand versus Carlson.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Two humans.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Two humans. Because it’s about us. We’re very narcissistic in this way. And so there was a period, and this is something that my wife tried to popularize, so she said this thing about the Golden Age of AI complementarity where the AIs aren’t good enough to take over from us, but they’re amazing tools.
And so there’s a period where we’re teamed up, you know, the prompt engineering revolution. They’re not good enough to come up with their own prompts. And a great example of this that Chi and I have been talking about is the cyborg chess era, which is a period where humans and the AIs could form teams that would do better. But at some point, the AI just looks at the human and says, “you’re just holding me back.”
STEVEN BARTLETT: You’ve got two children.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah.
Career Advice for the Next Generation
STEVEN BARTLETT: When they’re thinking about their career prospects, with all that you think and know and believe about the future that we’re heading towards, what kind of career advice would you be giving to them?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Oh, I’ve given them terrible career advice. I gave them somewhat different career advice. So to my son, my advice was, do the hardest, most technical thing you possibly can do and be prepared to use that ability, that facility in different ways than you’re honing it, but train yourself.
With my daughter, I think she cares deeply about people, and this is a typical male, female divide. And by the way, I’m not going to talk overly much about them because I try to keep them out. But she is somebody who is taking the same level of analytic ability, but putting it in the service of the law and trying to help people who are really unfortunate. She’s very idealistic.
And so at some level, the law is not going to allow us to have AI lawyers for quite some time. It’s not going to trust anything. We’ve got jury trials and judges and a legal system that’s written into our founding documents.
To the average person, I would say, get your board in the water and prepare to paddle. Like all get out. The tsunami of a lifetime is coming, and nothing your elders have seen is going to prepare. There’s no good advice to give that’s specific.
Let’s put it this way. One of the things when people tell me about their moving from one city to another, I have a phrase that nobody likes, which is, “every place is over.” Oh, I’m moving to Austin. Yeah, it’s over. Miami, it’s over. Nashville, over. All these places are over.
And every occupation that is named is over. I’m going to be a dentist, radiologist, accountant, teacher. These are all over. Whatever’s coming, get flexible, get good. Get good on a bunch of different stuff. Learn how to think across disciplines. I have no idea what’s going to be left for us, but somebody’s going to come out on top.
And I hate to tell people that you should try to come out on top of. I don’t think it’s healthy to have everyone trying to be world class. I think you should be able to just have a life. I have a golden retriever. I don’t know that it’s the greatest golden retriever in the world. Sometimes I think it is, but he does a lot of dumb stuff. But he’s my golden retriever.
I just don’t think it. I think that this mania for optimization, if you look at your own videos, you’ll find some of the best performing videos are “This is how to succeed. This is how to get anyone you want. This is how to get out of a bad situation.” People just want capacity, but for what? Okay, you’ve optimized your day, you’ve optimized your health, your social media is optimized. Now what?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Now what? I don’t know what should be. Then say, you know, is it time to just. One would say, well, now I. One would incorrectly say, well, now I can play with my golden retriever. And then one would say, well, you should have been playing with your golden retriever the whole time.
Finding Meaning in Simple Things
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Let me put it a little differently. Through some bizarre accident, I have gotten a chance to meet incredible people that I don’t even talk about who I’ve met. I’ve gotten a chance to see the world. I haven’t seen South America, but I’ve seen most of the other continents other than the Antarctic. I’ve had a really rich life.
Take somebody who hasn’t had those opportunities, but they got a chance to have three kids. I’m not sure I wouldn’t trade places. I so enjoyed raising my children. It’s available to everyone. It’s such a strange thing that we’re talking about optimization, all this stuff.
I get to think about the substrate of the universe, theoretical physics. I dream about visiting the stars. I dream about multiple dimensions of time, meeting aliens, all sorts of things. I still think having kids was unbeatable. I’m so sad that it’s over. I’m so sad that they moved out.
I cannot believe that I was dumb enough to live in a society that doesn’t believe in having your kids with you your whole life. The idea that we look at places where kids live at home as backwards is beyond me. And shout out to the entire Indian subcontinent. Family is everything. They drive me crazy, but it’s just meaning is available for you.
And again, every time I got a chance to eat a rambutan. It’s one of my favorite fruits. Mangoes, rambutans, jackfruit, sitafal. If you can get custard apple. The amount of pleasure I get. I’ve never had a good custard apple in the entire time I’ve lived in the US. Not one. I’ve had a frozen one imported from Taiwan. You get this Cherimoya. Just get out of here, Cherimoya. You’re not good. Great custard apple. Great Sita, fal or ramfal. What a pleasure to be on this earth. And it’s available to almost anyone.
I just think that you can find meaning. For God’s sakes, go to Spotify if you have a connection, if you can afford a connection to Spotify and put in Pablo Casals’ version of the Bach Cello Suites, you’re as rich as you need to be. I’ve flown private. I’d much prefer to listen to Pablo Casals playing the cello suites in economy than to be deprived of real luxury.
I don’t know, I just. To me, meaning is everywhere. I can’t swing a cat without hitting meaning.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Have you always been like that? Or is that something that you’ve cultivated? The point about being able to swing a cat and find meaning, so many people that would be listening now could swing a hundred mile stick and wouldn’t hit meaning in their lives. But you seem to be able to find it in the purer things, the more simple things. And I’m wondering if that’s something that we can all cultivate with a change of perspective, or if it’s just the way that you’ve always been.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Why is Joe Rogan such a big deal? You ever listen to Joe Rogan talk about pugilism? Two gentlemen beating the crap out of each other as poetry, as chess. I could listen to Joe talk about MMA for days. The story of Mighty Mouse, the guy trapped in some flyweight division with unbelievable skills, who never gets to meet a formidable enemy.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think that’s a privilege? Do you think that there’s a privilege in being able to craft a story? Because so much of the meaning you’re describing there comes from these great stories. And not everybody is able to craft the story. Upon seeing something, you probably look at this item in front of me, this glass, and create a story about it that drives meaning, that makes you feel something.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I worry about its manufacture. How is it that we got a surface of revolution. What is the industrial process? How do I take a picture of this and get it a photograph of the machine that made it? You know that fly that has been buzzing around us this entire interview?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Do you remember when Obama had a fly?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. And he caught it and. Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: The confidence of that man. See, I’d try that and I’d miss and I’d screw it up in front of millions of people. It’s like I took so much meaning away from that fly.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Were you trying to. Or is that just a sort of predecessor?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We all did.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Not everyone. Some people would have gone, how was.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It that you knew exactly what I was talking about? Because he captured a moment. He was the girl in the red dress. Now, there’s this thing that women say, “not every woman can wear a red.” Well, not every man can grab a fly with confidence. I think we all see this. I think we all see beauty everywhere.
Remember that movie American Beauty with the plastic bag that gets in the air, funnel going up? And the key point is the ability just to see beauty wherever you find it. Everything behind you means something to me. The letter B is strange to me that there’s only one phonetic alphabet and that every phonetic alphabet is descended from it. I basically view everything as a hyperlink. I just want to click on the world and see what it goes to.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Not everybody does, though.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: But we do.
STEVEN BARTLETT: They don’t make the step, is what I’m saying, because people would see the B and nothing would cross their mind.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You know what’s funny? There’s an absolutely horrible account that has been just dogging me for years, trying to make my life miserable.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And a social media account.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. Doesn’t matter.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: And the person said, “you know, one thing I just never understand is he’s not. He’s not hawking a book. He’s just talking. Why are his numbers high?” And the answer is, everybody cares about this stuff. They want an invitation.
One of the funniest things that gets said about me on social media is “he goes on forever and he never says anything.” And then I look at the word clouds of things that I’ve talked about, and people are just Googling everything incessantly. If you didn’t know who Pablo Casals was, now you do. Now you know what a real cellist sounds like.
I don’t know. I just. I can’t believe that I’m so far through this life and that there’s so little left. I can’t believe this doesn’t go on forever.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Does that bother you?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My people just got hit.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And.
World War 3 and Global Tensions
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You want to talk about the river and the sea, that river is not the Jordan river, and that sea is not the Mediterranean. The Arab world stretches from the Atlantic with Morocco right up to the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides Iraq from Iran. And I don’t think this is stable. There is no way in which we should be fighting like this. This is ridiculous.
Trump used the F word, and he’s taking a ton of crap. “Why would you use the F word?” Well, isn’t it interesting that people view Trump as so tacky? He’s got this queen sort of bluster. He doesn’t reek of finalist clubs at Harvard or Skull and Bones or whatever. No, Trump doesn’t use the F word for a reason. That he needs it. Once in a blue moon and it better mean something.
And he said this to Iran, and he said this to Israel. “These two countries have been fighting for so long, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” He didn’t make a mistake. The rest of the world has just forgotten how to calibrate. Where do you see Trump in. How is he clothed? He’s almost always in a suit and tie, and he almost never says the F word. And it’s carefully calibrated to get everybody’s attention.
And we’re so frightened asleep that we don’t even hear it. This is World War 3, and it’s already started. Biden was there in the Oval Office, non compos mentis. And I was being told, “don’t worry, there’s a committee that’s replaced him.” Because I was talking about the fact that he can’t be president.
I just don’t know what we’re doing. I’m so mystified by everybody else. It’s like, Elon makes sense to me. I’m not Elon. I’m a very different person. But at least Elon makes sense to me. Not 100%, but 98%. Elon makes sense to me. It’s everybody else that I’m completely confused by.
STEVEN BARTLETT: What part of what Elon is saying makes so much sense to you?
Understanding Elon Musk
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Oh, geez. Everything. One, we have to have babies. We have to keep going. Two, it can’t all be about problems. You have to be excited to be alive every morning. You have to work your ass off your whole life.
You want to know one of the most beautiful things that ever happened? Somebody telling Elon that he was the world’s richest human being. He said, “huh, that’s interesting. Okay, back to work.” Amazing, right? There’s no reward that he can’t have more of by stopping work and enjoying his wealth except doing stuff.
And I was born in this country. My parents were born in this country. My grandparents on one side were not, but my grandparents on the other side were. Elon is so American, that cowboy spirit that he does all sorts of stuff I can’t stand. I don’t want to see one more of those Pepe memes ever. I really don’t. What the fuck is his problem? Okay, I don’t know him at all.
But Elon at his best is the United States. Anything is possible here and we just waste our lives on interpersonal drama. He wastes his life to an enormous extent as a troll. I cannot. The part of him that I don’t understand is one why he’s not focused 100% on physics. I think he sees it as going through grok and AI. He doesn’t want to trust humans.
I think he sees Mars as energizing to engineers and the stars are innovating to engineers because the science. There’s no amount of engineering you can’t engineer your way to the stars with the science we have. But he’s being a complete pussy when it comes to science, and he’s being a total hero when it comes to engineering. But he is the quintessential American.
The Continuation of Life and Legacy
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Can’t believe my story doesn’t go on forever. Look, I’ve never died before so I have no experience with it. So as far as I know, I’ve always been alive and it’ll always go on that way. But there’s another thing that I’ve talked about occasionally which is I’m not the most public spirited human being. I am somebody who will take the last rambutan. I know that you’re not supposed to do that in almost any culture on earth, but sometimes it’s just sitting there and it bothers me.
Okay, so I’m not the classiest person on earth, but I’ll tell you something. If you have a kid and you have a choice about eating the rambutan yourself or giving the rambutan to your child, it’s a no brainer. You’re going to enjoy the rambutan so much more if you give it to your kid. And you’ll see. And that’s the way in which this goes on forever. It’s great. I mean, just how many young people do I have to yell at? “I don’t know if I want to have kids. I don’t want to bring anyone into this horrible world,” have kids.
STEVEN BARTLETT: It bothers you. I can see it personally bothers you.
The Middle East Crisis and Global Implications
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Do you have any idea how much hate there is right now for Israel? Do you have any idea how destabilizing this action against Iran was? Do you have any idea how many people have suffered for how long under the mullahs? We are being cheated of Persia. I’m not talking about Iran for the Persians. I’m talking about we are cheated of Persia, the entire planet, one of the greatest societies on earth. Taken offline.
Look, you’re catching me on the wrong week. I don’t want to dwell on it. This is just incredibly irresponsible. We’re not going to survive this. Israel is certainly not going to survive this. If the Abrahamic world does not get its head out of its ass, if the Christian world does not start to stand up for itself without becoming this “Christ is King” nightmare.
You know, I was in Tel Aviv before this all happened and I just said it from the stage, “make the Middle East Christian again.” Does nobody understand their role is sort of my question. How can you have Bethlehem without a strong Christian presence? Have you ever been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
STEVEN BARTLETT: No.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Can I give you another assignment?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Get off your ass and go. You got the money? Walk the Stations of the Cross and for God’s sakes, stop with the issue about belief. You can pray like the rest of us. We’re not sure if we’re praying. We’re not sure if the thing is hooked up and anyone’s listening. You have the right to go back, even with doubt, even with knowledge, and you have the right to believe about it. Tomorrow you know where you’re not going to be, but people are going to be mentioning your name.
STEVEN BARTLETT: When you say that your people are under attack, who are you referencing as your people?
Identity and the Jewish Experience
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I would. In general, there’s several groups of people that I would describe as my people. The Jews would be one, dyslexics would be another. Americans would be another. Scientists would be another. It depends on what these things. But right now I’m thinking about the Jews and I’m thinking about the fact that the social media businesses have lost complete control of the bot farms.
And we’re just seeing this unbelievable. I feel like I’m living through the 1930s again. We’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well. You know, what happened in Gaza is an unbelievable tragedy. And that tragedy was partially architected by the United States of America shoving a two state solution down the throats of Palestinian Arabs who absolutely do not want a two state solution.
And the creation in part of the situation where Israel has a hand, the US has a hand, the Palestinian Arabs have a hand, the creation of Hamas and the promotion of this just unbelievable genius, Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, who is continuing to best Bibi Netanyahu from the grave. You know, it’s just an amazing feat nobody reads anymore. As you know, there’s an old Sherlock Holmes story called “The Problem at Thor Bridge.” Ever heard of it?
STEVEN BARTLETT: No.
The Sinwar Strategy: A Modern Thor Bridge
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So you’re British. Sherlock Holmes gets called in on a case in which there’s a murder. The murder is traced to this gentleman who still exists. What Sherlock Holmes figures out is that it’s not a murder, it’s a suicide in which the gun will fall into the river at Thor Bridge because it’s tied to a weight and the person uses the suicide to frame someone else. You know, it’s just one of these genius little vignettes. And that’s what Sinwar was. He was a genius. He knew he was going to die.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Who was Sinwar? Sinwar’s the person who’s committed suicide.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Sinwar’s suicide was an IDF assisted suicide. I wrote about this almost instantly after the October 7th invasion. It didn’t make any sense that Gaza would undertake such an act against Israel, given the asymmetry and what this mirrored was that before the 1990s.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So you think Sinwar committed suicide to then cause the people of Gaza to invade Israel?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No, no, no, no. Sinwar would be happy enough for all the Gazans to die. And so what he did was he architected a situation in which Israel would be compelled to respond using the wrong tools. He tricked Israel. And, you know, I’m very confident to talk about this, because if you check my old tweets, I say “IDF assisted suicide” and “Munchausen by proxy” and “Zugzwang,” right?
And I said, these are the concepts. Familiarize yourself, because Israel is going to invade Gaza. And I knew what was going to happen because it took me, like, why would you do this? It doesn’t make sense from first order logic, but third and fourth order logic, you’re like, oh, of course it makes sense. This is hybrid war. The most important thing for Sinwar is video.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Why?
Hybrid Warfare and the Power of Video
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Look at the effect of the video. The video of Gaza has turned the world to an extent against Israel that’s sort of inconceivable. There’s a doctrine called hybrid warfare, and I think it came out of the US in the early 2000s, and it says that the kinetic component of warfare, the killing, the actual shooting and the planes and the bombs and all this kind of stuff is not the major component. The social media is really important. The video is important. The memetic complex is important.
And Israel has an advantage over the Gazan Arabs in kinetic warfare. And Sinwar knew that, and he was like, brilliant. All we need to do is force Israel to come after us. And this is this thing I was going to say, before the 1990s, we had a spate of killings of policemen firing on people who had pulled toy guns on them. And we would say things, and I remember this, like, “whatever you do, don’t point a toy gun at a policeman. Don’t you realize what’s going to happen?”
And then somebody coined the phrase “police assisted suicide.” The policeman is the instrument. That’s what I knew was going to happen. And for better or for worse, Bibi just couldn’t figure out where he was. And Bibi was dumber and Sinwar was smarter.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Is there any way back from here? Cause you said this is World War Three.
The Path Forward: Saudi Arabia and Iran
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, the way there is, but it’s slim and it’s evaporating. I mean, almost everything depends on Saudi Arabia and the Iranians and the Persians. If the Persians didn’t take this opportunity to rise up against their oppressors, I don’t know what they’re waiting for? Yes, you’re going to get killed in some numbers, but you have to figure out whether you’re interested in tyranny or not.
So the Persians are absolutely falling down on the ground, on the job, not rising up against the mullahs. This is a coordinated moment. Like, you know, there’s a moment for a prison break. This would be it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Who are the mullahs in this?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: The ayatollahs, the.
STEVEN BARTLETT: The government of Iran.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Khomeini. Yeah, the theocratic government of Iran.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So the rulers of Iran, basically, the people that are.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay, so I don’t know if you know a ton of Persians. They’re varied in their religiosity. But there’s a, you know, there’s an underground gay scene in Tehran. There’s super hyper modern people just like you and me who can’t stand these guys.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And so you’re saying that if they.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Rise up, that would be one of the parts of the solution. The other thing is Saudi Arabia, and I have to be very measured and careful here. You can’t fantasize about the Middle east becoming Western Europe overnight. Every time we do this, we make a terrible mistake. When you have a modernizer like MBS.
STEVEN BARTLETT: In Saudi Arabia, he’s the ruler of Saudi Arabia, right?
The Middle East Crisis and America’s Historical Responsibility
ERIC WEINSTEIN: De facto, he can’t suddenly become a modern person. So, you know, if we end up talking about Khashoggi and murders and murdered journalists and all this stuff, the whole conversation will derail. But he’s a modernizer, and there was a moment where he needed to not condemn Israel publicly and thank it privately, but to say we’ve all been terrorized by this country and Israel did what everyone needed. We needed to rise up against the mullahs. Because you can’t have a nuclear theocracy. You can’t have a highly developed notion of heaven, where this is the anteroom where you’re waiting to get into the real room.
That issue of needing to be rid of an aspiring nuclear theocracy, something that Israel undertook. Now, something that I’m going to say there are three words in Yiddish which you may have heard or may not. Schlemiel, Schlamazel, and Nebbish. So there are three unfortunate people. You don’t want to be any one of those three, but the subtlety is that the schlemiel is a klutz and the schlemiel spills hot soup on the schlamazel. So the schlamazel is the unfortunate person to whom bad things happen. And the nebbish is the weak, ineffectual person who decides that it’s his job to clean up the message. So the schlemiel spills the scalding hot soup on the schlamazel and the nebbish cleans it up.
Now in the US we’ve got this terrible sort of Christian nationalist problem that we’ve developed, which is what sometimes people call the woke, right? Where we have a bunch of people who’ve been badly treated. White Christian Americans have been badly treated in the woke era. They’ve been forced to salute everybody else’s, you know, yay for, I don’t know, Honduran Lesbians Day. And it’s like, okay, enough, we don’t want to do that anymore. We’ve also done great things and I absolutely think that they’ve been mistreated and they’ve gone sort of metastatic and their attitude is no more wars for Israel. America first.
Operation Ajax and the Creation of Modern Iran
What I was getting to with the schlemiel, schlamazel and nebbish is that most Americans don’t have any idea who Kermit Roosevelt was. Do you have any idea of who Kermit? So the US and the UK jointly overthrew a democratically elected leader in Iran through something called Operation Ajax. We installed the Shah. And then there’s this period where everybody stupidly celebrates the miniskirts and the jazz that was going through Tehran, which was a bridge too far. In other words, the miniskirts were a really bad idea because they were ready for some amount of modernization and they weren’t ready for that. And so we pushed it too far. And so we got the mullahs for 40 years.
And now we chop off people’s fingers and we pluck out people’s eyes and we put homosexuals on ropes and dangle them from cranes. They’re barbaric. They’re horrible human beings. These are really bad men, the mullahs. And we did that. So the scalding hot soup is revolutionary theocratic Iran. And we spilled it all over the Middle East, which is the schlamazel. We spilled it on Saudi Arabia, we spilled it on Iraq, we spilled it on Israel. Everybody suffers from having these people installed because of the US and the UK instituting a problem back in the 50s.
And who’s the nebbish who cleans this up? Israel volunteers for this job. And then Saudi Arabia pretends, “Oh my God, this is terrible. Our Muslim brother is being attacked by our Jewish barbarian.” I just can’t believe anybody’s dumb enough to fall for all of this. Like we’re involved in a story where nobody can sort things out. There’s no talking heads anyone believes in.
Understanding Iran’s Strategic Communication
And if I didn’t understand this, then how is it that I have a tweet from 10 days after October 7th or I appeared on Trigonometry? I’m telling you, Israel hasn’t even walked into Gaza yet. And I know what the strategy is. Iran sent hypersonic missiles into the ground in Israel as a message. Violence is a language and they spoke it well. The mullahs may be crazy, but they’re still Persians. They’re extraordinarily skilled.
And so what they did is they wasted some of their arsenal saying, “You have no Iron Dome and we’re not going to kill you. We’re going to put our missiles, we’re going to waste our missiles by sending them into your earth and try to kill no one.” And the Israelis, these brilliant, genius Israelis who pull off all sorts of things that the world can’t believe are dumb enough, some of them to say they sent all these missiles and they couldn’t even hit anyone. And I’m just thinking, do none of you understand anything? I just don’t even know where I am. And I’m looking at, you know, I…
STEVEN BARTLETT: Know Tulsi, Tulsi Gabbard there.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, Tulsi’s amazing.
STEVEN BARTLETT: She’s the head of the intelligence program for the United States.
Tulsi Gabbard and the Reality of Modern Warfare
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Director of National Intelligence. Right. Tulsi has seen the devastation not of war, but of US action abroad. Like, we haven’t really had full wars, but we get involved in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever and you know, people die and there are firefights. It’s not like it has nothing to do with war, but full on war is a very different thing. We say the Iraq War, but I want to be very careful about the language. War usually involves you getting rocked at home, not just your troops abroad.
I don’t think she appreciates the gravity of the situation. That somehow what we need to do is we need to stabilize this thing for 50 to 100 years while we desperately try to figure out a long term solution. This idea of like just we’re not taking responsibility for the world, we already screwed up. I don’t want to send Americans, you know, I’m not an Israeli, I’m an American. I don’t want to send my fellow Americans to die in foreign battles that we have no business being in. But we have to take ownership of our history with oil and energy in the Middle East.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And what does that look like?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Taking ownership, recognizing that we created the…
STEVEN BARTLETT: Mullahs and doing what about it?
The Two-State Solution Problem
ERIC WEINSTEIN: And wait, wait a second. Not just that. And that we also created a lot of the heartache along with Sinwar and to a much lesser extent, Israel by foisting this two state solution on people who would never put up with it. Like, I lived in Israel for two years. You would have conversations with Arabs, some of whom are Israelis, you know, and they would say, “Look, you know, you just don’t understand the West Bank and you don’t understand the difference between the West Bank and Gaza.” And they would tell me straight up, “You’re going to get us all killed with this two state solution. Stop it.”
And, you know, it was very hard for me to hear, but we’re just having a child’s conversation about the Middle East. And I will say this about the UK. The British Foreign Service had a different failure mode than the US they really learned the regions, they learned the dialects of the languages of the countries that they were involved in. The British Empire took many places that they were involved in seriously. And they have a very complicated legacy.
I spent a lot of time in Bombay, and there’s a lot of debate among very educated Indians about figuring out how to think about the British legacy. All of the great institutional structures that were built, all of the prejudice and bigotry. Why was such a small country able to colonize such a large land? Basically working with the locals. It’s a rich conversation. We’re having childlike conversations about all of this.
I’m sorry if I’m going on about this, but it’s just a very weird thing that we can’t get anybody’s attention. You can’t even get my attention. I’m watching hypersonic missiles slam into the places I just was. And then I’m watching a cat video, and then I’m trying to figure out what to order through Uber Eats. And it’s just like, I can’t stay focused. It’s really important to put this right. And the US screwed up the Middle East along with the UK really good. And we have a lot of responsibility. And if we want to go isolationist, I understand that. But you first have to put back the chicken soup that you spilled.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And how’d you do that?
The Challenge of Leadership
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m not sure. I’m not the Director of National Intelligence. I’m not the Secretary of Defense. I’m not in the Oval Office. I mean, you know, it’s very weird. I was workmates with J.D. Vance, you know, these are people who are, you know, Bobby Kennedy lives one canyon over from me in Los Angeles. The people around power in the U.S. godspeed, just wish them well. I don’t care what party you’re in. But to try to sabotage Trump or sabotage Tulsi or sabotage Pete Hegseth, these guys need to figure this out and they need to be at a totally different level.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And he’s figuring out peace in the region.
The Reality of Cold Peace
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You know, the peace between Egypt and Israel is a shitty, crappy, horrible peace, but it’s peace. It’s not a loving relationship. It’s not a question of everybody going back and forth between the two countries saying, you know, “We used to be enemies, now we’re friends.” It’s a lousy, cold peace. I’ll take it.
We need to have peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs who can live in peace, and we need the people who cannot live in peace. We need to find someplace else for them to be. It is absolutely imperative. And by the way, this goes for the Israelis. There are a small number of hardcore Israeli settlers who cannot live in peace with their neighbors. And it’s very important that they, the people who cannot live in peace, not be there.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do we need to go to. Are you suggesting that we focus on regime change in Iran?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That is really the responsibility of the Persians.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So I want to get clear on what you see as a solution. Because you’re saying the Persian people have to rise up, the US need to care, but not get involved in that regime change.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m saying that a bunch of things need to happen if we’re to have a long term solution.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I make you president tomorrow.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I hate when people do this, but…
STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s the clearest way of understanding the actions you would…
The Art of Strategic Communication
ERIC WEINSTEIN: First of all, if I was president tomorrow, I sure as hell wouldn’t be on a podcast discussing strategy with you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Trump does it?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, I decline to answer all sorts of questions on camera.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Fair.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. So my feeling is that you do a lot more behind closed doors and this idea of just handing people, “You’re the king of the world, what do you do tomorrow to stop…” You know, it’s like, don’t do that to me. Because it’s just, it’s a no win question.
If I was going to, I’d do a lot of Straussian communication. I’d meet with people in private, I’d use lots of carrots and sticks. I try to use long range thinking. And I wouldn’t tell you what my plan is. And by the way, I very much respect Donald Trump in certain ways, one of which is that this confuses our friend Sam Harris no end. Sam is always like, “Well, he’s not being truthful. He’s not making sense.” He’s a negotiator. You don’t sit down to a negotiation with an open book saying, “Let me make sense to you.” You sit there saying, “You don’t know what I’m going to do next. You don’t know how big the stick is. You don’t know how much carrot there is. Maybe I’m prepared to give you more. Maybe my stick isn’t as big as you think. Or maybe it’s twice as big.”
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think anyone has good answers?
The Challenge of International Relations and Nuclear Physics
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’ll be honest. I think that Trump is, in part, respected because he has some intuitions about this stuff. His intuition is not to say everything. His intuition is that negotiation is more important than transparency. And at a time when everybody’s craving transparency. “Tell me everything.” No, I’m not going to tell you everything. I’m going to try to save some children today. I’m going to threaten, I’m going to cajole. I’m going to do all sorts of things. And that’s what I’d do.
I would assemble the best people around me. I would stop giving so many press conferences. I wouldn’t tweet every four seconds. I’d be extremely strategic about it. But, you know, the situation in Tel Aviv and in Gaza makes me sick to my stomach. And in Ukraine, almost all of my DNA comes from Ukraine. At least passed through it. I’ve been there. And, you know, Russians in Ukraine. Ukraine used to be known as Little Russia. How are we sitting here watching this?
What moron decided in 2004 that we were just going to hand full Article 5 status to former Soviet republics without consequence? It is not the case that I don’t. I would love to have Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in NATO. Not at this cost. Look, the world is a brutal, brutal place. We’ve gotten really bad at international understandings. I can’t stand what’s happened to Europe. Europe has been completely denatured. We’re playing with fire everywhere.
And I just. I don’t know how to talk about it, because every time I talk about things where I’m the only person who sounds like this, it’s bad for my life. Look, if you’re in general a Ukraine hawk and you say we need to make sure that Ukraine is completely supported so that they don’t give an inch of territory, yeah, you’ll take a lot of crap, but you’ll be in a large group. And if you basically have the idea that Russia was minding its own business and the US was encircling it and good Russia, bad us, you’ll have a lot of company for that perspective.
I don’t sound like any of that. The most important thing is to stabilize the world again, and we’re not going to get another chance like World War II if we’re not smart. We’re crazy to give up this order that we have. And again, one more time, I’m talking about this stuff, and I don’t want to be talking about this stuff. Elon is 100% right. We can’t talk about problems all the time. It’s cheap, meaning there’s an entire universe to explore. And we’re sitting here focused on our own drama always, and I’m getting sucked into it. I don’t want it. I want to be talking about traveling through time and space using Easter eggs and hidden features of what we thought was the space time continuum.
The Hidden Dimensions of Reality
STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve got this picture that I came across.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Tell me.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, I’d love you to tell me. This is the flower of life geometric model. And I was reading through some of your work and I came across this sentence that said you’d kept a secret for 30 years in terms of your belief about the nature of the reality that we live in and that you thought maybe it was more than just the dimensions we experienced. Maybe there was 14 dimensions. I’ve always, I wonder this a lot, you know, because we’re fixated on problems. We’re fixated on what we see and what we hear and what we feel. But I wonder sometimes if even that is an illusion. I’ve spent a lot of time actually thinking recently about the simulation theory. And is this whole reality just some simulation on some kid’s video game in another dimension? So I thought, you know, you’re a.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Physicist, do me a favor. Put that in a triangle pattern here. Okay, so we have three mugs. Think of those as vertices of a tetrahedron. And think of this coaster floating here as the fourth vertex.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Mm.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: For every two vertices. So the number of vertices we would agree is four.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. What’s this vertice mean?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Points.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. 1, 2, 3, 4.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Idealize these three things in this as points. Draw a line segment between all of these four vertices. How many line segments are there?
STEVEN BARTLETT: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Six.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yep. So there’s six edges, four vertices. How many triangular faces that have three vertices on them?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, four.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah. This is how to think about the actual dimensions that we have open to us. The four faces we know about. The key point that I was trying to get at is I don’t believe that you just have the four dimensions. I believe that you have all six edges are dimensions. And all four vertices are also dimensions. I’m talking about a hidden world.
It’s very interesting. Physics has gone stagnant in terms of how we usually measure progress. The way we measure progress is the change in something called the action, or the Lagrangian, a specialized device. And that used to change a lot. And then in 1973, it stopped changing. The major thing that we have is we have no new ideas about how to change the Lagrangian that anybody finds that exciting or interesting. So there’s been no progress. Nobody goes to Stockholm to get a Nobel Prize because they changed the Lagrangian of the world.
Understanding the Lagrangian
STEVEN BARTLETT: What’s the Lagrangian?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: The Lagrangian. So you probably think about physics in terms of equations, like Maxwell’s equations or the Einstein equations or whatever. Think about an equation as being not the primary thing that physicists think about. So I give this example. The Beatles had four basically different configurations. When Ringo was the front man, he was singing “Octopus’s Garden.” George Harrison is singing “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” You know, Paul is singing about “Penny Lane” and John is singing about “Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Those four equations, those would be those different configurations of the Beatles with one of them front and everybody else backing. The front man would be the equations, but the Beatles would be the Lagrangian. It’s the thing that generates the four different configurations, okay?
And there’s this bizarre force field that anybody who wants to talk about physics and doing something new in particular, leaving or traversing time or multiple dimensions of time. Anything that’s really close to what might be possible gets slammed. We don’t know why, because it’s very cheap to explore ideas and we have no new ideas. But the only thing about a new idea in physics is that a new idea changes the balance of power in the world. Remember the thing I was saying about AlphaFold 3?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
The Most Dangerous Thought in History
ERIC WEINSTEIN: AlphaFold 3 changed the balance of power in the world. Bitcoin changed the balance of power in the world. The Diffuse proposal from the EcoHealth alliance changed the balance of power in the world. If that was the source of the COVID virus. Anytime somebody has a really big idea and the biggest idea, and I talk about this, people don’t grasp it.
Probably the most dangerous thought anyone has ever had was Rutherford in 1911 saying, “I wonder whether there’s a neutral version of the proton.” It doesn’t sound dangerous, but it’s hard to send a proton into a bunch of protons, because it’s positively charged, and a massive nucleus is really positively charged. And so there’s a repulsion if there’s a neutral version of the proton.
And these things are barely stuck together with a strong force, even though they’re trying to scream away from each other because they’re all positively charged, you can send a neutral version of the proton right into the center tap. And just imagine you have a bunch of magnets that are trying to flee from each other, and the Velcro around them is barely holding it together. So now you have a bullet in the form of a neutral proton, a neutron, and it hits this thing where the magnets want to come apart, and the Velcro is barely holding it together. Well, that idea led to the chain.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Reaction and the nuclear bomb.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, that was the fission bomb. And then a geometer. So I’m a geometer and not a physicist, and a physicist named Edward Teller, and the geometer was named Stanislaus Ulam, said, “I wonder if there’s a way to take the chemical bomb that creates the fission bomb and use the fission bomb as the detonator for a fusion bomb.” So bomb number one, bomb number two, bomb number three.
And what they figured out was that the only way to create that is to reflect light in a particular way, to compress hydrogen into helium and release energy. Because anything other than light wouldn’t get to the tertiary stage fast enough before the atomic bomb. Like you’re using a Hiroshima Nagasaki as a detonator. That’s how crazy it is.
So that chain of ideas, which is maybe there’s a neutral version of the proton, maybe I can send that into the middle of an atom that’s very heavy. That was built in a stellar collision. Maybe if I have a bunch of those uranium or plutonium type things, each one, when they break apart, will have more neutrons inside, that is more neutral protons, that will hit more nuclei, that will release more energy, and maybe that can then focus the light, the gamma radiation that comes off of this thing, or who knows what, to compress a narrow rod to create fusion, which only occurs on the sun, in the sun, but do it on Earth.
So we’re going to take a little bit of the sun on Earth. That chain of ideas was the most dangerous thing anybody’s ever thunk. And that’s why when you try to do physics, you don’t know, why are people making fun of me? Why are they being mean? Why are they dissuading me from talking? I don’t know.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You have a suspicion.
The Forbidden City of Los Alamos
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, there was a guy named Jack Raper, unfortunately, named Mr. Jack Raper, who was a reporter in Cleveland, who, for some reason, during the war in 1944, decided to vacation in New Mexico. So he goes to New Mexico and he comes back and he says, “I’ve got a crazy story. There’s a city that nobody knows about with a mayor who’s supposed to be the second Einstein, and it’s the most secretive city in the world, and the mayor is working on a doomsday weapon, and even the people who live in the city don’t know what it is.”
And he writes the story of Los Alamos and publishes it in 1944. The scoop of the millennium, to say nothing of the century. Nobody knows about this article, and it’s called “Forbidden City.” We pretended that it never happened.
STEVEN BARTLETT: For those that don’t know, Los Alamos is where the atomic. The nuclear bomb was, I guess, conceived and brought to life and tested.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, it was really designed there. And most of the nuclear processing took place at other sites, whether Hanford or Oak Ridge, I’m not sure. And it was tested a short distance away at the Trinity site. So go watch the movie Oppenheimer, if you will, but this is why physicists are the only occupation in the country that doesn’t have full free speech.
The Hidden Physics of Government Secrecy
STEVEN BARTLETT: So are you suggesting that there’s dangers in believing in more dimensions, that maybe some people might not want to be known in the same way that we didn’t want the.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My point is, I don’t think our government knows the real secrets of physics. If I had to make a bet tomorrow, I don’t think there’s a secret government office that knows physics. I think that there were a bunch of very smart people who knew how dangerous physics was, and that the idea that we would continue to do it in public struck them as insane.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Because it could lead to destruction.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: When I tell you that the most dangerous idea in human history is maybe there’s a neutral version of the proton, that’s supposed to sound insane, but the entire chain of ideas results in nuclear fusion happening on Earth at the direction of the President of the United States.
And that’s what I’m trying to get at, which people don’t understand, which is you probably don’t even realize that the Department of Energy is really the Department of Physics because we pretend that it’s the Department of Energy. Like we had a War Department that became the Department of Defense.
STEVEN BARTLETT: We’re scared of the possibility of physics.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We don’t even want to talk about it. Literally no other occupation has lost free speech like physics. There’s a special doctrine called restricted data that says you cannot write physics on a napkin even if you have nothing to do with the government.
I think even if you’re not an American, if it has anything that could possibly have to do with nuclear weapons, in other words, any advance that might have to do with nuclear weapons, you have to recognize that the instant you put pen to paper or you start talking to somebody, you’re committing a violation of the 1917 Espionage Act.
And if you think that’s crazy, start exploring the words restricted data. 1917 Espionage Act, 1946 and 1954 Atomic Energy Acts. The doctrine of bourne secret. It is illegal to pursue Q clearance data if you don’t have a Q clearance. But if you’re creating Q clearance data out of your own head as a byproduct of trying to do physics, you are actually potentially committing a capital offense.
The Theory of Everything and Its Implications
STEVEN BARTLETT: And your theory of everything, your theory, the theory you just talked to me about there, what does that mean for the average person that’s listening to this in terms of.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We don’t know.
STEVEN BARTLETT: That they should.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, this is my point. Did Rutherford know what he was doing?
STEVEN BARTLETT: No.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So I talk about this a lot, but I do think it’s probably one of the greatest lyrics ever in any song. And unfortunately, it occurs in a song that got way too popular. “The baffled king composing hallelujah.” That line. A baffled king does not realize what he is doing when he composes. Rutherford was a baffled king. Maybe there is a neutral version of the proton he was composing the end of the human race.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And your ideas about the nature of reality.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m a baffled person.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And your proposal.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I am baffled. I don’t know what it leads to is what I’m trying to tell you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: But your assertion is that there’s more than this dimension that we understand and more than ourselves.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m telling you that I can name for you what particles there are left to be found. And what comes back to me is you don’t have any predictions. And I’m thinking this doesn’t even make sense. Literally. I’m telling you there are. Maybe there’s a neutral version of the proton. Doesn’t begin to talk about all the things that I’m talking about, about so many new forces, so many new particles, ways to go in. There’s no longer an arrow of time in my theory.
STEVEN BARTLETT: So you could live forever, theoretically.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: What does it mean if you think about a final theory? And again, by the way, I just want to say something? I say my theory sometimes when I’m having to defend it, but it isn’t mine. It just is.
You know, Everest didn’t belong to Sir Edmund Hillary or to Mallory, or even to the surveyor for whom the mountain is named. When you chose to make the first ascent on Everest, you just chose a route, and then you either did or did not traverse the route. We don’t know whether Mallory may have succeeded.
But my point is that this isn’t my theory. There is a theory that’s there. It might be wrong. It’s possible I may have screwed it up, but it’s got so much in it that I have no idea what it means.
Understanding Hidden Dimensions
STEVEN BARTLETT: And the simple way to understand this theory is that there’s dimensions that exist beyond the ones that we know.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We already know from Einstein that these dimensions are implicitly in Einstein’s theory. Every single dimension that I’m talking about is being constructed out of the four that we began with. When I put the cups here and the coaster, the edges were calculated from the vertices and the faces were calculated from the edges.
My point being, these dimensions are already here. And because the dimensions are already here, they were already present in Einstein’s theory all along. When you ask for what Einstein’s real equation is, we actually don’t think about it that way. We call it the Einstein field equations, plural. How many of them are there? 10. Why are there 10? Because there are six edges and four vertices that weren’t accounted for. They’re already in Einstein’s theory. We just didn’t take them seriously as directions you could go in.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You’ve heard about this simulation theory, haven’t you?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Why? I don’t want to talk about it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Really?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, again, it’s the LLM problem. The really interesting thing comes from. I don’t know. And maybe the cosmos is traversable. Maybe times travel replaces time travel. You see, if I flip all of the dimensions of time and space, so I have one of time, three of space. In Einstein’s theory, the time dimension gets a minus sign. The three spatial dimensions get a plus.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Sign, and the three spatial dimensions are.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: X, Y and Z. Yeah, Z. Forgive me.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Which is for a simple person.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Depth, width and height.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, you can go forward, backwards, up, down.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Right? So we have three dimensions there, and then we have one of time. Because the conversation takes place over time. You’re moving around. Now flip the time dimension to being plus when it was minus before, and all the plus dimensions to being minus. So now I have three time dimensions and one Space dimension, it would look exactly the same. The one space dimension would take the function of time and the three time dimensions would have the function of space.
We don’t even teach people the idea that there is not necessarily an arrow of time if time is not one dimensional. The only dimension that has an arrow is one. If something has one dimension, you can say, I tried to do this on Rogan. I said, if you have a cassette tape and you want to go back to an earlier song, again, your younger listeners will have no idea what we’re talking about. You have to go back through all of the songs before, but if you have a stylus on a turntable, some of them will be hipsters with vinyl in their own homes. You can lift the stylus up and it doesn’t need to go back and unplay each song in reverse.
You may be able to go back in time without going back through time. I don’t know what this means, but it’s a lot like saying maybe there’s a neutral version of the proton.
The Hidden World of National Security
Now, what I’m concerned about is that essentially none of my physics friends know that there is a doctrine of restricted data. They’ve never heard of the 1946 and 54 Atomic Energy Acts. They don’t know that the Department of Energy that funds them is really the Department of Physics. They don’t know the extent to which we went to hide all of this stuff. They don’t know that they’re not allowed to talk to foreign nationals from hostile nations on our own soil because of a doctrine called deemed exports.
There’s an entire hidden world of national security. And the penalty for talking about national security with people who don’t live that is that you’re a conspiracy theorist. It’s like, do you have this terminology? Do you know the acts? Do you want to Google it? Well, you’re.
This is also just something that’s really interesting about the UFO, UAP world. We had this admission recently that the government knew that at a minimum. And again, I don’t think this is by anywhere close to the full story, at a minimum, there were secret, fake special Access programs. Do you know about special access programs? Super secret programs are called Special Access programs.
Then there’s a further category called Unacknowledged Special Access Programs, or usaps, which is you can know that a Special Access program exists. Like maybe Warhead Recovery might be a known one, but then there might be an unacknowledged Special Access program, which is like theft of foreign nuclear warheads, which it’s not even on the books. Only the super secret lawmakers in the Gang of eight, or whatever it is can know that that exists.
And then there are further designations of secretness. There’s waived and bigoted so you could have like a wave bigoted, unacknowledged special access program. And you don’t know any of this language. And then there’s this chorus of morons who the instant you start to educate people about the existence of the super secret Squirrel Club, rise up and say this is all conspiracy theory.
And you’re saying, wait a second. We just admitted in UFO UAP land that we have a fake special access program, which I predicted on Joe Rogan. I said we may be faking a UFO situation. The cost and the penalty at a personal level for letting people know how the government keeps secrets is personal destruction.
The Fake UFO Program Revelation
STEVEN BARTLETT: The US faked a UFO program?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yes. Correct. You don’t know about this? I think the Wall Street Journal had an article about it. So these guys knew when they filed their reports on the UFO UAP, that there actually is, at a minimum, a fake UFO UAP program.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Why would they want to fake UFOs?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: This is so weird. Did you happen to watch Joe Rogan Episode 1945 where I talked about the whole history of the golden age of general relativity and its relationship to UFO, UAP, antigravity research and the atomic bomb?
STEVEN BARTLETT: I didn’t.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: When we invaded the beaches of Normandy on D Day, that was called Operation Overlord. We had an entirely fake invasion planned of Norway called Operation Fortitude. That was part of Operation Bodyguard, which is part of just total deception. And why? Because we were building up troops to do something huge.
So we tried to convince. We planted plans for the invasion of Norway on dead bodies to wash up on beaches so the Germans would find them. We fake stuff all the time. That’s what we do. And you can’t talk about what we do that is deceptive without being ruined by what are called covert influence operations.
You watch my Twitter account, you’ll see all sorts of accounts descend on it. Fraud, charlatan, grifter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some of that is just people being mean. But you’ll notice that if I really start talking about physics and I start talking about security and I start talking about things that anyone can Google and most of us don’t think to do it, suddenly it gets really, really intense. And the whole point is it’s supposed to be untraceable.
It’s supposed to be a way in which almost certainly we know a ton about what happened in the Wuhan Institute of Virology because of two bioweapons conventions that we were signatories and which we ratified the Geneva Convention and a bioweapons convention in the 1970s. But that’s not top of mind for ordinary people. They just watched their great grandma die and watched their children get sick and they watched their own brain fog. They can’t know whether that was a bioweapon that we were working on coming out of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with Ralph Baric’s lab. You know, we’re up to constant secret stuff.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Why would they fake the UFOs, though? What was that distraction?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You ever seen the B2 bomber?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: What if you saw that before we were ready to say it existed?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, you’d think it was a UFO or something.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: So wouldn’t it be better if we had a UFO story ready to go when we had cool aerospace?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, okay, so you’re saying they’re working on something which they didn’t want you to know.
The UFO Deception Strategy
ERIC WEINSTEIN: What’s more, what if we convinced China or Russia or Iran that we had incredible powers that they don’t have? Then they might be very reluctant to strike us. Or they might waste a tremendous amount of money developing anti-gravity technology when there’s no such thing. There are plenty of good reasons to fake such things. Why would we fake an invasion of Norway if we weren’t going to invade?
STEVEN BARTLETT: But if that’s a distraction technique, do you have any hypothesis as to what was going on there?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: But that’s not my job.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Because as soon as you do that, I know that the quality of my guessing is not going to be at the quality of my detecting when we’re up to bullshit.
In other words, if you ask me why is physics stagnant? I can say I don’t know. But there’s a decent chance that we know how dangerous physics is and that it’s crazy to do it in an open university environment. We’ve taken precautions. We have a system of national laboratories which are effectively our secret university system where you have to be an American.
So we’re using our regular universities and the whole world comes through it. We have Chinese people learning physics side by side with our own people.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And I guess you’re saying that you don’t know if UFOs exist, but you’re sure now that they were faking the science.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I am absolutely positive that we have unacknowledged programs that have “UFO” written on the side of them.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: In other words, the number of people who repeat strikingly similar things, who appear to be completely sober in every other respect, with no known acting ability. There is no way in the world that these people just spontaneously have decided to destroy their sanity, their career, and their reputation.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve got you.
The Intelligence Community’s War on Its Own People
ERIC WEINSTEIN: At a minimum, we’re faking. I think we are doing a lot more than faking a UFO program. I don’t know what it is, and I also would not be talking about this on a large podcast, but for one thing, I have a particular hatred for one aspect of our intelligence community.
And I don’t mean that I disagree or don’t like or I’m not uncomfortable when our Secret Squirrel Club inside the intelligence world, and inside in particular, covert operations, targets our own people who are not read into these programs for personal destruction, reputational destruction, mental destruction, economic destruction.
We take our best people and we make fun of them and we belittle them and we destroy their families, their lives, their ability to earn. I have a very strong sense that you never destroy your best people.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think you’re under attack?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Let me talk about Leo Szilard instead. Leo Szilard is the father of the…
STEVEN BARTLETT: Manhattan Project, which was where the nuclear bomb was created.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That’s right. He was not allowed to go inside the Manhattan Project because they didn’t trust him. He was a genius. He was the idea for the Manhattan Project. He and Einstein made sure that it happened. The government barely trusted Oppenheimer, if you saw the film.
What they did with Leo Szilard was they minded him. They knew how good he was. They knew how important he was. They listened to him and they didn’t destroy him. He undoubtedly knew that the program was going on, but he wasn’t allowed inside the program. I think that’s okay.
I think it’s okay that our security state recognizes that some people are not cut out to keep secrets. Some people are not cut out to die with certain facts that have to be kept hidden. That’s fine.
The desire of our government to destroy people who have no idea what they’ve tripped over because our government isn’t good enough to keep its own secrets. This is an abomination. You cannot destroy your A team.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Who are you referring to when you say people are being destroyed? Are you referring to people like yourself?
Jeffrey Epstein: The Construct
ERIC WEINSTEIN: If you look at, for example, Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein conducted a conference called “Confronting Gravity.” I don’t know who Jeffrey Epstein was, but I would certainly bet money that he was a product of at least one or more elements of the intelligence community, the CIA, the FBI, those are ours. Department of Homeland Security has some of the stuff. Geospatial Intelligence has some of this. It’s a large network.
I’m talking about people like David Grusch. I’m talking about people potentially like David Fravor. I’m talking about people like Jake Barber. I’m talking about scientists like Leo Szilard. Imagine if Leo Szilard didn’t know that the Manhattan Project was going on. Or Jack Raper, a journalist who broke a story. These people all think that they’re doing their jobs.
I desperately want to know why Jeffrey Epstein knew so much about my work and I want to know why he was connected to my graduate program. I was in the Harvard Mathematics Department. Jeffrey Epstein was absolutely connected to the Harvard Math Department. I want to know why.
STEVEN BARTLETT: How was he connected to the Math Department?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You’re pushing me to say things I’m not going to say, but I don’t mind.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m curious. I’m not trying to push you out.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I understand, but I’m just not going to do it. I’m saying that anybody who wants to can check this out.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You say he was connected to the Math Department, to the Harvard Mathematics Department.
STEVEN BARTLETT: How did you know he was connected?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You can Google it. You could Google it right now. This is not… I can point at all sorts of stuff that’s hidden in plain sight.
STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ll take your word for it. And the assertion that I’m picking up on is that Jeffrey Epstein was planted in your world to keep…
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m not saying he’s planted. I don’t know who he was. I don’t know who ran him. He certainly was not a financier in any standard sense.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Really.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That was a cover story.
STEVEN BARTLETT: The way that we know Jeffrey Epstein in the UK especially is just this guy who was this rich guy who had this island, who brought people there and then did these despicable things.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: “Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.”
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, that’s what we… That’s the story.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: “Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.” It’s called perseveration. He was a disgraced financier. What kind of a financier? A disgraced one. What was his name? Oh, he was “Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.” They perseverate that into your mind so that you autocomplete that in your LLM life. Do you believe that? That’s what Jeffrey Epstein was.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You met him?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, I can tell.
STEVEN BARTLETT: That financier.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: He wasn’t a financier the day I met him.
STEVEN BARTLETT: What was he?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: He was a weird guy who didn’t seem to know a lot about currency trading, claiming to run a multi-billion dollar FX hedge fund.
STEVEN BARTLETT: When you say a weird guy, what made him weird?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Same stuff I’ve said on Chris Williams. I’m not going to go back through that. My point is you’re getting a different interview.
So what I’m trying to get at is Jeffrey Epstein knew a tremendous amount about my work when nobody knew anything about my work. And he had a pipeline into me that I didn’t understand, which is that he was connected to my graduate program. And you can check out the conference called “Exploring Gravity” and hosted a physical workshop called “Confronting Gravity.”
STEVEN BARTLETT: “Confronting Gravity,” that’s right.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: In March 2006.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. What is Jeffrey Epstein… Jeffrey Epstein is very focused on gravity.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Was it a gravity conference? It was about gravity, yeah. What the fuck was he doing talking about bloody gravity if he’s a financier?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It was very important to get Nobel laureates and some of the smartest people on Earth to come to the Virgin Islands and talk about gravity. Stephen Hawking was there, David Gross was there, Lawrence Krauss was there. Lisa Randall was there right before his conviction. And I’m telling you, he was very focused on the Harvard Math Department. And he knew all about me in ways that he wasn’t supposed to.
The Multi-Program Construct
STEVEN BARTLETT: I have to be clear. I have to be clear on my understanding of what you’re saying, from what I understood. And you can say, “Steve, I’m not going to answer that,” whatever. But I just have to… Because you’ve opened up a curiosity hole in my mind. So let me try and fill it. Even if it’s the conversation you had with Chris, I’ll just evade you if you… Fine.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, fine.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Fine. You’re within the right to evade me. And I hold the right to ask, which is… So is what I’m hearing is you believe, and I’m just going to say it how I think it is. What I’m hearing is you believe that Jeffrey Epstein was not a financier. He was planted in some way to influence…
ERIC WEINSTEIN: He was a construct, is what I said.
STEVEN BARTLETT: He was a construct in some way to mess with the progression of physics.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Jeffrey Epstein, apparently, I think some… I’ll tell you what I said when I met him. When the meeting was over, I immediately called my wife and I said, “I have just met a construct.” She said, “What do you mean?” I said, “This person is not who they claim to be. Somebody has constructed this human being to be something that they are not, which is a hedge fund genius, somebody who could understand the euro and the yen like nobody else.” Bullshit. Not true.
I believe that whoever constructed Jeffrey Epstein was running multiple different programs through the same thing, having put in a large initial investment. It wasn’t about one thing. If you build a mall, you don’t just have clothing stores in the mall. You have a food court in the mall. You have jewelry in the mall. You have all sorts of different things in the mall.
Jeffrey Epstein was a construct of something that was running multiple things. One of those things was science. And I don’t think that the science and the pedophilia were necessarily in the same bucket. He was funding all sorts of people. I don’t think everybody at that… Part of the problem with calling his plane the “Lolita Express” and calling his island “pedophile island” is that you just can’t see all the different things that were going through this guy.
I don’t think almost any of those scientists are exposed to anything really horrible. I think he was trying to keep a periscope on everything that was interesting. And I think that his girlfriend’s father, Robert Maxwell, was all through scientific publishing, and I think Pergamon Press was in part a control mechanism for making sure that revolutionary discoveries were taking place within a framework.
Anybody can look, you can write a substack article and you can hit post, and suddenly the world has access to your substack article. That is a nightmare. What if somebody posts weaponized anthrax? What if they do the equivalent of saying, “What if there’s a neutral proton?”
STEVEN BARTLETT: So you think he was controlling science?
The Reality of Managed Society
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I think that Robert Maxwell was in part trying to control science. I think Jeffrey Epstein was in part trying to fund science, trying to control it. I don’t really know. Again, part of the problem with why conspiracy theorists have a bad name is that they’re not content to live in ignorance. And I am.
I know something is really off with this story. If you look at me saying things like, “you don’t know whether Biden is going to make it to November.” Ha ha ha. Eric. What an idiot. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, then he has a debate, he doesn’t make it to November. I’m not Nostradamus. I’m just dumb enough to say something in public that makes sense.
Let me say something in public that makes sense. Our national security people suck at their jobs. The people who are in charge of the Department of Energy, which is masking the Department of Physics, which is masking the Department of Nuclear Weapons. Right. The Atomic Energy Acts, which are really about atomic weaponry, recast as atoms for peace or who knows what. Jeffrey Epstein, who is not a disgraced financier. The newspapers that have always had a national interest component and have liaisons so that they can work with the CIA and the State Department and they do each other’s bidding and scratch each other.
This whole network is what I’ve called managed reality. We live in managed reality. We are all in some version of the Truman Show. And you can look at it, you can Google it, I can give you a million search terms. And every time I give a million search terms, you’ll watch my reputation get torn apart.
Are you going to blame me that you didn’t know what the “whole of society approach” is? Because you didn’t know that Daniel Inouye, center for Security in the Pacific, came up with an idea for soft fascism to fight hybrid wars. You didn’t know what hybrid warfare. Look at my talk at ARC, Jordan Peterson’s group, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. It’s at almost 2 million views. And why is it? Because people are saying, “I didn’t know these terms.”
Human Terrain and Information Warfare
Did you know what the Human Terrain Project is? Do you know about human terrain? You’re a mountain, I’m a valley. And instead of war planners figuring out how do we use that valley to capture that mountaintop because it gives us an eagle’s nest to snipe from or whatever they say. Okay, this is the second most powerful podcast in the world. Second to Joe Rogan. How do we capture him?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Leave me alone, please.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No, but that’s what I’m trying to say. You’re human terrain.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: When the human terrain wakes up and says, “wait a minute, I’m human terrain.” Well, my feeling is, if you don’t want me to talk about this on a podcast, then keep your terms separate. Nobody knew the term “pre bunked malinformation.” Do you know what pre bunked malinformation is?
Malinformation is information we don’t want to get out. Technically, people try to pretend that it’s information that will be misinterpreted, but really it’s real stuff that is deleterious to the narratives that we’re trying to push forward and what we’re trying to do. And pre bunked means discredited, so we knew it debunked. We have to debunk disinformation. We get that. But you didn’t know that we had to pre bunk malinformation, which is we have to destroy truth tellers.
The Challenge for Independent Media
STEVEN BARTLETT: What do you think that means for people like me as podcasters, you know? Cause we’re doing these long form conversations.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I take you’ll snap back, you’ll say, “that was a really interesting talk.” And then you’ll have somebody else on who’ll be talking about the importance of melatonin and how we don’t understand the role of sleep. And you’ll have somebody else on with who will be talking about how do you do a clothing brand from scratch and turn it into a billion dollar unicorn. You’re not going to stay here on this topic. This is your time with me. And it’ll have some effect and it’ll start to fade. And that’s what this is.
I’d love to be doing my podcast. I just don’t know how to do it safely. I want to talk about taking our lives back from the intelligence community. I want to talk about taking our lives back from Silicon Valley, even though those people are my friends. I want to talk about taking my life back from the phone, from despair, from not having a future.
I want to talk about having a glorious existence that is not mediated by morons who sit inside the Beltway and play with large budgets and hurt people, particularly really good people who are good at their job, who are trying to figure out how to advance humankind, their family, the national interest, and get foul.
I did not ask for Jeffrey Epstein to fall into my life. I met him once, but it was enough to know, “Holy cow, the Harvard Math Department can’t be what I think it is.” Why was he there? I didn’t even know. I never heard his name when I was there.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Is that where you met him?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No, no, no, no. I think very powerful people at JP Morgan told me I needed to meet him. He didn’t want to talk about finance, he wanted to talk about science.
Living Under Surveillance
STEVEN BARTLETT: You can’t do your podcast safely.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My employer was a special informant to the FBI. He’s like one of my closest friends. I’m not going to say who it is.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Your employer?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, and one of my closest friends. I live under a periscope. Proctoscope is really what I meant, but yeah, I don’t. I want to do physics, man. I’m really, really good at it, you know? And if we have an idea that we shouldn’t do physics in public, I would like to have a call from somebody inside. “Hey, Eric, we need you to come in.” Okay, great. What’s up? But I didn’t use your resources. I didn’t use your Grants. Nobody ever informed me.
My God, nobody ever informed me about restricted data. How many people on Earth know that there’s a doctrine that says physicists don’t have free speech? We can execute you for doing your job. It’s never been tested in the courts, and I hope that the Supreme Court will not allow that. But, you know, if we have a problem that is so serious in theoretical physics that it needs the world’s largest exemption from free speech, we need to amend the Constitution.
You can’t just do this as a sneak attack where you reserve the right casually to hook the 1917 Espionage act up against the 1946 and 54 Atomic Energy Acts. I’ve canvassed my physics colleagues. One of the memes against me, which is very funny, is that no physicists take me seriously when I’m in their offices all the time. I just don’t know what my life is.
And with this latest advent of war in the Middle east, are you really going to pretend that if you can Google all of these things that I have no idea what I’m talking about? I’m looking to have a conversation with my own government. I’m looking to have a conversation about theoretical physics, and I can do it quietly, but I have rights. And I do not believe that the 1946 and 1954 Atomic Energy Acts are constitutional. Try me. There is no restricted data. You can’t do that to an American. And you can’t just keep mounting covert influence campaigns.
You know, I just spent five days in the physics department. I’m not allowed to say that it was five days in the physics department as a visitor, I gave a talk. I’m not allowed to say that I gave a talk. I don’t know what this is.
STEVEN BARTLETT: And.
The Corruption of Scientific Institutions
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’m tired of it. You know, it’s just like, if you’re managing the Middle east this badly, if you’re managing physics this badly, if you’re managing the national economy this badly, if you screwed up Covid this badly by getting inside of the Lancet and Nature. You know, peer review is this fake thing that supposedly stretches back to the founding of the Royal Society. And it’s very clear from the scholarship around it that it comes out of a period between 1965 and 1975 initiated by the Medicare act, predicated on the need for editors for the journal expansion, founded by Pergamon Press and Robert Maxwell.
By 1975, there’s a giant battle between the NSF and both fiscal and cultural conservatives against something called a course of study, or macOS, where Peer review was born in a Utah clinic, came out of the medical literature because the federal government in 1965 with the Medicare act, picked up the need to pay for so many medical procedures. They wanted to say, “why are we assigning this many medical procedures?” The doctors circled the wagons and said that we will peer review each other. Then by 1975, the NSF was under the microscope and they used peer review as a self defense of last resort to say, “we will be reviewing each other.”
Peer review is a myth. The scholarship is clear as day. I can’t keep going on the world’s largest podcasts saying everything that can be googled and figured out and just constantly have as my reward that the government refuses to have a conversation with me and sends its gaggle of idiots to harass me.
STEVEN BARTLETT: You think it’s doing that? It’s sending a gaggle of it.
The Power of Science and Its Suppression
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yes, I do. I do think. I think that some of them are actual idiots who just enjoy causing problems. But I think more than anything, we have a real problem. Science is too powerful. If you wanted to just cut to the ultimate core of this. If four amino acids can shut down planet Earth, if. What is it? A nine page paper, solving the double spend problem can create a new currency not backed by violence, but backed by mathematics. If the concept of an inner product in a large vector space generates something you can’t tell isn’t a human being in 2017? Do you have any idea what the power of the human mind is at this point?
Linear algebra can create something that you would fall in love with. It can create the most beautiful music you can imagine, or it can animate a photo of a dead relative so that you can actually have the experience of having some video of you with a great grandparent you can’t even remember. Science is the most amazing, powerful, crazy stuff possible. And we spend a fortune trying to convince people that scientists are worthless, that scientists are incapable. And in large measure, they’ve convinced the scientists themselves.
My colleagues, the supposed physicists, will spend their entire lives pretending to do physics and retire without ever having actually done any. I was in this physics department. I was just in. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent that long as a visitor. The top people in this physics department professed that they had no interest in the physical world, that they only cared about the mathematics that they were doing. And I just thought, “you’re in a theoretical physics group and you profess openly that you have no interest whatsoever in the physical world.” Well done.
I don’t know who you were. I don’t know how you did it, but it took you four decades to get the physicists to stop caring about the physical world. Somehow what we did is we stopped the world’s most powerful and the world’s most important group from making progress. And why Elon Musk is not out here saving this by just throwing a few billion at it? Elon, if you’re out there, it’s Ad Astra, yes or no? Mars is a stopgap message. Do you want to go to the stars? Is there something we don’t know?
A Call for Transcendence
To the Department of Energy. Do you want to have conversations? Is there anyone at all out here? That’s my question. That’s why I do the podcasts. And it’s. By the way, I’m repeating myself. I’ve said this before. Send lawyers, guns, and money. There’s no one out here.
But I will say this. If we could get out of here, you know, in terms of transcendence, in terms of things that are really exciting, there’s nothing that I had greater pleasure at as a father than taking my children for meteor showers. We take the dog. We go to a secret location outside of Los Angeles that’s quite dark. We just lie under the sky and watch for hours, you know, and look up at the heavens and think, “my God, that’s a destination. That’s some place I could go.”
I don’t think that there’s a more inspiring thing than to figure out the infinity of space, all of these galaxies, and the deep field photographs of these space telescopes filled with worlds, and we’re stuck here. It’s like, it’s enough already. Time to go. Let’s have some fun. That’s really what I’m excited about. Been great to be here.
Final Advice for Living Better
STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you for being here. Super fascinating. And it spun my brain in several different directions at the same time. I want to bring it back to the person who’s got to the end of this conversation, and they’re sat at home in their box of shorts, maybe listening on their iPhone as they fall asleep wherever they are in the world or on a train or plane or whatever, and allow you to offer them some kind of closing message that might make their life better in some way. It’s a broad brief, but I think it’s the most important brief, which is, you know, having heard everything we’ve talked about today, what advice would you give the listener? An actionable piece of advice so that they could live a subjectively better life?
Life Advice and Recommendations
ERIC WEINSTEIN: The songs of Tom Lehrer are pretty terrific, as are the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. You might want to explore the Azores as well as the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesian is one of the easiest languages to learn because it’s been denuded of most of the complexity that screw up people who have a hard time learning other languages.
Buy a poster of tropical fruit and make sure that you visit every single one on that poster before it’s time for lights out. Consider Bach’s B Minor Mass and the Cello Suites, particularly by Pablo Casals. And take a serious listen to Eva Cassidy singing “Stormy Monday” in an album called “Live from Blues Alley” to see if you really know how to feel things.
I think Professor Longhair’s “Big Chief” is one of the most brilliant pieces of piano music. It’s absolutely inspiring. And if you really like that, James Carroll Booker III has an album called “The Resurrection of the Bayou Maharaja.” Seriously, think about visiting the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic.
Take a look at Kurt Jaimungel’s channel. He’s doing amazing stuff being done by no one else on earth. I think that Chris Buck is really amazing. And if you think that “Crossroads” is good, have a listen to his version of “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones. An incredible groove and I didn’t really appreciate it the first time I heard it.
I think that the people making spark amps at Positive Grid and my friends at Neural DSP with the Quad Cortex will blow your mind with how much great audio equipment you can make. You can get a good electric guitar for a few hundred bucks thanks to advances in China. Put it into an open tuning and buy yourself a slider. Just slide a glass along it and you’ll be able to play most songs that you’d care about within a minute or two, maybe three, because you only need three chords.
Get married. It may not work out. It may be miserable. Have some kids. There’s nothing else great to do on this planet. At least give it a try and if your parents won’t pressure you to do it, I’m happy to do it. Try to keep this thing going. Try to dream big about legacy. Don’t feel embarrassed about wanting to conquer the world or leave a permanent stain. Get out of this moment where everybody’s worried about narcissism and drama.
Listen for meteor showers. They’re announced regularly. Nobody actually does anything about them and it’s worth inconveniencing yourself with people you love and take the dog really seriously.
Think about whether you want to pile on when you see what is almost certainly a federal or other campaign targeting people who are standing up for you, whether they’re trying to figure out where Covid came from, trying to figure out who was behind Jeffrey Epstein. Recognize that almost everything you’ve been taught to do in terms of hating Israel as part of somebody’s campaign out of Qatar. The situation in Gaza is incredibly dire. Don’t stop caring about the people who are living under that. Recognize that the Persians are not the mullahs.
Get involved. Wish your country’s leadership well, even if you didn’t vote for them and you think that they’re horrible people. They’ve got very hard work to do. Be good to each other. Try it’s a grand adventure and make sure you have some fun before it’s lights out. That’s it.
The Final Question
STEVEN BARTLETT: We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. And the question that was left for you. I love this question. What is the problem that you are doing the most mental gymnastics to avoid?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Pass. I know the answer. It’s not appropriate for your audience. One of the things about being in the hot seat on podcasts is that it is not right to force anyone to respond to a question. I know how to falsify an answer to that and I’m not going to do that and I’m not going to share the answer to that question because it’s not appropriate. But it’s a great question. Feel free to leave it for someone else. This doesn’t seem fair. Whoever you were, thank you for the question.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Obviously, my reaction was just tremendous curiosity, which would be a natural reaction to what you just said.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Thank you for a great interview.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you. It’s so unbelievably fascinating and you’ve given me so much. Unfortunately, you’ve given me a lot of answers, but you’ve given me even more questions, and maybe that’s the product of a good conversation.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You live in LA?
STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We’ll do it again.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Appreciate you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: Thank you.

Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, science policy expert and a frequent public speaker on a variety of subjects within the sciences.

Dr Weinstein was formerly a co-founder of the Sloan Sponsored Science and Engineering Workforce Project at Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research, a co-founder and principal of the Natron Group in Manhattan as well as a visiting research fellow at Oxford University in the Mathematical Institute. Since completing a PhD dissertation in the Mathematics Department at Harvard in 1992, he has held research positions in Mathematics, Physics, and Economics departments (at MIT, Hebrew University, and Harvard respectively). He delivered the Special Simonyi Lectures at Oxford University in 2013 putting forth a theory he termed “Geometric Unity” to unify the twin geometries (Riemannian and Ehresmannian) thought to ground the two most fundamental physical theories (General Relativity and the so-called Standard Model of particle theory, respectively). He has been asked to address the National Academy of Sciences on five occasions on the future of scientific and academic research at elite institutions within the United States.

Is This The End of Humanity? TRIGGERnometry: w/ Eric Weinstein

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:58:00 +0000

Is This The End of Humanity?
In this episode of Triggernometry, mathematical physicist Eric Weinstein returns for a gripping discussion on the existential threats facing humanity, ranging from the legacy of thermonuclear weapons to the rise of AI. Weinstein argues that we are living in a “BC/AD” moment of human history, defined by our god-like power over the atom and the cell, and warns that our current global leaders may lack the skill to navigate the “escape room” of our solar system. He makes a provocative case for resuming nuclear testing to reinstill a necessary fear of these weapons while urging a radical “sprint to the finish” to colonize other planets and transcend the limits of Einsteinian physics.
TRANSCRIPT:
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Eric, welcome back to TRIGGERnometry.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Thanks, guys. Great to be here.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: It’s great to have you back on. We’ve had three previous conversations, all of them extremely popular with our audience. People loved it. But the one thing that we’ve always felt that they’ve missed out is some of the conversations we’ve had with you in private.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We really shouldn’t talk about that.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: We should talk about some of the conversations. Some of the conversation we’ve had in private is actually about geopolitics and particularly how all of that is informed by the invention of first nuclear weapons and then thermonuclear weapons.
It’s interesting that as we sit down to record this, this episode might not go out for a few weeks, but as we sit down to record this, the Trump administration has just announced that it wants to do nuclear testing again. On par with other countries is the language. We don’t know the detail of that, but this seems to be a thing that we’ve talked about in the past. So just take us through it. Take it away, Professor.
The Forgotten Danger of Nuclear Weapons
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, it’s awfully nice to see the two of you. And onto nuclear weapons. I’ve been talking about this for a while. Somehow there was a crazy idea. At the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall fell, nukes became a non-issue, which was never true. And there was never a peace dividend, because there will never be a peace dividend as long as we know how to create this technology from physics.
And this issue about fictionalizing nukes and what they mean and how to think about them so that we can live our lives. I mean, right now we’re looking out at Los Angeles and there exist websites that will allow you to simulate the effect of any of the tests with any epicenter you like chosen at any point here. And whether or not you’re going to have gamma radiation as you will from the thermonuclear weapons, or cesium from fission weapons or dirty bombs, or who knows what.
All of our cities, other than two in Japan, have been untested as to how they’ll perform under these circumstances. So it’s not clear that it even makes sense to build cities. But because no one’s used a nuclear weapon in anger since 1945, we don’t know whether this is a silly thing to be worried about or the most important thing to be worried about.
So for years I’ve been calling for a return to rare above ground nuclear tests, which I think were ended by the Test Ban Treaty of, what is it, 62. So it’s been over 60 years since we’ve had above ground nuclear testing. And as a result we’ve just forgotten the power of the strong force and the electromagnetic force together. It’s just astounding and just, if I can say from a physics perspective we would call this SU Gauge theory. It’s just a technical thing that leads to engineering abilities that are sort of unthinkable.
I mean, I don’t know how to put it. I don’t think we can really think through the effect of thermonuclear weapons on urban centers. And the fact that this comes from physics and comes from science. Even my colleagues in physics are completely disconnected from their Manhattan Project colleagues. And that ethos, it was so long in the past that it’s sort of like modern Greeks thinking about Ulysses. There’s just no direct connection. It’s some sort of mythological thing.
So anyway, I’ve been talking about this nonstop till I’m blue in the face. Many people are bored of hearing it from me, but it was always going to be the main issue.
The Peace Dividend Myth
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So first of all, you said a lot of things there I want to pick up on. But the first one is you said there’s no peace dividend. Is that really true, Eric? I mean, we had historian Dominic Sandbrook on one of the Rest is History. Guys, we had a great, it’s one of our most popular conversations and one of the things we talked about is the reason there has not been another world war is because of nuclear weapons. They are sufficient deterrent for major powers to get direct conflict between them. Is that not true?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It’s worked for 80 years, exactly as you say. And if you’re settled, if you’re happy with 80 years, you could even double it to 160 years, which is a drop in the bucket when it comes to geological time, even human time. So, yes, they make the world much safer in the short run, much safer than it’s ever been. So if you like to think in short term thinking, nuclear weapons are the best thing that ever happened to humanity.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Surely, though, as those weapons become more and more powerful and one of the things you’ve talked about is the transition from nuclear weapons to thermonuclear weapons and the impact of that. But beyond that, I mean, Russia is developing what they call a tsunami bomb, which is basically a giant nuclear torpedo. It explodes in the water outside Los Angeles and, you know, the entire western seaboard basically gets swept off the map. Same on the eastern side, Eastern seaboard.
As the potential damage becomes greater, isn’t that a greater disincentive for those weapons to be used? And therefore we are more likely to not have a world war?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You’re more likely to not have a world war if everyone is convinced of the calculus and everyone remains rational. But this is sort of the whole idea behind playing chicken. People always fancy themselves excellent chicken players. And so it’s sort of that scene in Rebel Without a Cause where you have two people who think that they can outwit the other one as to what level of risk they can handle.
I don’t view the current crop of leaders as particularly skilled. I mean, I would say that Putin would be the most skilled of the current crop of leaders and Xi, but they’re not world class talents in this department, I don’t think. And nobody’s used these weapons in so long, they’re not even positive whether they’ll work.
And so the fear of God also has to be reinstilled in the population through, let’s say through music. I mean, there was a song called “The Eve of Destruction” that your listeners can find or “On the Beach” or “Dr. Strangelove.” And all of these stories we’ve stopped telling so that we no longer think of these things as immediate.
So I don’t think it works as well as you think it does. But if you’re satisfied with that short term cessation of hostilities because everyone’s so terrified of the consequence, absolutely. That’s the major positive externality of Armageddon and the apocalypse is that it keeps the peace very well in the short term.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, my thinking is you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Right. And you know that. Which is, I think one of the reasons you’re saying we should be testing nuclear weapons is your rationale that we should be doing this to remind people.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Just how dangerous. We should remind ourselves. You know, I don’t think there’s this sort of cavalier attitude that you develop when you know how men who’ve never gone to war. I’ve never been to war. Men who’ve never gone to war tend to talk tough because they have no idea what they’re saying.
And so I’m always interested when I see people who are, you’ve got a tough guy and you’ve got a guy who’s actually been in Special Forces at the same table. And the guys who talk stuff will go on at great length, and the guy who’s actually seen some stuff will just remain silent. It’s not even worth having the conversation.
My feeling is that there are too many people in the middle of a masculinity crisis who are currently at the head of world government.
The Element of Luck
FRANCIS FOSTER: Eric, when we talk about nuclear weapons, what we sometimes fail to acknowledge is there’s an element of luck to this peace because we came quite close, didn’t we, in the Cuban Missile Crisis to everything going disastrously awry.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Sure. Even in the early 80s with Stanislav Petrov, I believe, who more or less said, I think the Americans probably aren’t actually attacking us. I’m going to hold off and launching. Yeah, it’s come several times. It’s come down to sheer good luck.
And I just don’t want to, I don’t feel like playing Russian American roulette forever. I mean, it just, I guess even the questions are offensive. Why are we pretending that this is, it’s not safe. I mean, to me, the exciting thing is, if we were smart, we would be taking the supposed peace time dividend and we’d be plowing it into the idea that the solar system is an escape room.
It’s our job to escape the solar system as fast as we possibly can and spread out so that if something goes wrong on one planetary surface, we’re not all doomed. And that doesn’t seem to animate anyone. To me, it’s clearly the world’s most important question. I’ve spent my entire life on this question. I’m not really on the podcast circuit. That’s what I really do.
And no one’s interested. No government is interested. There’s no institute, there’s no fund. There’s nothing you can apply for. No one is interested in the idea that the solar system is an escape room and that Einstein is our jailer. We’ve got to get past Einstein before the thing goes off. It’s as clear as day to me.
The Iran Question
FRANCIS FOSTER: I think the thing is, is that is, to put it mildly, incredibly big picture for most people, including myself. I think the thing that most people and most governments have been almost lulled into a false sense of security around nuclear weapons because we just assume that the other person won’t use them.
Where it starts to get a little worrying for me is when you look at Iran developing nuclear weapons with a country that is so fiercely ideological, and particularly when they look at Israel and they’re, they’ve said in their own words, they want Israel wiped off the map. Isn’t that the most dangerous outcome if someone like Iran has nuclear weapon as opposed to Russia or any other country?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I mean, India and Pakistan, you know, you have two countries that are, the difference between Urdu and Hindi is nil. These people are exactly the same culturally. One more Hindu religion, one more Hindu, one more Muslim. However, you know, that is an incredibly dangerous flashpoint because it’s dependent upon skill. And you have the government versus the army versus the ISI in Pakistan.
You know, if I think about the Taiwan Strait and China in its calculation, versus the U.S., that’s incredibly dangerous. We have a half proxy war between Russia, Ukraine, with Ukraine representing NATO and the US and we’ve humiliated Putin in particular, in my opinion, by the 2004 ascension into Article 5 status of the three FSU countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Latvia, Estonia. Sorry.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yes. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. Sorry. And the 1999 provocation of Poland, which I think was entirely defensible as a Warsaw Pact entry into Article 5 status. I don’t know what we’re doing. I think we seem insane. Let me put it on the table. I don’t think anybody’s thinking rationally.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Why do you say that?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Because I think I’m thinking rationally. I think I can defend everything that I’m saying, and I think no one can handle it because nobody actually is motivated to go behind. If general relativity holds, gentlemen, we’re in real trouble. It’s very hard. Einstein is the problem.
FRANCIS FOSTER: What do you mean by that, Eric?
We’re four light years away from the nearest star. So if you think about habitable planetary surfaces, if you could grant science fiction powers to Elon, and he could terraform the moon and Mars, we’d have three spheres that we could get to sort of by chemical rockets. That is not enough diversification for humanity. It’s nowhere close.
So then you have this issue, okay, where do we get the supply of spheres? The issue is atmospheres. We’re all connected by the same atmosphere. So you saw that with, like, Chernobyl, the cloud doesn’t stay in Ukraine. The only place to find new planetary surfaces, if we’re not going to make artificial platforms, which is very difficult, is to be able to get very far away very quickly.
And you can sort of do this with something called time dilation. But if you were to do a round trip and traveling just at the speed of light, by taking a short jump to the nearest star and back, you’d lose eight years relative to your relatives. That’s not practical. It’s not going to work. You can’t really traverse the cosmos if general relativity is in force.
So we know general relativity isn’t the last word. We know Einstein isn’t the final sage. And for some reason, because his theory hasn’t budged for over 100 years, basically 110, we’re demotivated. We just have decided that we live in space time, which is totally untrue. We don’t live in space time. Space time is a model of where we live.
And in that model, there’s no out. We can prove that you can’t go faster than the speed of light. And as a result, we’re trapped here. This is like the greatest puzzle ever. It tells you that everything that we’re good at, science, physics, introspection, mathematics, can be brought to bear on the question of our survival.
And if we can crack this one problem, we can split up. You can have a planet. You can have a planet. The Oprah principle of the cosmos. And then we don’t all have to have the same fate if one planet goes stupid, and most of them will go stupid.
FRANCIS FOSTER: I mean, I see what you’re saying, but I think for the vast majority of government and people, they see their concerns are more real world. And by real world, I think things are happening in the here and now.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: More short term, I guess.
FRANCIS FOSTER: I guess so. The point is, to then propose these things, they may be in the long term a good idea. A lot of people will go, but we don’t have enough money in this country. We’ve got a huge deficit in the economy.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: The allocation is zero. And by the way, let’s stop talking about normal people. Normal people just don’t matter. The goal is to save normal people. And to save normal people you need extraordinary people. You see who endangered these normal people? It was two guys, Stanislav Ulam and Edward Teller. And these two guys came up with a piece of geometry. Do you know how the thermonuclear weapon works?
FRANCIS FOSTER: No.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: You should explain how a nuclear weapon works then how a thermonuclear weapon works. And then also, what have been some of the developments since the thermonuclear weapons were invented? Like I mentioned the tsunami bomb, etc.
The Birth of Thermonuclear Weapons
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay, so the first thing is, why didn’t we have these crazy weapons during the Civil War? Civil War was very close to World War II in human history. And if you look at one, it’s clearly fought in antiquity. And then suddenly you’ve got jet planes and you can have the ability to drop off.
The key issue is that we didn’t understand that there was something called the neutron. We knew about protons and electrons before we knew that there were neutrons. About 1911, I think Ernest Rutherford said, maybe there’s a neutral version of the proton inside of the atom. And that was the most dangerous idea, in my opinion, any human ever had. Just that one idea. Maybe there’s a neutral version of the proton.
Why is that? Because if you send a proton as a bullet into a very large atomic nucleus, that’s a lot of protons stuck together. So as magnets, they’re all trying to run away from each other. But there’s some extra force called the strong force that is even crazier than the super strong force of electromagnetism that’s pushing.
But if you send this proton in, as it gets closer and closer, it gets repelled because everything is charged, like with like. But what if you have something that doesn’t feel that charge, but it’s just like a proton that’s like a bullet that then taps this thing. And this thing is already straining to stay together under the strong force. So it blows apart. And what does it do? It releases more bullets, these neutrons. And that’s what a chain reaction is. It’s bullets creating bullets, creating bullets tapping at these.
Think about a bunch of magnets velcroed together so that they stay together and don’t repel. And then suddenly when you tap them, the velcro comes apart because it’s just at that critical thing. So that would be called a subcritical mass of heavy elements like uranium. And now the idea is that if you push that together, it goes from subcritical, not enough bullets to start the chain reaction, to critical enough bullets. That’s what causes the reaction.
So what you do is you take a subcritical mass of radioactive material and you wrap it in a sphere of chemical explosives, and you push that thing from subcritical to critical so that the density of the bullets means that there are enough targets for them to hit. That’s the first stage, and that’s fission. And that’s what we did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and at Trinity.
Now, why did it take seven years to come up with thermonuclear weapons? Because what you want to do there is you want to actually fuse hydrogen into helium to release the energy that you get in the sun. And for that you need a detonator that is already the atomic weapon of madness from 1945. And now you’re going to just use that as the detonator.
So what you do is you create sort of like a lipstick like tube and you put the detonator fission weapon in the top part of the tube. And what Stanislav Ulam and Edward Teller figured out was that you could bounce the consequences of that weapon on some geometric pattern and have the reflected waves come down to a rod and compress hydrogen into helium in the second stage.
And the key problem there, as I understand it, is that because you’re using an atomic bomb as a detonator, the top part’s going to blow apart the tertiary stage and therefore it won’t work. But there’s one thing that can get there fast enough so that you don’t blow up the design before it’s ready, and that’s light.
And so my understanding is that what you do is that you take the light that comes off of the initial explosion and you focus it with geometry to concentrate it in the tube to create the tertiary state. So chemical is the primary, subcritical to critical is the secondary. Reflected light to compressing hydrogen to helium is the tertiary. And that thing was Ivy Mike in November of ’52. And that is the BCAD, my friends, of science.
FRANCIS FOSTER: What does that mean? BCAD?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You know, there’s like before Christ and after Christ and they’re just very different. Before November of 1952 with the test known as Ivy Mike, the first hydrogen bomb. And in the publication in April of 1953, less than six months later, with the double helix giving the structure of DNA, we didn’t have the power of the twin nuclei, the nucleus of the atom and the nucleus of the cell.
And then after that, suddenly we were like gods. And that is the BCAD of human history that’s much more important than the birth of Christ. Before that time we didn’t have the power of gods, and after that time we did.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And what is the difference between the nuclear weapon as it originally was, the detonator, and the second generation, the hydrogen bomb, etc.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, there was no point to ducking cover. I mean, you weren’t going to survive this thing. It was just at a different scale. I mean, you’re talking about orders of magnitude bigger bombs than what already caused the Emperor to surrender in Japan. We’re just talking inconceivable levels of destruction.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, give me an, let’s conceive it.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My guess is that one or two devices means that Los Angeles is no more.
FRANCIS FOSTER: By no more you mean completely flattened and raised to the ground?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, I mean there was a, the Soviets of course, were slightly late to the game. Sakharov was a father of that bomb. And of course they had to go big or go home. So they did this Tsar bomb. And the Tsar bomb, I think it’s in Nova Zemlya.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Nova Zemla, yeah. New land.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: New land. KONSTANTIN KISIN: New land, yeah.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: And this was at a scale that wasn’t conceivable. I wish I had, the American comparable device was this thing called Castle Bravo, which was way bigger than we had expected. We didn’t know how well we could control it. But if I’ve played on the simulators, all of these concentrated cities are just instantly uninhabitable.
FRANCIS FOSTER: And what are the long term effects of these types of weapons? Does it mean that the land that they have been detonated on will never be able to bear fruit, etc.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, my understanding is that the hydrogen ones are actually cleaner, that you really have gamma radiation in the form of photons that are very hard to guard against. The other ones have these radioactive isotopes that linger on for forever. But I’ve never really cared that much about the post war scenarios. My feeling is that once you get going, everything that you know about life as we’ve led it is gone.
The Reality of Nuclear War
KONSTANTIN KISIN: And not to say nothing of the fact that as we understand it currently, I think if you had nuclear war between major players, the tit for tat would actually end all human life on earth, wouldn’t it?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Even if it didn’t, you’re talking about setting back everything that we know of as life, as modern life to levels that I don’t know, whether there’s subsistence living or hunter gathering or somebody’s got some crazy compound, but I’m not going there. It’s too much. And by the way, there’s a comparable version of this for pandemic, and we’re talking about playing with things where we’re just not. If you saw what happened with COVID just took over the planet.
FRANCIS FOSTER: I guess the question is if you have weapons of that magnitude does not therefore instill a certain humility in the people wielding them. For instance, you look at Putin. Glad you find this question’s funny. But you know, unless you are completely insane, you wouldn’t be tempted to push that button because you know that the moment you launch that weapon, not only have you ensured the destruction of millions of people, you’ve also assured your own destruction.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: What conversation are we even having? These people are nuts, Francis.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Which people?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Oh, Sinwar was clearly crazy.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yep.
The Nuclear Threat and Global Leadership
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Khomeini. Putin is absolutely up for brinksmanship. Xi, I think, thinks he can calculate this fairly well. Donald Trump is famous for promoting himself as a wild card, my friends, in order to confuse his negotiating partners. I just don’t see this level of skill.
Netanyahu clearly did not understand he was in a hybrid war and he fought a kinetic war while he lost the hybrid war. I don’t see this level of skill.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, hold on a second. I mean, if you look at Russia, Ukraine, and we should come back to that because of the point you made. But you know what I think about the invasion of Ukraine? I think it’s an abomination from Putin. I agree, and I know you do.
But I also think, and we should explore this actually before we get into the nuclear dimension, because the one argument I’ve never heard anyone who thinks that the west provoked Russia ever address is the argument that I always make on this, which is ultimately, every time Russia is strong, it seeks to cushion itself westwards, create a bigger cushion between Moscow and its western frontier.
And so if you don’t expand NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that’s fine, but what you will end up with is a Russian dominated Eastern Europe in the way that you had before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, some people will see that as a price worth paying, others not. But ultimately my point is you are going to find yourself in a confrontation with Russia at some point, unless you have no red lines whatsoever.
Unless you and Putin is on record as saying America is evil. Because what they did is they upset the post World War II order. They went reneged on the agreement of the post World War II order. Well, the post World War II order was Russian tanks in Berlin. Right. So, and half of Germany being effectively controlled by the USSR.
So unless you’re prepared to tolerate that, you are always going to get into a standoff with Russia. And therefore, if you don’t expand NATO into Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, they just become, they get taken over by Russia in some form. And if we say, well, Russia’s got nuclear weapons, we always just, we got to be careful. Well, when does that end? At some point there is a tension that has to be addressed. Even in a nuclear world, isn’t that inevitable?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Eric, I’m just a mathematician. I mean, I guess you’re doing your…
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Whole I’m just a comedian thing now. No, we’re free America. Well, you’re free American.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Yeah, you will soon be free Americans. My friends, I believe we are going to have to redefine the west to include a lot of Eastern Europe. And I wish that we would do that to include Russia. It’s a very weird thing to have to say. Russia both is and is not the West.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Correct.
Russia and the Definition of the West
ERIC WEINSTEIN: And I feel like we haven’t spent enough time thinking about Russia. The differences between Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, I have to say, I think it’s just really important that we recognize that the west probably made a bad line of division between Austria and Hungary, where we sort of stopped seeing ourselves at some point. How is Poland not us?
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Poland increasingly is us, but Russia isn’t.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: But Chopin was us and Tchaikovsky was us. And Putin that Putin, Pushkin should be us. Dostoevsky is certainly us. I mean, in many ways, my feeling, particularly as a mathematical physics guy, it was a different mathematical physics culture, different musical culture.
This is why, for example, Van Clyburn’s winning of the competition in Russia was so powerful that America recognized that in the style of play, the Russians were dominant. They were the experts. And I have to say that Russia is a barbell culture. It’s the highest of the high and the lowest of the low, and we just don’t understand it well enough.
So I’ve spent a great deal of my life appreciating Eastern Europe, in awe of Eastern Europe. And I’m sad to say that in general, I don’t think we give Eastern Europe its due. The two men who gave America its thermonuclear strength came from Budapest and Lvov, which is, I’m now told, is Lviv.
But Stanislav Ulam came from the mathematical school of Banach and Hausdorff in the Scottish Cafe. And Edward Teller came from Laszlo Ratz’s math classroom at the Lutheran Gymnasium in Budapest. And these fine Americans who signed our death warrant were Eastern Europeans.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yes, but neither of those places is in Russia, Eric. Then we’re talking about.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: No, but I’m saying. But I am saying that we are already over the line. When Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were absorbed into NATO, we acknowledged that we have the wrong line. We said, those are us. If we say Ukraine is us. Ukraine’s old name was Little Russia.
The key issue is that Russia is the strongest part of that universe, and we would have had to make an accommodation. That said, we recognize your strength, we respect your strength, your brilliance, and I think it was the right thing to do.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Sorry, go ahead.
Cultural Differences and the Value of the Individual
FRANCIS FOSTER: I think one of the issues is the way that we see Russia is completely different. And Constantin Jumping. And if I get this incorrect, is that we don’t see them as Western because of the way they treat the individual. The individual in Russia is expendable.
And we saw that by the way they treated their soldiers in World War II, whereby as long as, you know, if, however, men had to die, that’s however many men had to die. But they had to move forward, dig a trench, throw them in, cover the trench, we keep moving. America is, and the US and the UK is, you know, we leave no man behind.
So I feel that that’s the way that we see Russia, as a completely alien culture because of that. Because we see it as a cold, brutal way of looking at its own populace.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My God, I don’t agree with this at all. I believe. I’m sorry, let me.
FRANCIS FOSTER: No, deep, go ahead.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I’ve never actually had this out, so it’d be great to push back a little bit and see where it goes.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah. And we’re also all thinking out loud, this isn’t something we came prepackaged to. Right.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I don’t think that this is true. I think that there’s an issue of geography, and geography has a lot to do with how people die in war. So in general, for example, Austria is Alpine Germany. It’s a very hilly place, whereas a lot of Germany is much flatter. That is going to affect how tanks and other things roll through, how defensible something is.
You have a piece of geography in Eastern Europe which leads to incredible killing and movable borders. So if you look at just a historical timeline of how, let’s say, Lithuanian Polish Empire expanded and contracted and everything’s moving around, it really doesn’t get still until the nuclear weapons come in. So you have a situation in which these people have been subjected to very high levels of uncertainty and warfare because of a bad accident.
So you have the same situation in some sense with the Jews. During the 1930s and 40s, you had fantastic percentage of the world’s Jewish population put to death. And one thing that could have happened is that we would have found that we had adjusted to the concept of the expendable Jew. And the Jews said, under no terms is this going to happen. We are going to treat every Jewish life as precious. We will bargain a thousand people for the return of a single Jewish hostage. It, in fact gets us into trouble.
So my feeling about this is Poland experienced what, like a fifth or a fourth of its population dying during World War II. I don’t feel that way about polls at all. And it is true what you say Francis, about expendability in terms of risk tolerances. Have you been over in Russia?
FRANCIS FOSTER: No, I’ve never been to Russia.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It’s just different. People have a different level of risk tolerance, and I believe that that is culture. But if you move a Russian to Bel Air or Beverly Hills, they very quickly acclimatize to the idea that their safety matters.
And my feeling about this is this is the luxury of a country with unbelievable borders. Two beautiful oceans, a very long, peaceful border with Canada and kind of a weird border with Mexico. Thinking that there’s something about American life that is precious and it’s an accident.
Almost 100% of who I am came from Russia and Ukraine and Moldova and Romania and Latvia. I think we just have to get out of this mindset. I think that they are us and they are a spicy, weirder, stranger version of us. But in the grand scheme of thing, it’s not Africa, it’s not East Asia, it’s not the Pacific Islands. That’s us. And we have. I wish that we were oriented differently.
Russia as a Separate Civilization
KONSTANTIN KISIN: But I don’t agree with that, actually. But there’s also a lot to unpack elsewhere. I mean, the greatest objection, I think, to what you’re saying is that Russia sees itself as being a separate civilization. Russia sees itself as the descendant of the Eastern Christian civilization, and there’s a continuation of it, in fact. So the idea that they, an alliance is possible. But I think what you’re talking about, which is absorption, I don’t think there’s ever been any appetite for that.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, I think that there was. I think that we may have blown that. I think there was a period of time when Russia, and if we’re just going to be honest, because we both know both cultures, there was a desire to say, don’t you see us as you. You know, the concept that somebody’s really made it, if they’ve made it in the West?
The Russians were, in some ways, in my opinion, like many other civilizations, partially pooh poohing and partially desirous of being seen. And I believe that in part, it was up to NATO and the west to not treat this as we won, you lost. Ha ha. But instead to be gracious in victory and say, this was not a defeat of Russia, this was a defeat of communism, which had settled over Russia.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: But even once you’ve done that, look, Russia has a brief experiment with democracy in the 90s. Doesn’t work out, and, you know, people will say, oh, the evil Americans came, and that’s not what happened. It’s not what happened at all. Sure, there were some western people who came and did business and profited. It was actually Russians that used the moment to steal as much wealth as they could.
And after that finishes and all the chaos of that eight year period finishes, you’ve got a former KGB colonel who comes in. He’s not elected, he’s appointed by the previous president to make sure that his corruption doesn’t get prosecuted. And the Russian people are perfectly happy with 26 years of a KGB colonel being in charge.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, it’s Putin’s all the way down. There’s also this yearning for the strongman to stop chaos.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right, exactly. And it comes from hundreds of year history. I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about this on air, but it comes from the times of trouble, really. But also before that, which is the time Russians learned that instability is worse than anything else. Literally. So you can have the worst tyrant ever, but that’s still better than chaos.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: What is the great quote? The great quote, something like better 30 years of tyranny than a single night of anarchy?
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, yes, well, because the times of trouble is a period of time when a very short time due to political instability and some other things that happen, like a third of the Russian population gets wiped out. You have foreign, foreign fake rule after foreign fake rule after foreign fake ruler coming in. And people go, okay, we’ve got to have stability. Right.
But that’s precisely my point is people with that mental attitude might be right for their geography, might be wrong for their geography, but what it does is it creates a culture that I think is not compatible with the way that we do things. And the evidence is there, I mean, the Polish people or the Ukrainian people, they didn’t go down the same path as Russia after 1991, after 1989. Because Russia wants to be a power center. It doesn’t want to be part of a thing where it’s not the main thing. That’s my argument.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You as a Britain, you as a Russian, you who’s talking here?
KONSTANTIN KISIN: I have access to both perspectives.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I understand that. What I’m saying is, but do you that for yourself? I’m sorry, you’re talking about a guy from Russia talking to a guy whose family came from Umay. It’s a little rich that we’re having this conversation in Los Angeles. It’s not really.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t think so at all.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Tell me more.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, because people within there are, I have friends who are Westerners who live in Russia and love it there. Yeah, but they don’t love it in the west because their mindset is not suited to this culture. It’s suited to that culture.
The communism was entirely foreign to this place.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, that’s not what I’m saying. I mean, like, right now.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Sure, I understand. What I’m trying to say is I believe that we had opportunities that may no longer be present for a greater union after this battle was over, when there was uncertainty. If instead of trying an isolated democracy with American economists meddling in post Cold War reconstruction, whatever, if we tried something different, I think there was an opportunity.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Something different how? Like, what should we have tried?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I don’t know. There was a period of denazification after.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: World War II, but that requires admission of defeat, which is the thing you’ve just said we shouldn’t have done. You said we should have been.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: What did I say? That what was important to defeat was Communism. This is what we did with Germany, is that we made a point about defeating Nazism and we allowed the German people the ability, which was not entirely true, to say, oh, yes, those Nazis were terrible. That wasn’t us.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yes, yes, but what happened in Russia, you’re right, is we didn’t defeat communism as the ideology. We didn’t say you went through this terrible period of communism. All of these terrible communist leaders, they were bad, whatever. But, you know, a lot of people in Russia don’t think communism was a great period in Russian history.
But my point is, in order to have gone through that, Russia would have felt even more humiliated. Or some Russians would have felt even more humiliated than they ended up doing. And the thing that many Russians feel humiliated by is not that the evil American economists came and ruined everything.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: It’s actually the fact. I remember this as a kid in Russia being given humanitarian aid. And the view is, well, you know, these people, they gave us these crumbs off their table. How insulting. We will build ourselves up again and we will be strong and we will shine.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I do think it was kind of insulting.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, should we have done that?
Russia’s Complex Legacy
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I don’t know. Look, I think in part I’m in awe of Russia. And I’m in awe of Russia in its brutality, its backwardness, its horror. I’m in awe of its accomplishments, its achievements, its high culture. I think about Russia a lot. Most of my American friends do not.
Just as a side note, I’m very worried about my family losing its familiarity with its Eastern European heritage. I make a point of my son and I go on Kvass runs and we try to figure out who’s got the best kvass from all of the Armenian stores that carry it. Just talking a lot about the Soviet schools of mathematics under Gelfond and under physics under Lev Landau and what these cultures were about and what they meant.
I care tremendously about Russia, and I feel connected to it. I don’t feel that way with China. I mean, a Chinese American can say I feel that, but I do feel a continuity from Austria to Hungary to Moscow.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: I don’t think that’s, with all respect, a very strong argument when we’re talking about the thing that we’re talking about. Because if you say we should have done something else, I don’t know what taught to be persuaded.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I said, I really think that we should have separated two things. We should have separated out the Communist overlay and the Russian substrate. We should have been celebrating not only Russia, to be blunt, but there’s Ukrainian opera, there’s the incredible savoir faire and joie de vivre of the Georgians, the proud histories of the Armenians. And, you know, there’s so much over there that we don’t even know exists as Americans.
And I really feel like I wish we treated these places with the respect that I have for them and all of their accomplishments, their literature, their music, their science. I just think it’s a crime. Even in mathematics, we make up two different names for the same theorem, depending upon whether we want to claim that it was done in the west or it was done in Eastern Europe.
But look, we don’t need to labor. I think we have a difference of opinion. I think that it’s not an easy sell, but it’s not impossible. And I think you think it’s more difficult. And I will have to say that you probably know far more about these two cultures than I do.
Russia as a Separate Civilization
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, I agree with your point about respecting different cultures and their many achievements. I am not the reason. I’m not picking on you specifically. I have heard this argument a lot about how the reason we’ve ended up in conflict with Russia is that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West mistreated Russia. And I’m sure you can find plenty of individual examples of where that’s absolutely the case.
But overall, my contention is that Russia is a separate civilization that doesn’t want to be part of our civilization, doesn’t see itself as part of our civilization, and the only viable friendly relationship with Russia is one of alliance right now. Was that achievable? Maybe. But it would have been achievable at cost in the same way that the alliance with the Soviet Union during World War II was necessary for the west and unavoidable if we were going to win that war collectively.
But the cost was tremendous. The cost was the subjugation of all of Eastern Europe. And what I’m saying is, unless we took the position that we took, we would have ended up allowing Russia to overrun not just half of Ukraine as it now has, but all of Eastern Europe is the inevitable destination of that. For very much for the very geographical reasons that you lay out a while back.
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The Complexity of Eastern Europe
ERIC WEINSTEIN: You know, this gets into I think it’s very unfortunate that certain civilizations in the boundary land between what is clearly Western Europe and Russia. But you know, it has always been the case to me that Ukraine people in the east of Ukraine people in the west of Ukraine barely see themselves as members of the same country. The way the western crust of Turkey looks to Anatolia and says there be dragons, even though it’s their country.
So there’s a great deal of intra country alienation where Chernowc looks to the Donbass and says, wow, that’s some freaky stuff. Particularly with Lwow, which I think of as being a Polish city, even though it’s in Ukraine. Look, Eastern Europe is complicated and you have to think not in terms of, boy, it’s really sad that Riga can’t simply be part of the West.
My feeling is that if we were in grouping Russia, we would be getting a better deal for Latvia than saying, okay, Latvia, you’re with us, and then antagonizing Russia. But this is above my pay grade. This is just my caring about each of these places individually and caring about different places within.
Just to tell a tiny little anecdote. I got my great aunt in Kiev to take me to Umayn, where my family was from, and she said, do you want to see the park where your grandfather used to walk with me? I said, sure. You know, and it was like Versailles. It was some park on a scale you couldn’t even believe called Sofivka. Nobody in the west has ever heard of this place. That’s ridiculous. This should be a famous site throughout the world. And I don’t know how that happened.
So what I think we need to do is to recognize that we have an exaggerated blindness when it comes to Eastern Europe. And a lot more of us should try to speak, you know, a regional language. And a lot more of us should care. Just the way the Brits used to have their foreign service be very well informed about all four far flung provinces where they could see the world because they had an empire to take care of.
I think the US should be honest that it’s had an empire and it should care a great deal more to speak the local languages, to care about the traditions, to understand the difference between orthodoxy and other forms of Christianity, et cetera, et cetera.
America’s Geographical Isolation
FRANCIS FOSTER: Look, I agree with you with the argument in that sense and the arguments you’re making about Eastern Europe. There’s a lot of people in Latin America who feel very bitter towards the United States because they would put forward the same arguments. You’re Venezuelan, you’re Mexican, you’re Argentine, you’re Mexican, you’re Colombian, you’re Mexican. And they would make that point. And in some ways it’s probably merited.
I think one of the challenges that America faces is that the geographical isolation of your country, you don’t have to engage with the world the same way The British do because we’re a tiny little island and we are in Europe separated by a small bank of water. So we have to be more engaged than you do at the moment. Now that might change.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Man, my. Your tiny little island was like this.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Superpower once upon a time. It ain’t anymore.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Come on, man.
FRANCIS FOSTER: But it ain’t anymore.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: 100 years ago.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: A hundred. I mean, 1948 is within living memory. And the Suez crisis. I just think this is not true, Francis. I think this is much more recent. You have to understand. I married into an Indian family. And so I go to your British clubs in Bombay that are now populated by Indians and I look at the club members who died during the Great War and it’s all British names.
I feel connected. The arguments we get into in Bombay are very often arguments about were the Brits that bad, how much was positive, how much was negative. Of course you’re not around to hear them. I’m sure if you were around people would be angrier.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s what we do.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: But I’m talking. The guy who mostly comes from Ukraine is talking to the guys from Russia and Venezuela. As if you’re British and I’m American. There is something a little rich about all this. That in general, the UK was very knowledgeable about the world because Oxford and Cambridge and the Foreign Service and the army and the British East India Company worked as a system.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Agreed.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: And that system eventually gave way to the American system. I think one thing people don’t understand or appreciate about James Bond is that James Bond was created because Felix, who works for the CIA has to be a less than character. And there’s something about the British that is necessary to keep the world in order. Right. It’s sort of a. It’s a post empire vision for a powerful, strong, virile Britain.
Britain’s Diminished Status
FRANCIS FOSTER: Look what you were talking about in my opinion, and as someone who lives in the UK, you’re talking about a Britain that sadly no longer exists. Eric, it doesn’t exist. We are financially bankrupt. Our army is tiny, our navy is practically non existent. When it comes to our political might, no one really listens to us anymore. You could see that, by the way, Keir Starmer spoke about recognizing a Palestinian state. And to be honest, you, when it came to Netanyahu, he regarded it as a mere. As a mere irritant.
The UK’s Hidden Strengths
ERIC WEINSTEIN: I was invited by one Dr. David Tong to go to Trinity College in Cambridge. And I can’t tell you how priceless that day I spent with David was. I went to the Portico where he said Newton measured the speed of sound by clapping. And I saw the notes in the first edition of the Principia about what should be fixed in the second. And I was thinking, okay, this is Michael Attia and Isaac Newton. All of that stuff is still in the UK. That magic is still in the UK.
I’m in the UK often enough to know that the UK’s biggest problem is that it’s got to get over this negative view of itself. We in the States have a much more positive view of the UK. And my feeling is, for God’s sakes, man, get it together, slough it off, pick yourself up and get back to being the UK. It is essential that you become the UK. We don’t know exactly who we are if you’re moping about, so it’s really important to just cut the crap.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Look, I agree that we need a stronger view of ourselves. I think we need to stop apologizing. I think we need to stop seeing ourselves as the worst people in history. I completely agree. What I’m dealing, what I’m talking to you about, Eric, are just the facts of where the UK is at the moment. I’m not saying if we don’t sort ourselves out in 40, 50 years time, we can’t beat that.
Hyper Liberal vs Hypo Liberal Illiberalism
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Didn’t the US go through a Great Depression? We did. Okay, so we were in the Great Depression, couldn’t figure out our way out. You know, my feeling is that you need to be stronger and you need to tap into some extremely dangerous stuff. And I’m sorry about that.
But part of the issue is liberal societies go illiberal in one of two ways. They go illiberal through hyper liberal illiberalism and hypo liberal illiberalism. So the US has been experimenting with hyper liberal illiberalism. Maybe we shouldn’t have a border because all people are, no person is illegal. Maybe you can be any gender you want, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That is not liberalism. That’s revolutionary thinking.
That’s going to get reversed by hypo liberal illiberalism, which is like the Donald Trump MAGA. Let’s blow up a boat which we hope is filled with drugs and ask questions later. That kind of super masculine. We’re going to send the National Guard in, we’re going to send ICE in, we’re going to throw people out. And one way of looking at it is that it’s a turn towards fascism. It’s possible.
But another way of looking at it is that it is necessary to counter the negative effects of a spate of hyper liberal illiberalism with hypo liberal illiberalism. That’s a little confusing. I’m sorry, but one thing that we’re doing is we are undoing some of the excesses with excesses that are currently in favor for this group.
And my feeling about this is the UK may have to experiment. And as a guy who has a preference for not only a liberal state, but I would probably err on the hyper liberal. But I don’t like hyper liberal illiberalism. You may have to experiment with hypo liberal illiberalism to get rid of the sense of weakness and not being able to defend yourselves and not knowing who you are.
This question about what does it mean to be English? What does it mean to be British? Enough, we all know what it means. One of the things is that you guys are a human software producer. So if I think about Michael Attia, who’s one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, come to Harvard, I played ping pong with him. He was absolutely British. But the name Atiya indicates that his family is from Lebanon. Paul Dirac, the great English physicist, had a French last name. Whether Disraeli. So many great people from the UK have clearly been from somewhere else.
My feeling is you have to be more proud of the software that you built. The software that you built is second to none. It’s the envy of the world and you’ve got to stop this madness of self hatred.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So what is the British software?
Defining British Excellence
ERIC WEINSTEIN: My God. It’s irreverent. It loves oddities. It’s extremely dry in its humor. It’s incredibly bold and daring in its creativity. It mixes irreverence and reverence like nobody’s business. It’s elitist as the day is long. It’s elitist in multiple senses, both in the landed sense, which I don’t love, but it’s part of your system and in the sense of being a meritocracy.
I love the fact that when you guys can’t do things, initially you do them better. For example, you can’t grow wine to save your life. So what did you do? You turned France into a parlor game where you could guess the vintage and the chateau, and you created French wine. You don’t think of it that way, but you did. And then when they went to war with you and you couldn’t get access to French wine, you created your own wine houses in Portugal where they didn’t have any noble grapes. So what did you do? You created crazy numbers of minor grapes as if they were noble grapes to create port. That’s why they all have English.
I mean, just one cool thing or the blues. I’m very proud of what we did with the blues up until Skiffle, which was terrible. You guys came up with Skiffle and I think it’s almost unlistenable.
FRANCIS FOSTER: I mean, it produced the Beatles, but let’s not get into that.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It produced a lot beyond the Beatles. The aftermath of Skiffle was the elevation of the blues into this unbelievable virtuosic art form. We didn’t know what we had and you sent it back. That’s what the British Invasion is in large measure, the UK telling us what we had and didn’t appreciate in ourselves. We had to send you Jimi Hendrix before we understood what he was. I love these stories.
And, you know, my feeling about it is you also have a bit of a barbell culture, which we love. You know, the guys who brawl at the football games and the pubs are connected to the people who have, without question, the world’s finest sensibilities about art, the greatest historians and masters of language.
One of the things that I think is terrible is that you don’t know your own culture often enough. I grew up as a Jewish kid from a Ukrainian Jewish family in LA fetishizing Chaucer. And, you know, when I taught my kids drinking songs, I went back to Ravenscroft in 1609, you know, and looking at this canon, my daughter fell in love with Henry Purcell. You know, we played Gilbert and Sullivan in the house and Flanders and Swan and all the, or, you know, the great British American projects.
T.S. Eliot is this marriage of the UK and Missouri where I had Jim Watson in my office who discovered three dimensional structure of DNA. And I got a chance to play Francis Crick. A little video of him on my screen in my office. And I watched Jim tear up because it was clear that there was no person on earth that was ever going to be for him what Francis was.
And I got a chance to ask him. I said, I read your book very carefully. You shared an office with Jerry Donahue from Linus Pauling’s lab at Caltech. And he told you that all of the textbooks were wrong, that the hydrogen atom was in the wrong place in the nucleotides in the next page. You figured out the base pairing arrangement through hydrogen bonds. Didn’t you really do the double helix and not you and Francis?
He looks at me and he says, oh, no. He says, absolutely. You’re right. I did the inside of the double helix. But look at the beautiful sugar phosphate backbone twirling around the outside. That’s 100% Francis. And so you look at it, you think, okay, the world’s greatest scientific partnership ever. It’s the US on the inside and the UK on the outside. I mean, it just doesn’t get better than that for me.
And I could go on and on and on about what I got from the UK that I could never have gotten from anything else. You’re in charge of that legacy and you’re screwing it up. We want the confidence, we want you guys to be the great orators of our time. How much do we lean on Churchill again, a complex product of America and the UK. It’s very important to us if we are going to be the major power, that the UK play its role.
Nuclear Testing and Modern Threats
KONSTANTIN KISIN: So we’ve returned to where we started through the medium of hydrogen. And where we started was your point was that a lot of the people who now have control over nuclear weapons are second string. Or in the case of, you know, some countries who are pursuing nuclear weapons might be outright, you know, crazy. I think there are people like that as well. But what I don’t understand is how does the testing of nuclear weapons to demonstrate to us just how destructive they are address that problem?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, in multiple ways. First of all, there was a question about testing a nuclear weapon for the simple purpose of reminding us of what we’re talking about. To scare the crap out of us so we can get another 80 years of peace.
But the other thing is if we test them within our scientific programs, then we will have more lethal weapons because we will be more assured that we know how they behave. We’ve lost a lot of knowledge about how these weapons behave by letting that atrophy. So it really matters a great deal whether it’s underground, whether it’s above ground or underground. Nuclear testing, you know, the underground stuff doesn’t have the same impact and the above ground stuff has terrible consequences.
I’m not the person to design this and I don’t think we’re doing it in a smart way. I think what we’re doing is that we’re all playing chicken again. And by the way, there’s a lot of stuff that can happen beyond nuclear weapons. It doesn’t need to have the same raw terror.
But if you can figure out how to send energy through the earth and have it refocus at some other point so that you could vaporize something at a cell phone coordinate. Right now we don’t know how to do that because the only thing that you can send through the Earth would be like neutrinos, which are hard to catch on the other side, or gravity waves. You can’t send photons through the earth particularly, or electrons. But if you do further research in physics, you may be able to create all kinds of weapons that you can’t possibly imagine, including time weapons.
The AI Arms Race
FRANCIS FOSTER: Which brings us nicely to AI because it currently feels that we’re in an arms race when it comes to AI between America and China. Is that something that concerns you, Eric?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That’s not how I would phrase it.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Okay, well, you push back on my inadequate phrase.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We’re just playing with fire and we don’t know what fire we’re playing with. So you can view it as America versus China. By the way, don’t sell DeepMind in the UK short. They figured out AlphaFold. Well done, gentlemen.
We don’t really know what this game is like. We don’t know what it’s about. We’re playing it as if it was an old style game. But DeepSeek migrated very quickly. And I’ve talked to some of the major players. I said, how are you going to keep secrets from China? They said, we can’t.
FRANCIS FOSTER: So essentially, we can’t keep secrets from China. Therefore, what we have, they will have. And vice versa.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Maybe. Or maybe the issue is the bottleneck is the chips. Or maybe somebody will figure out something about chip architecture where it’s not as essential to use this scheme. And maybe the energy needs are going to dwarf anything. Or maybe the energy needs are suddenly going to collapse.
We’re at the beginning, we’re at the infancy of something that is astounding. And we already know how astounding it is. And it can only be this astounding or more. And we’re acting as if it’s not that big of a deal because it hasn’t changed our lives that much yet.
The Challenge of Preventing Dangerous Innovation
KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s one reason. The other reason we’re acting this way is that human beings have not come up with a way of preventing people from playing with fire. We can’t. It just isn’t going to happen. Even if the entire west, let’s say, agreed not to do this, even if the entire world agreed not to do this, someone somewhere would still do it because the advantage of being the one that’s doing it is so tremendous. So there’s actually nothing we can do to stop people playing with this fire. Is that fair?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That’s according to you.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: I mean, I’m asking you.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, the Test Ban Treaty. I have this feeling that if we were talking in the 50s, you would have said that the Test Ban Treaty was impossible because you can’t stop people from playing with fire.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Explain to us what the Test Ban Treaty is.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: We agreed to stop testing nuclear weapons among the major players.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: That hasn’t prevented the existence of nuclear weapons or their continued development.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: It has certainly slowed down. It’s antiquated the weapons a great deal. It stopped the atmospheric testing that caused radioactive decay products to blow in the wind. We had things like, what is it, Operation Starfish, where we exploded a weapon in space, knocked out the grid in Hawaii. We retarded ourselves a great deal. And then we signed the bioweapons conventions in the 70s, which had a big effect on how we do research. We have scared ourselves before into some kind of cooperation that does something.
The Multipurpose Nature of AI
FRANCIS FOSTER: But isn’t the challenge with that? And I think it’s a very good example. But nuclear weapons are mainly used for one thing and one thing only. AI is multipurpose.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, first of all, Russia doesn’t agree with you. Russia used nuclear weapons for engineering purposes. They would use them to dig holes or put out fires or do all sorts of crazy things. So even that is not quite true.
And then with respect to AI, things don’t always spread just because they’re known. I keep giving this example, like, if I ask people, do you know the formula for black powder?
FRANCIS FOSTER: No.
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Do you? No. 75% saltpeter, 10% sulfur, 15% charcoal. Okay, now everybody at home knows, but they’ll forget it. We in general don’t see people taking advantage of these huge leverage opportunities.
Right now, we’re in some race because we don’t know what we’re racing for. We just know that if the other guy had something that we didn’t have, that feels vulnerable. But the problem is the other guy may become the AI itself. So the US and China may get into a race to get this thing, and then the thing says, you dear, sweet children, nobody even knows what we’re talking about.
KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right?
FRANCIS FOSTER: So doesn’t that mean that that’s even more dangerous? Because with nuclear weapons, we know what we’re talking about.
Living at Death’s Door
ERIC WEINSTEIN: Okay? We have been at death’s door. I mean, am I right that we were just gentlemen at the Cave of the Apocalypse together in Greece? In Greece, yeah. Okay, so my feeling is we’ve been thinking about the apocalypse for a long time, and we should have been thinking about the apocalypse every week since 1952, 1953.
Suddenly we’re back to thinking about it. My friend Peter Thiel is giving lectures about the Antichrist. People are talking about Armageddon, the AI Apocalypse. We need to be thinking about this. I don’t know how we got out of thinking about this now that we’re thinking about it again.
It’s what I said at the ARC Conference. It’s a race. It’s a sprint to the finish. Right now, the world has woken up. Holy crap. The World War II order is crashing as we speak. People around J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin have no patience for this anymore. Nobody’s maintaining it.
Okay, so the question is, what are we doing? This is so clear to me. I can’t understand why everyone isn’t animated by it. And I could pretend that I’m crazy and that you all are sane, but I’m pretty sure it’s the reverse. No, I really think that. I really think I’m somehow not affected by some sort of universal mind virus, and I can’t figure out why.
So the argument is, this is the time to run like hell. This has been in our future for forever. And we’re here. And right now, the thing to do is to try to figure out how to spread out and run as many experiments as we can and recognize that it’s not just that Eastern Europe is going to get sacrificed to Russia. Planets are going to die because the technology is just too powerful.
We should be honest where we are. And if we’re honest, right now, the thing to do is to colonize as many planets as we can find in the heavens. And that seems crazy to people, but I just had a conversation on my way over with a person who doesn’t exist, who told me all sorts of points that I made were good, others were weak. She knows all about every aspect of the world. If I ask her to tell me a doctor joke, I can say, tell it to me in Urdu, tell it to me in Yiddish, tell it to me in Russian.
We are already living science fiction lives. Why can we not understand that this is the time to lead a science fiction life about getting out of the solar system and finding the largest number of planets and spreading out and running the largest number of experiments we can?
Everything that has one planet and us trying to make sure nothing goes wrong here is completely enervating. But somehow none of you are energized as I am. And I don’t know why to say we are Ferdinand and Isabella. It is time to find Columbus and try to reach something new. Whether it’s a new route to India or whether it’s new land entirely, it’s time to do something new.
The last major landmass that was found on Earth was found off the north coast of Siberia about 100 years ago. We’ve gone out of the habit of finding new worlds. And my feeling about this is that this should be energizing us. We have a brief period to sprint. We should create new institutions, new science. We should take on Einstein and defeat him. We should get excited. We should dance harder, sing longer, do more partial differential equations into the night and try to realize that we’re on the eve of destruction.
And take a Jewish attitude, which is survival at all costs. Something will work out, something will provide. If we just believe and work hard enough and risk everything. Our history tells us that it’s always possible to survive. And that’s what, really, as a Jew, what I want to bring to a diverse audience of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, Buddhists, I don’t care.
There’s something about the Jewish will to survive that is not infecting planet Earth. I just see everybody basically on the couch with their remote, solving minor problems. And it’s time to recognize, no, no, no, this is the end. This is the apocalypse. This is the phase transition. And it’s been clear as day since 1952, 1953. And we’re just now waking up to it with AI for reasons that are completely unclear. But that’s always been the problem, Francis. It’s always been the problem.
A Call for Glory and Hope
FRANCIS FOSTER: Eric, it’s been a fantastic conversation, as always. It feels a bit weird saying this, considering what we’ve been talking about over the previous hour, hour and a half or so. So what is the one thing that we’re not talking about that we really should be?
ERIC WEINSTEIN: That a lot of our problems are mediated by our phones. That the phone is not an appliance, it’s a brain scrambling device. And that in general, we’re making things out to be much harder than they’re meant to be.
We have grand challenges. We have the ability to fall in love, form families, drive each other crazy, and not screw up this whole beautiful experiment. And my feeling about it is that we’ve decided somehow that there’s something wrong with us. And I think that it’s, we’re just making things out to be much more difficult than they are.
There are glorious, wonderful challenges. There are places to visit that are still remarkably undiscovered on Earth. And we’re going to wake up hopefully in the next couple of years to the idea that with the machine’s help, we can solve all sorts of problems that we thought were intractable.
And so I think the thing that we’re not talking enough about is that this is the sprint to the finish and it can be glorious, even though it’s incredibly dangerous. And that if we just have a completely different attitude, which is that we are the original badasses that changed everything in such a short period of time. We get back to being those people who did so much instead of visiting the monuments built by our ancestors.
I think we could imagine that unlike this period of stability and safety for the last 80 years, this could be a period of incredible chaos, great peril, lots of fear, but unparalleled fun, excitement, wonder, glory. We don’t even feel comfortable with the word glory. We can say Slava, Ukraina, but we can’t say glory to us.
And I think it should just be a glorious age filled with hope. And I think we can get out of here. And I love the fact that I’m back on the show and I can end on a positive note like that. So thank you both.
FRANCIS FOSTER: Well, thank you as always, Eric. And make sure to join us over on Substack where you get to ask Eric your questions and we get to carry on the conversation. Everyone focuses on the US versus Russia relationship to be the one to set off a bomb, but which lesser known conflict competitive pairing should we also pay attention to in terms of setting off a nuclear exchange?

Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, science policy expert and a frequent public speaker on a variety of subjects within the sciences.

Dr Weinstein was formerly a co-founder of the Sloan Sponsored Science and Engineering Workforce Project at Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research, a co-founder and principal of the Natron Group in Manhattan as well as a visiting research fellow at Oxford University in the Mathematical Institute. Since completing a PhD dissertation in the Mathematics Department at Harvard in 1992, he has held research positions in Mathematics, Physics, and Economics departments (at MIT, Hebrew University, and Harvard respectively). He delivered the Special Simonyi Lectures at Oxford University in 2013 putting forth a theory he termed “Geometric Unity” to unify the twin geometries (Riemannian and Ehresmannian) thought to ground the two most fundamental physical theories (General Relativity and the so-called Standard Model of particle theory, respectively). He has been asked to address the National Academy of Sciences on five occasions on the future of scientific and academic research at elite institutions within the United States.

Data Centers: Are They Really Surveillance Or Spy Centers?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:21:00 +0000

AI Overview
The immense computing power housed in AI data centers is directly driving a massive expansion in global and domestic surveillance. These facilities provide the necessary infrastructure to ingest, process, and analyze vast amounts of data—from facial recognition feeds to location tracking—for law enforcement and government agencies.
How AI Data Centers Power Surveillance
Predictive Policing & Data Brokers: Data centers process massive, warrantless collections of data, such as geolocation and web-browsing information purchased from data brokers. This allows law enforcement agencies to build geospatial heat maps to predict crime trends.
Real-Time Crime Centers: Platforms aggregate feeds from widespread sources (like automatic license plate readers and public CCTV cameras) into searchable, AI-powered networks. Officers can use natural language searches to track specific vehicles, bystanders, or suspects.
Global Monitoring: At a larger scale, AI data center architecture enables widespread public surveillance, such as real-time tracking of dissidents and monitoring of crowds using biometric scanning.
Physical Security Inside the Facilities
Interestingly, these data centers also use AI for their own physical surveillance. Operators use AI-powered cameras with video analytics to secure server racks, prevent unauthorized access (such as "tailgating"), and guide automated emergency responses.
Privacy & Public Concern
Civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, frequently cite "mission creep" regarding this technology. Tools originally justified for specific security applications are now increasingly used to monitor everyday citizens. If left unchecked, privacy advocates warn that these networks could facilitate an unprecedented digital surveillance state.
And:
Data centers play a central role in mass surveillance by serving as the physical infrastructure where vast amounts of personal information are stored, processed, and analyzed. While data centers themselves are neutral facilities designed for general business functions, they can be utilized for surveillance when government agencies or corporations gain legal—or sometimes unauthorized—access to the data housed within them.
How Data Centers Facilitate Surveillance
Mass Storage: Agencies like the NSA use massive facilities, such as the Utah Data Center, to store billions of communications, including emails and text messages, for later analysis.
Legal "Loopholed" Access: Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. government can compel providers to hand over data. Recent legislative changes have attempted to broaden the definition of service providers to include almost any business with access to communication equipment, potentially including data center operators.
The Data Broker Loophole: To bypass warrant requirements, some federal agencies simply purchase bulk personal data—such as location history and web browsing habits—from data brokers who store this information in commercial data centers.
AI Supercharging: Advanced AI models running in these centers can now process "unclassified bulk data" to recreate people's movements, associations, and daily habits at an unprecedented scale.
Real-World Examples of Monitoring
Internet Traffic Splitting: Whistleblowers have previously revealed that major telecommunications companies installed hardware at their facilities to provide the NSA with full copies of all fiber-optic internet traffic.
Targeted Programs: Programs like PRISM allow intelligence agencies to collect data directly from the servers of major technology companies.
Corporate Monitoring: Beyond government spying, data centers enable companies to track worker productivity through keystroke monitoring and facial expression analysis, practices that are legal in many states.
Privacy and Policy Responses
Digital rights organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU frequently advocate for national privacy bills and the closure of data broker loopholes to limit warrantless mass surveillance. They argue that the current "mission creep" of surveillance technology—initially intended for foreign intelligence but increasingly used on domestic citizens—undermines basic civil liberties.

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How AI can enable public surveillance

Data Centers Throughout The Country
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers many promising applications. Algorithms and machine learning can help develop new drugs and target treatment in effective ways. AI also plays a role in tracking climate change by monitoring weather patterns. Wildlife experts have coupled AI with satellite imagery to monitor how endangered species are faring and where threats are appearing.
But there is a dark side to AI as well, given its potential for nefarious purposes. Concerns around privacy, safety and security have grown as the technology is used to analyze confidential material and amplify false narratives as part of disinformation campaigns. Due to its scalability and capacity to examine large data sets, it can study people’s behavior and act on that information.
Perhaps the starkest example is in China, where AI enables surveillance on a widespread scale. Coupled with social media monitoring, cameras, and facial recognition, the technology enables authorities to track dissidents and government critics and identify their statements and locations. There is infrastructure in place that can integrate information from a variety of sources and analyze it in real time for government authorities.
Concerns over AI surveillance echo the fears surrounding TikTok’s data-sharing practices with Chinese authorities, including the collection of users’ personal details and content interactions. U.S. officials have flagged this as a national security threat, contributing to Congress’ decision to ban TikTok in 2024.
However, AI surveillance may no longer be just a foreign government threat. Reports have surfaced about potential abuses in the U.S., including government contracts that may enable the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor social media. According to the Politico Digital Future newsletter, “the contractors advertise their ability to scan through millions of posts and use AI to summarize their findings” for their clients. With major agencies, law enforcement, and intelligence services now in the hands of Trump loyalists, this monitoring capability is a particular concern right now when the administration is going after its critics.
DHS later confirmed it is using digital tools to analyze social media posts from individuals applying for visas or green cards. The surveillance software would search for any signs of “extremist” rhetoric or “antisemitic activity.” The announcement raised questions about how these terms would be defined and whether public criticism of certain countries could be used to label applicants as “terrorist sympathizers.”
Other reports suggest that surveillance has already occurred within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to sources quoted by Reuters, “some EPA managers were told by Trump appointees that Musk’s team is rolling out AI to monitor workers, including looking for language in communications considered hostile to Trump or Musk.” The EPA has denied the report, calling it “categorically false.”
It is not just the American government that is getting into the monitoring act. Some U.S. companies already engage in workplace surveillance of their employees for business purposes. In the absence of a national privacy bill, there are few legal safeguards to limit workplace computer or network surveillance—or even to require that such monitoring be disclosed. Employers can track what workers do on their computers, even if they are using their equipment at home as part of hybrid work. Some firms even go as far as monitoring keystrokes or facial expressions to see what people are doing, who may be underperforming, and whether they are obeying company policies. These digital practices are perfectly legal in many states.
Overall, it is a risky time for AI-based surveillance because we have a combination of advanced digital technologies, high-level computing power, abundant and non-secured data, data brokers who buy and sell information, and a risky political environment. It is the confluence of each of these factors that endanger people’s freedoms and ability to express themselves in an open manner. As AI surveillance grows, individual freedom diminishes, and the risks of government and corporate overreach rise.
A national privacy bill could help mitigate some of these threats by establishing privacy standards and blocking some of the most dangerous practices, but it would not be a comprehensive solution.
Further, U.S. government agencies should be barred from using AI or facial recognition software to spy on individuals or monitor their public statements on social media. Using such tools to track what people say about public officials could cross into undemocratic territory for the United States.

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US government ramps up mass surveillance with help of AI tech, data brokers – and your apps and devices

On a Saturday morning, you head to the hardware store. Your neighbors’ Ring cameras film your walk to the car. Your car’s sensors, cameras and microphones record your speed, how you drive, where you’re going, who’s with you, what you say, and biological metrics such as facial expression, weight and heart rate. Your car may also collect text messages and contacts from your connected smartphone.
Meanwhile, your phone continuously senses and records your communications, info about your health, what apps you’re using, and tracks your location via cell towers, GPS satellites and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
As you enter the store, its surveillance cameras identify your face and track your movements through the aisles. If you then use Apple or Google Pay to make your purchase, your phone tracks what you bought and how much you paid.
All this data quickly becomes commercially available, bought and sold by data brokers. Aggregated and analyzed by artificial intelligence, the data reveals detailed, sensitive information about you that can be used to predict and manipulate your behavior, including what you buy, feel, think and do.
Companies unilaterally collect data from most of your activities. This “surveillance capitalism” is often unrelated to the services device manufacturers, apps and stores are providing you. For example, Tinder is planning to use AI to scan your entire camera roll. And despite their promises, “opting out” doesn’t actually stop companies’ data collection.
While companies can manipulate you, they cannot put you in jail. But the U.S. government can, and it now purchases massive quantities of your information from commercial data brokers. The government is able to purchase Americans’ sensitive data because the information it buys is not subject to the same restrictions as information it collects directly.
The federal government is also ramping up its abilities to directly collect data through partnerships with private tech companies. These surveillance tech partnerships are becoming entrenched, domestically and abroad, as advances in AI take surveillance to unprecedented levels.
As a privacy, electronic surveillance and tech law attorney, author and legal educator, I have spent years researching, writing and advising about privacy and legal issues related to surveillance and data use. To understand the issues, it is critical to know how these technologies function, who collects what data about you, how that data can be used against you, and why the laws you might think are protecting your data do not apply or are ignored.
Big money for AI-driven tech and more data
Congressional funding is supercharging huge government investments in surveillance tech and data analytics driven by AI, which automates analysis of very large amounts of data. The massive 2025 tax-and-spending law netted the Department of Homeland Security an unprecedented US$165 billion in yearly funding. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, got about $86 billion.
Disclosure of documents allegedly hacked from Homeland Security reveal a massive surveillance web that has all Americans in its scope.
DHS is expanding its AI surveillance capabilities with a surge in contracts to private companies. It is reportedly funding companies that provide more AI-automated surveillance in airports; adapters to convert agents’ phones into biometric scanners; and an AI platform that acquires all 911 call center data to build geospatial heat maps to predict incident trends. Predicting incident trends can be a form of predictive policing, which uses data to anticipate where, when and how crime may occur.
Privacy risks of using AI to collect data
The U.S. Government Accountability Office identified 10 privacy risks in collecting data using systems that include artificial intelligence. The report, published on March 26, 2026, also included a longer list of challenges to preserving privacy while collecting data using AI.
List of 10 items
Data persistence Data may continue to exist in AI systems and be difficult to extract/remove once collected.
Data re-identification AI has the ability to cross-reference multiple data sets from seemingly independent and anonymous outputs to reidentify anonymized data.
Generation of deceptive or inaccurate outputs AI may be used to intentionally or unintentionally generate deceptive outputs (e.g., deepfakes) or inaccurate outputs (e.g., hallucinations) that may result in harm towards individuals.
Improper disclosure AI can reveal and cause improper sharing of individuals’ data when it infers additional sensitive information from raw data.
Increased accessibility to sensitive information AI can make sensitive information more accessible to a wider audience (e.g., data brokers) than intended.
Invasion of privacy from data aggregation AI may combine various pieces of data about a person to make inferences beyond what is explicitly captured in those data (e.g., social scoring), which can invade an individuals’ personal space and solitude by revealing private information (e.g., health-related, financial, location).
Lack of security over data Inadequate AI data requirements and storage practices can result in data breaches and improper access.
Lack of transparency related to data use AI may be used without providing individuals with notice and control over how their data is being used.
Lack of transparency in AI model algorithmic decision-making The workings of AI models could include decisions based on individual data that one is unaware of and that can lead to privacy risks.
Secondary use of data The use of personal data for purposes other than originally intended can be exacerbated by AI’s ability to repurpose data.
DHS has also spent millions on AI-driven software used to detect sentiment and emotion in users’ online posts. Have you been complaining about Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies online? If so, social media companies including Google, Reddit, Discord, and Facebook and Instagram owner Meta may have sent identifying data, such as your name, email address, phone number and activity, to DHS in response to hundreds of DHS subpoenas served on the companies.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s national policy framework for artificial intelligence, released on March 20, 2026, urges Congress to use grants and tax incentives to fund “wider deployment of AI tools across American industry” and to allow industry and academia to use federal datasets to train AI.
Using federal datasets this way raises privacy law concerns because they contain a lifetime of sensitive details about you, including biographical, employment and tax information.
Blurring lines and little oversight
In foreign intelligence work, the funding, development and controlled use of certain AI-driven gathering of data makes sense. The CIA’s new acquisition framework to turbocharge collaboration with the private sector may be legal with proper oversight. But the line between collaborating for lawful national security purposes versus unlawful domestic spying is becoming dangerously blurred or ignored.
For example, the Pentagon has declared a contractor, Anthropic, a national security risk because Anthropic insisted that its powerful agentic AI model, Claude, not be used for mass domestic surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons.
On March 18, 2026, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed to Congress that the FBI is buying Americans’ data from data brokers, including location histories, to track American citizens.
As the federal government accelerates the use of and investment in AI-driven spy tech, it is mandating less oversight around AI technology. In addition to the national AI policy framework, which discourages state regulation of AI, the president has issued executive orders to accelerate federal government adoption of AI systems, remove state law AI regulation barriers and require that the federal government not procure the use of AI models that attempt to adjust for bias. But using advanced AI systems is risky, given reports of AI agents going rogue, exposing sensitive data and becoming a threat, even during routine tasks.
Your data
The surveillance capitalism system requires people to unwittingly participate in a manipulative cycle of group- and self-surveillance. Neighborhood doorbell cameras, Flock license plate readers and hyperlocal social media sites like Nextdoor create a crowdsourced record of all people’s movements in public spaces.
Sensors in phones and wearable devices, such as earbuds and rings, collect ever more sensitive details. These include health data, including your heart rate and heart rate variability, blood oxygen, sweat and stress levels, behavioral patterns, neurological changes and even brain waves. Smartphones can be used to diagnose, assess and treat Parkinson’s disease. Earbuds could be used to monitor brain health.
This data is not protected under HIPAA, which prohibits health care providers and those working with them from disclosing your health information without your permission, because the law does not consider tech companies to be health care providers nor these wearables to be medical devices.
Legal protections
People have little choice when buying devices, using apps or opening accounts but to agree to lengthy terms that include consent for companies to collect and sell their personal data. This “consent” allows their data to end up in the largely unregulated commercial data market.
The government claims it can lawfully purchase this data from data brokers. But in buying your data in bulk on the commercial market, the government is circumventing the Constitution, Supreme Court decisions and federal laws designed to protect your privacy from unwarranted government overreach.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Supreme Court cases require police to get a warrant to search a phone or use cellular or GPS location information to track someone. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act’s Wiretap Act prohibits unauthorized interception of wire, oral and electronic communications.
Despite some efforts, Congress has failed to enact legislation to protect data privacy, the use of sensitive data by AI systems or to restore the intent of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Courts have allowed the broad electronic privacy protections in the federal Wiretap Act to be eviscerated by companies claiming consent.
The way to begin to address these problems is to restore the Wiretap Act and related laws to their intended purposes of protecting Americans’ privacy in communications, and for Congress to follow through on its promises and efforts by passing legislation that secures Americans’ data privacy and protects them from AI harms.

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Hidden Consequences of the Big Data Surveillance Complex
A free and democratic society is only as strong as its citizens’ abilities to make informed decisions, which, in turn, are only as strong as their media and digital literacy skills and the quality of information they consume.
Unbeknownst to much of the public, Big Tech exacts heavy tolls on public health, the environment, and democracy. The detrimental combination of an unregulated tech sector, pronounced rise in cyberattacks and data theft, and widespread digital and media illiteracy—as noted in a Dispatch on Big Data’s surveillance complex—is exacerbated by legacy media’s failure to inform the public of these risks. While establishment news outlets cover major security breaches in Big Tech’s troves of personal identifiable information (PII) and their costs to individuals, businesses, and national security, this coverage fails to address the negative impacts of Big Tech on the full health of our political system, civic engagement, and ecosystems.
Marietje Schaake, an AI Policy fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI Policy, argues that Big Tech’s unrestrained hand in all three branches of the government, the military, local and national elections, policing, workplace monitoring, and surveillance capitalism undermine American society in ways the public has failed to grasp. Indeed, little in the corporate press helps the public understand exactly how data centers—the facilities that process and store vast amounts of data—do more than endanger PII. Greenlit by the Trump administration, data centers accelerate ecosystem harms through their unmitigated appropriation of natural resources, including water, and the subsequent greenhouse gas emissions that increase ambient pollution and its attendant diseases.
Adding insult to the public’s right to be informed, corporate news rarely sheds light on how an ethical, independent press serves the public good and functions to balance power in a democracy. A 2023 civics poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School found that only a quarter of respondents knew that press freedom is a constitutional right and a counterbalance to the powers of government and capitalism. The gutting of local news in favor of commercial interests has only accelerated this knowledge blackout.
The demand for AI by corporatists, military AI venture capitalists, and consumers—and resultant demand for data centers—is outpacing utilities infrastructure, traditional power grid capabilities, and the renewable energy sector. Big Tech companies, such as Amazon and Meta, strain municipal water systems and regional power grids, reducing the capacity to operate all things residential and local. In Newton County, Georgia, for example, Meta’s $750 million data center, which sucks up approximately 500,000 gallons of water a day, has contaminated local groundwater and caused taps in nearby homes to run dry. What’s more, the AI boom comes at a time when hot wars are flaring and global temperatures are soaring faster than scientists once predicted.
Constant connectivity, algorithms, and AI-generated content delude individual internet and device users into believing that they’re well informed. However, the decline of civics awareness in the United States—compounded by rampant digital and media illiteracy, ubiquitous state and corporate surveillance, and lax news reporting—makes for an easily manipulated citizenry, asserts attorney and privacy expert, Heidi Boghosian. This is especially disconcerting given the creeping spread of authoritarianism, smackdown on civil liberties, and surging demand for AI everything.
Open [but not transparent] AI
While the companies that develop and deploy popular AI-powered tools lionize the wonders of their products and services, they keep hidden the unsustainable impacts on our world. To borrow from Cory Doctorow, the “enshittification” of the online economy traps consumers, vendors, and advertisers in “the organizing principle of US statecraft,” as well as by more mundane capitalist surveillance. Without government oversight or a Fourth Estate to compel these tech corporations to reveal their shadow side, much of the public is not only in the dark but in harm’s way.
At the most basic level, consumers should know that OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, collects private data and chat inputs, regardless of whether users are logged in or not. Any time users visit or interact with ChatGPT, their log data (the Internet Protocol address, browser type and settings, date and time of the site visit, and interaction with the service), usage data (time zone, country, and type of device used), device details (device name and identifiers, operating system, and browser used), location information from the device’s GPS, and cookies, which store the user’s personal information, are saved. Most users have no idea that they can opt out.
OpenAI claims it saves data only for “fine-tuning,” a process of enhancing the performance and capabilities of AI models, and for human review “to identify biases or harmful outputs.” OpenAI also claims not to use data for marketing and advertising purposes or to sell information to third parties without prior consent. Most users, however, are as oblivious to the means of consent as to the means of opting out. This is by design.
In July, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the Federal Trade Commission’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have made online unsubscribing easier. The ruling would have covered all forms of negative option marketing—programs that give sellers free reign to interpret customer inaction as “opting in,” consenting to subscriptions and unwittingly accruing charges. Director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, John Davisson, commented that the court’s decision was poorly reasoned, and only those with financial or career advancement motives would argue in favor of subscription traps.
Even if OpenAI is actually protective of the private data it stores, it is not above disclosing user data to affiliates, law enforcement, and the government. Moreover, ChatGPT practices are noncompliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the global gold standard of data privacy protection. Although OpenAI says it strips PII and anonymizes data, its practice of “indefinite retention” does not comply with the GDPR’s stipulation for data storage limitations, nor does OpenAI sufficiently guarantee irreversible data de-identification.
As science and tech reporter Will Knight wrote for Wired, “Once data is baked into an AI model today, extracting it from that model is a bit like trying to recover the eggs from a finished cake.” Whenever a tech company collects and keeps PII, there are security risks. The more data captured and stored by a company, the more likely it will be exposed to a system bug, hack, or breach, such as the ChatGPT breach in March 2023.
OpenAI has said it will comply with the EU’s AI Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI, which aims to foster transparency, information sharing, and best practices for model and risk assessment among tech companies. Microsoft has said that it will likely sign on to compliance, too; while Meta, on the other hand, flatly refuses to comply, much like it refuses to abide by environmental regulations.
To no one’s surprise, the EU code has already become politicized, and the White House has issued its own AI Action Plan to “remove red tape.” The plan also purports to remove “woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” eliminating such topics as diversity, equity, and inclusion and climate change. As Trump crusades against regulation and “bias,” the White House-allied Meta decries political concerns over compliance with the EU’s AI code. Meta’s claim is coincidental; British Courts, based on the United Kingdom’s GDPR obligations, ruled that anyone in a country covered by the GDPR has the right to request Meta to stop using their personal data for targeted advertising.
Big Tech’s open secrets
Information on the tech industry’s environmental and health impacts exists, attests artificial intelligence researcher Sasha Luccioni. The public is simply not being informed. This lack of transparency, warns Luccioni, portends significant environmental and health consequences. Too often, industry opaqueness is excused by insiders as “competition” to which they feel entitled, or blamed on the broad scope of artificial intelligence products and services—smart devices, recommender systems, internet searches, autonomous vehicles, machine learning, the list goes on. Allegedly, there’s too much variety to reasonably quantify consequences.
Those consequences are quantifiable, though. While numbers vary and are on the ascent, there are at least 3,900 data centers in the United States and 10,000 worldwide. An average data center houses complex networking equipment, servers, and systems for cooling systems, lighting, security, and storage, all requiring copious rare earth minerals, water, and electricity to operate.
The densest data center area exists in Northern Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital. “Data Center Alley,” also known as the “Data Center Capital of the World,” has the highest concentration of data centers not only in the United States but in the entire world, consuming millions of gallons of water every day. International hydrologist Newsha Ajami has documented how water shortages around the world are being worsened by Big Data. For tech companies, “water is an afterthought.”
Powered by fossil fuels, these data centers pose serious public health implications. According to research in 2024, training one large language model (LLM) with 213 million parameters produced 626,155 pounds of CO2 emissions, “equivalent to the lifetime emissions of five cars, including fuel.” Stated another way, such AI training “can produce air pollutants equivalent to more than 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City.”
Reasoning models generate more “thinking tokens” and use as much as 50 percent more energy than other AI models. Google and Microsoft search features purportedly use smaller models when possible, which, theoretically, can provide quick responses with less energy. It’s unclear when or if smaller models are actually invoked, and the bottom line, explained climate reporter Molly Taft, is that model providers are not informing consumers that speedier AI response times almost always equate to higher energy usage.
Profits over people
AI is rapidly becoming a public utility, profoundly shaping society, surmise Caltech’s Adam Wierman and Shaolei Ren of the University of California, Riverside. In the last few years, AI has outgrown its niche in the tech sector to become integral to digital economies, government, and security. AI has merged more closely with daily life, replacing human jobs and decision-making, and has thus created a reliance on services currently controlled by private corporations. Because other essential services such as water, electricity, and communications are treated as public utilities, there’s growing discussion about whether AI should be regulated under a similar public utility model.
That said, data centers need power grids, most of which depend on fossil fuel-generated electricity that stresses national and global energy stores. Data centers also need backup generators for brownout and blackout periods. With limited clean, reliable backup options, despite the known environmental and health consequences of burning diesel, diesel generators remain the industry’s go-to.
Whether the public realizes it or not, the environment and citizens are being polluted by the actions of private tech firms. Outputs from data centers inject dangerous fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the air, immediately worsening cardiovascular conditions, asthma, cancer, and even cognitive decline, caution Wierman and Ren. Contrary to popular belief, air pollutants are not localized to their emission sources. And, although chemically different, carbon (CO2) is not contained by location either.
Of great concern is that in “World Data Capital Virginia,” data centers are incentivized with tax breaks. Worse still, the (misleadingly named) Environmental Protection Agency plans to remove all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. Thus, treating AI and data centers as public utilities presents a double-edged sword. Can a government that slashes regulations to provide more profit to industry while destroying its citizens’ health along with the natural world be trusted to fairly price and equitably distribute access to all? Would said government suddenly start protecting citizens’ privacy and sensitive data?
The larger question, perhaps, asks if the US is truly a democracy. Or is it a technogarchy, or an AI-tocracy? The 2024 AI Global Surveillance (AIGS) Index ranked the United States first for its deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools that “monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of objectives— some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reported.
Surveillance has long been the purview of authoritarian regimes, but in so-called democracies such as the United States, the scale and intensity of AI use is leveraged both globally through military operations and domestically to target and surveil civilians. In cities such as Scarsdale, New York, and Norfolk, Virginia, citizens are beginning to speak out against the systems that are “immensely popularwith politicians and law enforcement, even though they do real and palpable damage to the citizenry.”
Furthermore, tracking civilians to “deter civil disobedience” has never been easier, evidenced in June by the rapid mobilization of boots on the ground amid the peaceful protests of ICE raids in Los Angeles. AI-powered surveillance acts as the government’s “digital scarecrow,” chilling the American tradition and First Amendment right to protest and the Fourth Estate’s right to report.
The public is only just starting to become aware of algorithmic biases in AI training datasets and their prejudicial impact on predictive policing, or profiling, algorithms, and other analytic tools used by law enforcement. City street light and traffic light cameras, facial recognition systems, video monitoring in and around business and government buildings, as well as smart speakers, smart toys, keyless entry locks, automobile intelligent dash displays, and insurance antitheft tracking systems are all embedded with algorithmic biases.
Checking Big Tech’s unchecked power
Given the level and surreptitiousness of surveillance, the media are doubly tasked with treading carefully to avoid being targeted and accurately informing the public’s perception of data collection and data centers. Reporting that glorifies techbros and AI is unscrupulous and antithetical to democracy: In an era where billionaire techbros and wanna-be-kings are wielding every available apparatus of government and capitalism to gatekeep information, the public needs an ethical press committed to seeking truth, reporting it, and critically covering how AI is shifting power.
If people comprehend what’s at stake—their personal privacy and health, the environment, and democracy itself—they may be more inclined to make different decisions about their AI engagement and media consumption. An independent press that prioritizes public enlightenment means that citizens and consumers still have choices, starting with basic data privacy self-controls that resist AI surveillance and stand up for democratic self-governance.
Just as a healthy environment, replete with clean air and water, has been declared a human right by the United Nations, privacy is enshrined in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although human rights are subject to national laws, water, air, and the internet know no national borders. It is, therefore, incumbent upon communities and the press to uphold these rights and to hold power to account.
This spring, residents of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, did just that. Thanks to independent journalism and civic participation, residents pushed back against the corporate advertising meant to convince the county that the fossil fuels powering the region’s data centers are “clean.” Propagandistic campaigns were similarly applied in Memphis, Tennessee, where proponents of Elon Musk’s data center—which has the footprint of thirteen football fields—circulated fliers to residents of nearby, historically Black neighborhoods, proclaiming the super-polluting xAI has low emissions. “Colossus,” Musk’s name for what’s slated to be the world’s biggest supercomputer, powers xAI’s Hitler-loving chatbot Grok.
The Southern Environmental Law Center exposed with satellite and thermal imagery how xAI, which neglected to obtain legally required air permits, brought in at least 35 portable methane gas turbines to help power Colossus. Tennessee reporter Ren Brabenec said that Memphis has become a sacrifice zone and expects the communities there to push back.
Meanwhile, in Pittsylvania, Virginia, residents succeeded in halting the proposed expansion of data centers that would damage the region’s environment and public health. Elizabeth Putfark, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, affirmed that communities, including local journalists, are a formidable force when acting in solidarity for the public welfare.
Best practices
Because AI surveillance is a threat to democracies everywhere, we must each take measures to counter “government use of AI for social control,” contends Abi Olvera, senior fellow with the Council on Strategic Risks. Harlo Holmes, director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Wired that consumers must make technology choices under the premise that they’re our “last line of defense.” Steps to building that last line of defense include digital and media literacies and digital hygiene, and at least a cursory understanding of how data is stored and its far-reaching impacts.
Best defensive practices employed by media professionals can also serve as best practices for individuals. This means becoming familiar with laws and regulations, taking every precaution to protect personal information on the internet and during online communications, and engaging in responsible civic discourse. A free and democratic society is only as strong as its citizens’ abilities to make informed decisions, which, in turn, are only as strong as their media and digital literacy skills and the quality of information they consume.

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The federal government is building Big Brother
Fighting for digital privacy has never been more important. The Trump administration has empowered big tech surveillance companies like Palantir and Babel Street to aggregate Americans' personal data into massive government databases. This includes the collection and sharing of precise location information that makes it easy for police and federal agencies to track people, including at protests and while peacefully observing ICE agents.
Palantir and Babel Street don't only collect and aggregate huge quantities of public and nonpublic information about ordinary Americans. They also apply machine learning algorithms to look for patterns in the information, pull out so-called "suspicious activity"— like criticism of the Trump administration—and automate profiling and surveillance.
According to recent reporting from 404 Media, Palantir’s ICE app, called ELITE, “populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address.” The State Department is already using similar technologies as part of its "catch and revoke" program, targeting U.S. visa holders. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has extended these social media surveillance practices to visa applicants, effectively screening immigrants based on their political expression.
That's bad enough.
But it could very quickly get worse, because what the government does to foreigners is often a prelude to what it intends to do to U.S. citizens.
A weaponized federal government prepares to take on U.S. citizens
Indeed, in September 2025, the Trump administration issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, instructing the Department of Justice to investigate civil society organizations, activists, and donors, with a particular focus on the political left and pro-democracy organizations. Palantir’s and Babel Street's databases provide the infrastructure to identify, track, and act against these targets.
The Fourth Amendment and state constitutional protections, like Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, guarantee individuals the right to be free from warrantless government surveillance and tracking. But these constitutional protections are being eroded right in front of our eyes.
The White House ignores the law. And the administration's reckless disregard for civil liberties is given astonishing reach by AI and machine learning technologies that automate surveillance and profiling, enabling the government to track and categorize people at a scale never before possible.
This automation means the government is no longer limited by the number of people it employs. Effortless and pervasive monitoring tracks people on sidewalks, roadways, and even into our private spheres—including the websites we visit, the ideas we express, and the places we spend and donate our money.
The ACLU and other organizations are filing lawsuits to stop Trump's assaults on our civil liberties at the federal level.
We are also hard at work in the states, to ensure state and local government resources are not being used—intentionally or not—to assist with Trump's assaults on the rule of law and our democratic freedoms.
Massachusetts's slide into a digital surveillance state
Mirroring surveillance expansion at the federal level, AI-powered technology is enabling local and state law enforcement to erode our privacy here in Massachusetts. Nearly every part of policing is becoming automated—from warrantless tracking of all drivers on the roads through automatic license plate readers to social media surveillance.
Some of these tools have valid law enforcement purposes when implemented with proper guardrails. The problem is that there are few, if any, guardrails in place today. Even worse, as our work on Flock license plate readers has shown, when state and local police beef up their surveillance apparatus, Trump's agencies are often the beneficiaries.
Law enforcement agencies often justify expansions of surveillance by suggesting that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. But that’s simply not true.
In Commonwealth v. Augustine, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court was among the first courts to recognize that people retain their right to privacy even in public spaces. The Supreme Court has acknowledged this reality as well. In the landmark case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court warned that privacy rights could be eroded by “ever alert” modern surveillance technologies. Both the Augustine and Carpenter cases established that police cannot track people via their cell phone location for extended periods of time without a warrant.
Yet the automation of policing continues to surge, with apparent disregard for our bedrock constitutional rights.
Surveillance technology companies like Axon, Motorola, Flock Safety, and Genetec are rolling out AI-powered predictive policing and "real-time crime center" tools that greatly increase the potential for abuse.
These technology suites gather data from various surveillance devices and sources into a central database bolstered with AI capabilities, including facial recognition. The result: police can follow your every move — tracking where you live, work, worship, protest, get healthcare, and more.
And they can do this not just to one of us, but to all of us, with the mere click of a button.
In Massachusetts, this shift toward AI-driven surveillance is already underway. Here are some of the tools deployed by state and local law enforcement agencies:
Automatic license plate readers
Police departments across Massachusetts are deploying AI-powered automatic license plate readers (LPRs) that transform routine traffic monitoring into comprehensive location tracking tools.
Companies like Flock Safety and Vigilant Solutions provide law enforcement agencies nationwide with access to vast networks of cameras that capture and store license plate data, creating detailed records of people's movements over time. These technologies don't just track people suspected of serious crimes—they monitor everyone on the roads, building massive databases of where ordinary people go about their daily lives.
Today, unrestricted sharing of license plate reader data through Flock and Vigilant's national databases is facilitating ongoing civil immigration enforcement by federal and state authorities, and even helping cops in Texas investigate a woman for terminating her pregnancy.
When combined with cell-site simulators that can track the location of mobile devices, police gain unprecedented ability to follow individuals without a warrant, even though the Supreme Court raised concerns about this practice in Carpenter.
According to documents obtained by the ACLU of Massachusetts in response to public records requests and other publicly available sources, more than 80 police departments across the state have adopted automatic license plate reader systems. No state laws regulate the use of this location tracking technology.
Surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, and video analytics software
The proliferation of surveillance cameras across Massachusetts cities and towns has created a foundation for AI-powered monitoring that extends far beyond what was previously possible.
The ACLU of Massachusetts obtained the user guide of one common video analytics software, BriefCam. It reveals extensive reliance on facial recognition technology and machine learning to automatically identify and follow individuals across multiple camera feeds. This technology transforms scattered surveillance cameras into an integrated tracking network that can follow the daily movements of countless surveillance targets with minimal human labor.
Facial recognition technology is far from perfect. It has well-documented misidentification issues — including the recent misidentification (twice!) of a woman who was taken into ICE custody. Even famous athletes have been misidentified. The technology’s high error rates reflect a persistent and insidious racial bias that disproportionately harms people of color.
Yet police departments continue to use it.
The Springfield Police Department is among the Massachusetts law enforcement agencies using BriefCam, despite a local ordinance prohibiting City agencies from using face surveillance. The Boston Police Department also has a contract for BriefCam but says it is not currently using the software.
How you can help rein in the surveillance state
We need immediate action at both the state and local level to ensure that law enforcement can continue to use technology to protect the public from true threats — without creating a digital dragnet that sweeps up the data of millions of people suspected of no crime.
The ACLU of Massachusetts’ top priority this legislative session is data privacy protection.
The Senate has passed a strong data privacy bill. The House is now considering similar legislation. This bill will limit the amount of information companies can collect and process about us, and will completely forbid them from selling especially sensitive data like precise geolocation information.
We know ICE is purchasing cellphone location data and using it to hunt down our friends, family, and neighbors. Massachusetts must prohibit the sale of these sensitive data, to ensure agencies like ICE cannot skirt Fourth Amendment warrant requirements simply by cutting a check to a data broker.
Take action to support comprehensive data privacy legislation today.
We are also supporting other important legislation. With your help, they will gain momentum in the coming months. These include:
H.3755 would prohibit the accumulation and sharing of license plate reader data on millions of people not suspected of any wrongdoing, while still allowing law enforcement to use these tools in legitimate criminal investigations, subject to judicial oversight.
H.1946 and S.1053 would establish critical guardrails on the use of facial recognition technology and advanced video analytics software that threaten our privacy and disproportionately harm communities of color.
In addition, you can encourage your municipality to adopt a Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinance, which gives local leaders and residents democratic oversight of surveillance tools such as license place readers and facial recognition before they're deployed. CCOPS has already been enacted in Boston, Cambridge, Lawrence, Medford, Northampton, and Somerville.
If your community doesn't yet have a CCOPS ordinance, now is the time to organize and advocate for one—visit the ACLU of Massachusetts CCOPS resources page to learn more.
Protect privacy without compromising safety
AI can multiply the power of individual surveillance tools exponentially, transforming them from limited investigative resources into an omnipresent digital dragnet that monitors everyone, not just people suspected of serious crimes.
The automated nature of these systems means that traditional limitations on police resources—once a vital check on government overreach—have been effectively eliminated, replaced by AI-powered surveillance that never sleeps, never forgets, and constantly watches our every move.

Pope Leo Creates Artificial Intelligence Study Group

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:00:00 +0000

AI Overview
Pope Leo XIV has made artificial intelligence a central moral focus of his papacy. He views AI as the defining issue of a new industrial revolution. His concerns center on labor rights, AI-directed warfare, and the potential for technology to diminish human creativity, wisdom, and neurological development.
The Vatican addresses AI across several key initiatives and statements:
First Encyclical Warning: Pope Leo's encyclical, reportedly titled Magnifica Humanitas, is a major moral document emphasizing human dignity, labor protections, and the ethical management of artificial intelligence.
Interdicasterial Commission: The Pope approved the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which coordinates the work of various Vatican departments to study and address the global societal effects of AI.
Warnings Against "Virtual Popes": He has directly dismissed the idea of a "virtual pope" and discouraged youth from asking AI to do their homework, stating that machines lack genuine wisdom and the ability to discern right from wrong.
Concerns Over Automated Warfare: He has heavily denounced the rise of AI-directed weaponry, warning that it leads the world into a dangerous "spiral of annihilation".
Papal Name Significance: He chose the name "Leo" to deliberately align his teachings with Pope Leo XIII, who authored Rerum Novarum—a foundational text on workers' rights during the first Industrial Revolution.

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Pope creates artificial intelligence study group as Vatican prepares to release his first encyclical

Pope Leo XIV has created a study group on artificial intelligence, the Vatican said Saturday, as he gears up to release his first encyclical that is expected to emphasize the need for an ethics-based approach to the technology that prioritizes human dignity and peace.
The Vatican said Leo had decided to create the in-house study group because of the acceleration in AI’s use, “its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole (and) the church’s concern for the dignity of every human being.”
The announcement came a day after Leo signed his encyclical, 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, dated his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or Of New Things. That document addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was underway.
It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope has already cited it in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. The new encyclical is expected to place the AI question in the context of the church’s social teaching, which also covers issues such as labor, justice and peace.
“I think that the Catholic Church in many ways is going to be the adult in the room on some of these debates about how we are going to integrate AI into the rest of our society,” said Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame who directs its ethics institute. “For sure, the pope is going to be one of the most forceful advocates for human dignity in these discussions.”
Just days after his 2025 election, Leo told the cardinals who made him pope that the Catholic Church owed it to the world to offer the “treasury of its social teaching” to confront the challenges posed by AI on “human dignity, justice and labor.”
The public release of the encyclical, expected in the coming weeks, will likely become a new flashpoint between the Chicago-born Leo and the Trump administration, which has made the rapid development of AI a matter of vital national economic and security strategy. The United States has strongly rejected international regulatory efforts to rein in AI and the Trump administration has removed bureaucratic roadblocks slowing its development domestically.
The flurry of Vatican activity came as U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up a visit to China that included AI business. Traveling with Trump on Air Force One were, among others, Elon Musk, whose social media platform X features his AI chatbot Grok, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who recently secured federal approval to sell H200 AI chips to Chinese buyers.
The Vatican wants its voice and values in the AI debate
Since the AI boom kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have raced to develop better AI systems even as experts warn of its risks, from existential but far-off threats like rogue AIs running amok to everyday problems like bias in algorithmic hiring systems.
The United Nations last year adopted a new governance architecture to rein in AI after previous multilateral efforts, including AI summits organized by Britain, South Korea and France resulted only in nonbinding pledges. In 2024, the EU adopted its own Artificial Intelligence Act, applying a risk-based approach to its AI rules.
The Vatican has sought to add its voice to the debate, offering ethical guidelines for the application of AI in sectors from warfare to education and healthcare. The underlying call has been that the technology must be used as a tool to complement, and not replace, human intelligence.
The Vatican has also warned of the environmental impact of the AI race, noting the “vast amounts of energy and water” required by AI data centers and computational power.
“There are almost a billion and a half Catholics in the world, so that alone is reason to pay attention,” said Thomas Harmon, theology professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. “But beyond the numbers, the Catholic Church has a deep and sophisticated tradition of thinking through what it means to be human.”
In 2020, the Vatican enlisted tech companies to sign on to an AI pledge, known as the Rome Call for AI Ethics, which, among other things, outlined core principles for AI regulation, including inclusiveness, accountability, impartiality, and privacy. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco were among the private sector companies that signed on.
In his final years, Pope Francis called for an international treaty to regulate AI, saying the risks of technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness were too great to merely trust in the morality of AI researchers and developers.
He also brought his authority to bear on the Group of Seven, addressing a special session on the perils and promises of AI in 2024. There, Francis said politicians must take the lead in making sure AI remains human-centric, so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less-lethal tools always remain made by humans. He called ultimately for a ban on the use of lethal autonomous weapons, colloquially known as “killer robots.”
AI-savvy Leo is concerned with peace, truth and human relations
In-house, Leo has warned priests against using AI to write their homilies. But the math major pope, who does spend free time scrolling on his phone, has also raised his voice on the broader implications of AI on world peace, labor and the very meaning of reality.
For the Augustinian pope, generative AI’s ability to misinform and deceive through deepfake imagery is particularly worrisome, given that the search for truth is a fundamental element of his religious order’s spirituality.
In a June 2025 speech to an AI conference, Leo acknowledged generative AI’s contributions to healthcare and scientific discovery. But he questioned “its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp reality.”
Leo, who has emphasized a constant appeal for peace, has also called for monitoring how AI is being used and developed in warfare in the Middle East and Ukraine, where automated weapons systems are using everything from aerial drones and maritime and ground platforms.
“What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said this past week at La Sapienza, Europe’s largest university.

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Pope Leo sets Catholics on collision course with AI
Pope Leo XIV is expected to sign his first encyclical later this month, positioning artificial intelligence as the defining moral and labor challenge of a new industrial revolution.
Why it matters: The document, reportedly titled "Magnifica Humanitas" ("magnificent humanity"), would become the Catholic Church's clearest attempt yet to place human dignity, labor rights and ethics at the center of the AI race.
Catholic and European outlets reported that Leo is poised to sign the AI encyclical on the anniversary of "Rerum Novarum" (1891), Pope Leo XIII's foundational industrial-era labor encyclical.
But the Holy See's Press Office told reporters on Friday that the announcement about the document will take place on May 22, per InfoVaticana, a Spanish-language digital news outlet that covers the Vatican.
The encyclical will focus specifically on AI's impact on "people and working conditions," framing it as Leo XIV's effort to modernize Catholic social teaching for the AI era, per the French newspaper Le Monde.
Other reports suggest "Magnifica Humanitas" will argue technology must remain subordinate to the human person — not the reverse — and that AI systems should protect workers, creativity and moral agency.
The Vatican has not commented, but it has implemented formal AI guidelines and monitoring structures inside Vatican City.
Zoom in: The late Pope Francis warned repeatedly that AI risked reducing humans to data points and accelerating inequality, surveillance and autonomous warfare.
The Holy See also backed the "Rome Call for AI Ethics," an initiative urging transparency and human-centered AI development.
Context: Encyclicals are among the most important documents a pope issues — used to set priorities and define how the Catholic Church responds to major global challenges.
They often act as blueprints for a papacy, signaling what issues will take center stage for the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.
Zoom out: The Vatican has stepped up cybersecurity partnerships and AI oversight efforts, blending defense with diplomacy and ethics.
In February, Leo told priests not to use AI to write homilies or to seek "likes" on social media platforms like TikTok.
What they're saying: "This is exactly the fear ... that machines were replacing human labor. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now with AI," said Andrew Chesnut, chair of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Chesnut said Leo is treating AI less like a tech trend and more like a replay of the industrial revolution, with entry-level workers already "evaporating" as automation accelerates.
"This is going to be one of the fundamental pillars of his papacy."
Between the lines: Leo XIV's choice of name increasingly looks like a mission statement.
By invoking Leo XIII, the pope is explicitly drawing parallels between 19th-century industrialization and the AI revolution now unfolding, Catholic experts say.
The message: The Church believes it has a historic role to play again during a period of technological upheaval.
The intrigue: Some American Catholic institutions have also been preparing for this moment and discussing the use of AI.
The Catholic Health Association of the United States, for example, has been examining the ethical implications as AI increasingly shapes health care delivery.
The bottom line: The Vatican is signaling it does not intend to sit out the AI era.

King Charles Announces Introduction of UK Orwellian Digital ID System

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:55:00 +0000

AI Overview
On May 13, 2026, King Charles III delivered the King's Speech, which officially announced that the UK government will proceed with the introduction of a national digital ID system through a new "Digital Access to Services Bill".
While some critics and privacy advocates have characterized these plans as Orwellian or intrusive, the government describes the initiative as a voluntary, secure, and modern way for citizens to interact with public services.
Key Details of the 2026 Digital ID Announcement:
The Announcement: King Charles stated, "My Ministers will also proceed with the introduction of Digital ID that will modernise how citizens interact with public services".
Voluntary Nature: The government has positioned the digital ID as an optional, free, and voluntary tool, rather than a mandatory national ID card, aiming it at those without traditional documentation like passports or driving licences.
Intended Use: The digital ID is intended for use across public services (e.g., NHS services, HMRC records, DWP benefits) and the private sector, such as assisting renters, verifying age, or proving right-to-work.
Implementation: The bill aims to establish a legal framework for creating, storing, and verifying digital credentials, with the rollout expected by the end of the current parliament.
Shift in Policy: The government U-turned on earlier proposals, confirming that this digital ID will no longer be mandatory for right-to-work checks.
Concerns and Criticisms:
Privacy Advocacy: Organizations such as Big Brother Watch have expressed significant concerns, arguing that even a voluntary scheme could lead to a "cradle-to-grave" system for mass surveillance and increased government control.
Public Reception: Despite being framed as a convenience, there has been a lukewarm reception to the proposals, with concerns over potential data breaches and the risk of state overreach.
Potential Expansion: Some analysts worry that despite being labeled "voluntary," the scope could expand over time, leading to a de facto mandatory system.
The King's Speech also mentioned a police reform bill that could introduce new legal frameworks for police use of facial recognition and biometrics alongside the digital ID system.

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UK claims new system will facilitate access to government services, but critics fear it's precursor to China social credit score model.
UK monarch King Charles III announced the rollout of the nation’s digital ID system, ostensibly to allow more citizens to access government services online.
“My ministers will also proceed with the introduction of Digital ID that will modernize how citizens interact with public services,” the king declared in Parliament on Wednesday.
The Sun claims the digital ID “would allow people to prove who they are online ‘in one safe place, at the touch of a button.'”
“The digital ID can also be used for things like free childcare vouchers, tax, passports and driving licences, replacing piles of paperwork and repeated checks,” reports The Sun.
The system would effectively do away with internet anonymity and comes as the UK government has also announced new crackdowns on antisemitic speech, much of which is communicated online.
The scheme has reportedly been revised and “watered down” following massive public opposition and is no longer mandatory as first proposed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year.
While the government professes the system will enhance access to social services, many fear the digital ID scheme could become a precursor to a system resembling China’s social credit score model, which tracks citizens via facial recognition and denies or restricts services based on AI assessments.

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Controversial digital IDs WON’T be mandatory, Charles confirms in King’s Speech
THE controversial digital ID scheme won’t be mandatory, King Charles confirmed in the King’s Speech.
The monarch, 77, delivered a speech to the State Opening of Parliament which featured over 35 bills including on immigration, the NHS and police.
His Majesty’s speech marked the beginning of a new parliamentary session outlining the Government’s legislative priorities which included changes to the digital ID scheme.
Sir Keir Starmer first proposed mandatory digital IDs last year as part of plans to modernise public services and tighten right-to-work checks.
But it has now been confirmed that the public “will have an option” to use the scheme as part of the Digital Access to Services Bill.
It was announced that it would be “free to access for anyone who wishes to use it”.
Ministers launched a consultation on digital ID in March which would allow people to prove who they are online “in one safe place, at the touch of a button”.
The digital ID can also be used for things like free childcare vouchers, tax, passports and driving licences, replacing piles of paperwork and repeated checks.
Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones said at the time that the current system often rewards “pushy” people who know how to work the system, while others struggle to get help.
The plans had already been watered down after it was announced they would be mandatory which sparked a fierce backlash.
Outlining the priorities of the government in his speech, the King said the UK faced an “increasingly dangerous and volatile world”.
Key pieces of legislation announced included the European Partnership Deal which will “strengthen ties with the European Union” as well as the Police Reform Bill.
It was announced that the Government is set to crack down on anti-antisemitism while new legislation will also be introduced in the wake of the horrific Southport attack in 2024.
Also included was the Courts Modernisation Bill which includes the controversial plan to restrict trial by jury to the most serious cases.
The King and Queen left Buckingham Palace in a procession earlier this morning, before making his way to the Houses of Parliament at around 11.15am.
The King travelled in the State Coach while being escorted by members of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment.
He was seated on the throne in the Lords chamber before the Black Rod, a senior Lords officer, was sent to the House of Commons to summon MPs to the Lords to listen.
The State Opening of Parliament is littered with pomp and pageantry – and the procession from Buckingham Palace is no different.
But the pomp and pageantry comes amid efforts to oust the PM, who was last night clinging on to his ailing premiership.

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UK to relaunch digital ID scheme, King’s Speech confirms
“My Ministers will also proceed with the introduction of Digital ID that will modernize how citizens interact with public services [Digital Access to Services Bill]” the King said, outlining the government’s law making agenda.
The King's Speech, a centuries-old tradition marking the start of a new parliamentary session, is written by ministers and read by the monarch in the House of Lords. It typically confirms policies that are already in motion rather than introducing new proposals.
Among the headline measures was confirmation that legislation will proceed on digital identity – despite a recent government U-turn.
Originally pitched as a tool to crack down on illegal working, the scheme will no longer be mandatory for right-to-work checks.
First conceived under Tony Blair’s Labour government, digital ID has shifted from what was once described as a "silver bullet” against illegal immigration to a system that can help employers verify new hires.
UK ID scheme now voluntary, King confirms
Under the new scheme, the government is positioning it as an optional tool for those without traditional identification such as passports or driving licences.
The policy shift follows mounting public backlash, including a petition signed by 3 million people, alongside concerns over privacy, cybersecurity risks and the potential for state overreach.
Silkie Carlo, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, argued that even a voluntary plan would lead to more governmental control of people’s lives, and that the UK should drop it entirely.
“Access to public services we all pay for should never require a digital ID. This would inevitably be an intrusive, multi billion pound system no one wants, no one voted for, and that has no real purpose."
Silkie Carlo, director, Big Brother Watch
“Plans so far have indicated that the digital ID would be a cradle to grave system ripe for mass surveillance and more government control over people’s lives," she added.
It will also be required for right to work checks to stop those with no right to be in the country from finding work. On Gov.uk, it said: "This is to send a clear message that if you come here illegally, you will not be able to work, deterring people from making dangerous journeys."
Your free digital ID will be stored securely on your phone and will help to prove your identity, including age and residency status, simplifying access to government services and a range of uses across the private sector.
It will be free to download and employers will be required to check it as evidence of your right to work in this country. This is to curb the prospect of work for illegal migrants.
Guidance shared via Gov.uk said: "Work is now underway to draw up the design and technical details of the scheme to ensure it is inclusive, fair and follows best practice for security and data privacy, including drawing on examples of where digital IDs are already delivering benefits internationally.
"The government will launch a public consultation to ensure we get the best possible input. Police will not be able to demand to see your digital ID – as with current precedent."
The digital ID will be free to individuals, so everyone can access it. Citizens right across the UK have access to the new digital ID. The new digital ID will be the authoritative proof of who someone is and their residency status in this country. It will include:
name
date of birth
information on nationality or residency status
a photo – as the basis for biometric security – just like an eVisa or Passport, but updated for the modern digital world we live in.
According to the government, your personal data will be better protected because if a phone is lost or stolen, the digital credentials can be easily revoked and reissued, providing better security than traditional physical documents.

Enoch And The Watchers And The Nephilim

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:41:00 +0000

AI Overview
Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, is a pivotal biblical figure (Genesis 5:21-24) known for walking with God for 300 years and being taken to heaven without experiencing death. His life signifies intimate fellowship, righteousness, and prophecy, setting him apart as a "Hero of Faith" (Hebrews 11:5) who broke the cycle of death, while the non-canonical 1 Enoch links him to a visionary role regarding the fallen angels known as "Watchers".
Enoch: "He Walked With God"
The phrase "Enoch walked with God" is interpreted in several profound ways:
Continuous Fellowship: It implies a constant, intimate, and interactive relationship, not a one-time event.
Lifelong Faithfulness: He maintained this walk for 300 years after the birth of his son Methuselah, implying a firm dedication to God's will despite the growing wickedness of his time.
Pleasing God: Hebrews 11:5 highlights that Enoch's walk was a testament to his faith, pleasing God so deeply that his walk ended with his translation (removal) from earth without experiencing death.
Prophetic Action: Enoch is depicted as a prophet (Jude 1:14-15) who walked "against" the ungodliness of his day, acting as a "John the Baptist" figure who warned of divine judgment.
The Translation (God Took Him)
Unique Departure: Genesis 5:24 says, "And he was not, for God took him." This implies a miraculous departure from the mortal realm, where Enoch did not suffer physical death.
The "Seventh" Factor: Being the seventh generation from Adam, Enoch represents a symbolic number of completion or spiritual perfection.
Enoch and the Watchers (The Book of 1 Enoch)
While the canonical Bible does not detail the "Watchers," the ancient, non-canonical text 1 Enoch (part of the canon in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) provides context:
The Watchers: These are a group of fallen angels (led by Samyaza) who were originally guardians assigned to watch over humanity.
The Sin of the Watchers: Driven by forbidden desires, they descended to earth, married human women, and brought forth giants (Nephilim), filling the world with violence and chaos.
Enoch’s Role: Because of his righteousness and close walk with God, Enoch is given divine visions and acts as an intermediary, witnessing the sins of the Watchers and hearing the decree of their judgment.
The Connection: In this narrative, Enoch's close "walk" is directly contrasted with the Watchers' fall, showcasing him as a chosen human who gained knowledge of heavenly mysteries.
The Book of Enoch (specifically 1 Enoch or The Book of the Watchers) details the descent of rebellious angels known as Watchers, who bred with human women to produce a race of violent giants called the Nephilim. These events directly cause the great flood, resulting in a narrative that expands upon Genesis 6 to explain the origins of evil, fallen angels, and the destruction of the hybrid giants.
The Watchers
Rebellion: Led by Samyaza and Azazel, a group of angels (the watchers) desired human women, descended to Mount Hermon, and broke their oath to God.
Forbidden Knowledge: The Watchers taught humanity forbidden arts, including metallurgy (weapons), magic, astrology, cosmetics, and astronomy, which accelerated human corruption.
Judgment: Because of their rebellion and corruption of humanity, the Watchers are judged by God and imprisoned in dark places until the final judgment.
The Nephilim
Origins: The Watchers fathered children with human women. These offspring were the Nephilim—a race of monstrous giants.
Destruction: The Nephilim devoured human food and eventually humans themselves, causing widespread destruction on Earth.
The Flood: Their chaotic nature necessitated the great flood as a form of divine cleansing to remove the corruption of humanity and the hybrids.
Enoch's Role
Intercessor: Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, acts as an intermediary. The fallen Watchers ask him to petition God on their behalf for forgiveness.
Prophet of Judgment: God refuses the petition, and Enoch instead delivers the prophecy of judgment, condemnation, and destruction to the Watchers and their Nephilim offspring.
Heavenly Tours: In the latter sections of the book, Enoch is shown the heavens, the secrets of creation, and the places of punishment for the Watchers.

Also:

What Is the Book of Enoch? (And What It Isn’t)
The Book of Enoch is one of the most vivid, controversial texts to come out of ancient Judaism. It is not part of the Bible for almost all Christians. But it is a major window into how some Jews between the Old and New Testaments understood Genesis 6, the “sons of God,” and the giants.
The Bible itself only tells us a little about Enoch. In Genesis 5:21–24 we read: “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Later, Genesis 6:1–4 briefly describes “sons of God,” “daughters of man,” and the Nephilim.
Then the story moves straight into Noah and the flood. Scripture gives almost no details about who these sons of God were, how their unions worked, or exactly what the Nephilim were like.
The Book of Enoch (usually called 1 Enoch) steps into that silence. It is a collection of Jewish writings, put together between about 300 and 100 BC. It claims to record visions and journeys that God gave to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah.
But scholars agree Enoch himself did not write it. It is what we call pseudepigraphal—written under the name of a famous figure to give weight to the message.
1 Enoch is actually several books in one: the Book of the Watchers (ch. 1–36), the Book of Parables, the Astronomical Book, and others. The section most people think of is the Book of the Watchers, which retells the Genesis 6 story in dramatic detail.
For many centuries, complete copies of 1 Enoch survived only in Ge’ez (Ethiopic) manuscripts inside the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which still treats it as Scripture. The rest of the Jewish and Christian world did not.
When fragments in Aramaic turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 20th century, scholars realized just how old and widespread this Enoch tradition was in Second Temple Judaism. For a deeper dive into this background, see Fr. Stephen De Young’s overview of the Book of the Watchers on Ancient Faith and this survey of the Watchers and origins of evil on TheTorah.com.
Here is the key point: the Book of Enoch is a powerful ancient Jewish commentary and expansion on Genesis 6. It teaches us what some Jews believed. It does not stand alongside Genesis as what God Himself declared.
Regarding the Giants, “Enoch teaches us what some Jews believed about Genesis 6—not what God declared about it.” Genesis 6:1–4 is the inspired baseline. Enoch is one later way of filling in the gaps.
How the Book of Enoch Retells Genesis 6, the Watchers, and the Giants
If Genesis 6:1–4 is a tight, mysterious summary, 1 Enoch turns it into a full-blown drama. Genesis says: “The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days…” (Genesis 6:2, 4).
That is all. No names. No locations. No list of sins. No giant battles. The Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) “explodes” those verses into a story.
In 1 Enoch, a group of heavenly beings called Watchers—“sons of heaven”—are appointed to watch over humanity. They look down, see the beauty of human women, and decide to cross a line. Their leader, often called Semjâzâ (or Shemihaza), fears that if he goes alone, he will bear the guilt by himself.
So about two hundred angels gather on Mount Hermon, swear an oath together, and descend as a group. They take wives “for themselves,” knowing full well that they are violating God’s boundaries. This is where Genesis and Enoch still overlap: both describe heavenly “sons of God” taking human women. But Enoch adds the details, names, and dialogue.
The Watchers do more than marry. They begin to teach humanity “forbidden knowledge.” One named Azazel trains people in warfare, swords, shields, and armor. He also teaches cosmetics and jewelry—how to beautify the eyelids, how to work with precious stones and dyes.
Other Watchers teach astrology, omens, root-cutting, sorcery, and how to manipulate creation. In Enoch’s eyes, this is not progress or neutral science; it is a corrupt form of wisdom that leads to violence, sexual sin, and idolatry.
Their children are the giants—the Nephilim. Enoch describes them as enormous, far beyond normal human size. They devour all the food humans can produce. When that runs out, they turn on humans themselves.
They eat animals, then people, and finally even one another. Blood fills the earth. The whole world is enslaved and crushed under their violence, until, in Enoch’s words, “the earth complained” and the cry of the oppressed rose to heaven.
God responds by sending archangels—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel—to act. They report the horrors they see. God commands Gabriel to turn the giants against one another in war, so they destroy each other.
He tells Raphael to bind Azazel in the desert until the final judgment. Michael is ordered to bind the other Watchers in dark pits “for seventy generations,” echoing what the New Testament later calls “chains of gloomy darkness” (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6).
In 1 Enoch 15–16, God gives Enoch another shocking explanation: when the giants die, their spirits do not go away. Because they were born from heaven and earth together, their disembodied spirits remain on earth as evil spirits that afflict humanity.
As 1 Enoch 15:9 puts it, “The spirits of the giants… shall be called evil spirits upon the earth.” In Enoch’s retelling, the Watchers are rebellious heavenly “sons of God” who cross the boundary between heaven and earth, and their union with women produces violent giants, the Nephilim.
Their forbidden teaching spreads bloodshed, idolatry, and corruption. God judges the angels and their offspring, using the flood as a cleansing of a world ruined by this cross-realm rebellion. The lingering “evil spirits” explain ongoing demonic activity.
This is far more detail than Genesis gives, and we must keep that in mind. But when Peter and Jude speak of angels who sinned, are imprisoned, and are connected with Noah’s days (2 Peter 2:4–5; Jude 6–7), they are clearly drawing on this same story-world that Enoch helps us see. For more on the Nephilim specifically, see the overview at Biblical Archaeology Society.
Why the Book of Enoch Is Not a part of Scripture
Because Enoch is so vivid—and because Jude 14–15 directly quotes 1 Enoch 1:9—many Christians wonder: why is it not in our Bibles? There are several reasons the historic church, and almost all Jewish communities, have not treated 1 Enoch as inspired Scripture.
First, authorship and date. The biblical Enoch lived before the flood. The Book of Enoch was written roughly between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, many thousands of years later. It reflects the language, concerns, and literary style of Second Temple Judaism, not primeval history.
It is pseudepigraphal by design. Ancient readers often accepted that kind of writing as a normal way to say, “This is in the line of Enoch’s wisdom,” but that is not the same as inspired prophecy.
Second, canon history.
1 Enoch does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. It is absent from the Greek Old Testament list used by most early Christians. It was not adopted into the canons of the Western or Eastern churches.
Only the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its Eritrean sister church include it formally. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that some Jewish groups loved and copied it, but it was never a universal standard.
Third, quotation does not equal canon. Jude 14–15 says: “It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all…’”
This is a direct quote of 1 Enoch 1:9. But Paul also quotes pagan poets in Acts 17:28. That does not canonize their whole works. Inspired authors sometimes use familiar lines from well-known writings to make a true point. The Spirit guarantees the truth of what is used—not the status of the whole source.
Finally, the church has always sensed that Enoch’s genre is mixed. It is part interpretation, part imagery, part apocalyptic vision. It extends Genesis 6 in ways that often feel more mythic and symbolic than historical.
That does not make it worthless. It does mean we must not treat it like Genesis or the Gospels. A simple guardrail helps: read the Book of Enoch the way you would read something like Pilgrim’s Progress or the writings of Josephus—deeply interesting, often helpful, sometimes insightful—but never equal to Scripture.
As Paul tells Timothy, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). Enoch is not on that level.
How Enoch Influenced Jewish and Early Christian Thought
If Enoch is not Scripture, why does it matter? Because it shaped the world in which Jesus, Peter, Jude, and the early church lived and thought. First, Enoch gives us a detailed Second Temple Jewish interpretation of Genesis 6.
When Peter speaks of “angels who sinned” being cast into Tartarus and tied to Noah’s day (2 Peter 2:4–5), and when Jude talks about angels “who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling” and are now kept “in eternal chains” (Jude 6–7), they are using language and ideas that match the Enoch tradition much more than the brief Genesis text.
Second, Enoch offers an origin story for demons that became influential: the idea that the spirits of the dead giants are the “evil spirits” that roam the earth. The Bible itself never states this directly, but you can hear echoes of this way of thinking in early Christian writers who connect demons, fallen angels, and primeval rebellion.
Third, Enoch helped fill out early Jewish and Christian angelology and judgment themes. The picture of rebellious heavenly beings, a sealed abyss, and a final day when God will judge both humans and angels shows up all over the New Testament. Enoch provided a shared vocabulary and imagination that biblical authors could draw on while still correcting it where needed. Today, the Book of Enoch also stands behind much of the modern discussion about Nephilim, giants, and the unseen realm.
Unfortunately, that sometimes turns into hype and conspiracy. Our goal on Chasing the Giants is very different: to let Enoch show us how ancient Jews wrestled with Genesis 6, so we can read our Bibles more clearly, not chase hidden codes.

Also:

Fallen Angels in the Book of Enoch: Who Are the Watchers?
The Book of Enoch tells the story of the Watchers, angels who procreated with mortal wives and taught mankind forbidden arts, resulting in their downfall.
The Book of Enoch tells the story of two hundred Watchers, or angels, sent to watch over humanity. These Watchers conspired to commit sins by taking human women as wives and having children with them. They also taught humans many forbidden skills relating to the different arts and sciences. God condemned these fallen angels for their actions and assigned archangels to confine them to Tartarus until their final judgment.
Where does the Book of Enoch come from, what does it say about the Watchers and their crimes, and how does Enoch’s account relate to the rest of the Biblical canon?
Where Is the Book of Enoch in the Bible?
The Book of Enoch does not appear in the Bible but is an ancient Jewish religious text credited to Enoch, seventh from Adam, the father of Methuselah and the great-grandfather of Noah. However, it was probably composed between 300 and 100 BCE. While it was considered an important religious text in ancient times, it is no longer considered canonical scripture by the majority of Jews and Christians. Nevertheless, the authors of the New Testament were familiar with Enoch and cited the work. Parts of the book of Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran Caves. Some Greek translations also survive.
Book of Enoch Summary
The Book of Enoch contains the Book of the Watchers, which describes the Watchers sent to oversee mankind, their betrayal of their mission, and their ultimate fall. It also contains the Book of Parables of Enoch, which explores divine judgment, the fate of the righteous and unrighteous, and the role of the Messiah.
The Astronomical Book contains descriptions of the movement of heavenly bodies, and knowledge revealed to Enoch on his trip to Heaven with the archangel Uriel. The Book of Dream Visions contains a vision of the history of Israel potentially as far as the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Finally, the Epistle of Enoch contains a variety of information, including exhortations to Methuselah on how to live righteously, the birth of Noah, and the fates of the righteous versus sinners.
Revelation of the Book of Enoch
Following the sins of the Watchers, God tasked the Archangels to deal with the rebellious fallen angels. He also instructed the archangels to show Enoch, the main character in the Book of Enoch, what would happen to the Watchers and their offspring. In the process, different archangels show Enoch the workings of creation, especially that of the heavenly bodies and how they impact man. It is this encounter with the archangels that the Book of Enoch describes.
At first glance, the knowledge the Watchers imparted to humans does not seem that different from what the archangels shared with Enoch. Furthermore, the knowledge that the Watchers shared with humans is considered science by many readers today. It is the knowledge that falls into various fields of science and art. So, were the actions of the Watchers virtuous and in service of humanity, or were these angels instigators of violence?
What Sins Did the Fallen Angels of Enoch Commit?
The Watchers descended to earth in the “days of Jared,” the father of Enoch. Jared was of the sixth generation from Adam. The Watchers conspired to take wives and have children with human women instead of watching over humanity as they were supposed to do. They also taught humans various sciences and skills (1 Enoch, The Watchers 3:2-7).
The Watchers’ desire for female humans was born from lust. The intermingling of Watchers and human women resulted in the Nephilim. These giants were violent and destructive individuals who had no regard for life. The rebellion of the Watchers resulted in them becoming fallen angels.
Some of the Watchers also taught the humans forbidden skills. Azazel, for instance, “taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all coloring tinctures.”
In modern terms, this is metallurgy and cosmetology. Metallurgy is the art of extracting metals from rock and shaping those metals into various implements and artifacts. Azazel taught humans to shape metal into weapons, ornaments, and bracelets and how to set precious stones in them. Cosmetology is the professional skill or practice of beautifying the body by applying pigmented powder and accessories.
Semjaza, the leader of the two hundred Watchers, taught “enchantments and root−cuttings” while Armaros taught them how to resolve enchantments. Baraqijal taught astrology while Kokabel shared information on the constellations. Ezeqeel shared the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiel instructed on the signs of the earth, Shamsiel on the signs of the sun, and Sariel on the course of the moon.
This science sounds innocent enough and correlates with many modern practices and fields of study. Some scholars have interpreted the cutting of roots as a reference to the practice of herbal medicine or to agricultural production, and the references to the constellations, the sun, and the moon to the study of astronomy. Some people may consider the Watchers’ act of teaching humanity these sciences as virtuous, designed to uplift humanity and increase their knowledge — but was it?
Was it Science or Sorcery?
The early Christian readers of 1 Enoch, most of whom believed the book to be a valid source for theology, had a very different view of what the Watchers were up to. They understood Semjaza’s teaching of enchantments and root cutting as the practice of witchcraft.
Irenaeus, for instance, considered the enchantments and root cutting as “the discovery of rare substances, love-potions, aversions, amours, concupiscence, constraints of love, spells of bewitchment, and all sorcery and idolatry hateful to God.” The other teachings on astrology, the heavenly bodies, and the earth gave rise to soothsayers, augurs, magicians, and other forms of practitioners of the dark arts. It was not the science practiced today.
Irenaeus, Commodianus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria are among many early Church Fathers who reflect negatively on the Watchers and their influence on humanity. According to Commodianus, the Watchers were so revered among men that they erected statues to commemorate them once they died. In his understanding, the Watchers were the demons people worshiped and prayed to in his day.
Corrupting Influence
Azazel’s teaching may, at first glance, seem innocuous, an early form of metallurgy and cosmetology, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. The Watcher Azazel is associated with crafting metal objects such as weapons, bracelets, and jewelry with costly stone inserts and the art of using cosmetics. His teachings had a corrupting influence on humanity and led to much fornication, degradation, and violence.
The information in the Book of Enoch has parallels with Genesis. Azazel’s instruction soon led to industry. Lamech, in the line through Cain, was the seventh generation from Adam and juxtaposes Enoch, a righteous man. Lamech was the first polygamist, taking two wives, Adah and Zillah. Adah means “ornament,” and names in the Old Testament often point to character or nature, implying she may have liked to beautify herself with make-up and accessories like metal bracelets and jewelry with precious stone inserts.
The son Lamech had with his other wife, Zillah, was called Tubalcain, which points to him as a character in the likeness of Cain. The Bible describes him as “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron” (Genesis 4:22). He likely manufactured both ornaments and weapons at scale.
Lamech was a man prone to violence that threatened any challenger with mortal injury (Genesis 4:23-24). His propensity to violence parallels the circumstance described in the book of Enoch where “men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven” (1 Enoch, The Watchers 3:14). It was the bloodshed among men that caused the archangels to call on God for action (1 Enoch, The Watchers 4:1).
It was, however, not only men who were violent. The offspring of the Watchers and human women, the giants, consumed whatever men gathered. When humans could no longer sustain the giants, they started feeding on humans too. The giants then turned on the animal kingdom and, eventually, on one another.
Punishment of the Fallen Angels
The Watchers received a severe punishment for leading humanity astray. They would see their offspring, the giants, murdered and destroyed (1 Enoch, The Watchers 4:25). God denied their supplication for mercy. The destruction of the giants happened in two ways. First, many giants turned on one another, devouring each other’s flesh, and drank each other’s blood (1 Enoch, The Watchers 3:14). Secondly, those that remained were destroyed in the flood (1 Enoch, The Book of Noah, 1:15-16).
The punishment of the Watchers did not end there. God instructed a selection of archangels to bind the Watchers and cast them in an allocated part of the underworld that is called Tartarus. The fallen Watchers were to remain there until their final judgment.
Details of the different punishments suffered by the Watchers are included in the texts. For example, God told Raphael to bind Azazel and cast him into an opening in the desert on rough and jagged rocks. His face was covered so that he could see no light, and he was to remain there until the day of judgment when he would be cast into the fire. This is described as necessary so that all the children of men do not perish as a result of the knowledge shared with them.
The Watchers Versus the Archangels
The Watchers, or fallen angels, shared information regarding the heavenly bodies with humans and were punished for it. The archangels shared information regarding the heavenly bodies with Enoch without punishment for their actions. What were the differences between the two acts?
It was not within the purview of the Watchers to provide knowledge to humans. The Book of Enoch states that Azazel “taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were in heaven, which men were striving to learn.” Azazel and the other fallen angels were not authorized to share their information with humans. The Watchers’ teaching led to unrighteousness, godlessness, and sin.
The results of the knowledge the humans acquired from the fallen angels harmed them and caused them to separate from God and become lawless. They started practicing occultism and used magic, potions, and spells on one another to influence and manipulate one another. The depraved interaction between the fallen angels and humans culminated in the birth of the giants. These giants typified the destructive result of the intermingling of the Watchers and humans and eventually resulted in the almost complete destruction of both.
The knowledge that the archangels shared with Enoch was a different matter altogether. God authorized the archangels to share their knowledge of heavenly bodies and their motion with Enoch. It was not knowledge that would lead to occult practices but science that pertained to cycles, seasons, and systems God created and set in place. The sharing of this knowledge brought Enoch and the few faithful people who remained in a closer relationship with God (1 Enoch, The Watchers, 7:68)
Fallen Angels of Enoch in Conclusion
The Watchers became fallen angels because they were more concerned with their desires than doing what they were appointed to do, watching over humanity. They decided to take wives and have children with the daughters of men, resulting in giants as offspring. They also taught humanity how to make weapons, how to make ornaments, and how to use cosmetics. All of these things harmed humanity and eventually led to their destruction.
The Watchers did not have noble intent with the actions they took. On the contrary, they seem to have set themselves on doing what was in their selfish interest. Instead of being watchers, they became abusers. There was nothing virtuous in their deeds, and considering the results of their actions, we should regard them as the villains of this story.
Some religious groups advise against reading this book. Why stay away from the Book of Enoch? It was clearly written long after the life of the supposed Enoch, by multiple authors over several centuries. It was one of the many religious texts that did not make it into the final canon of the Bible, known as Apocrypha. Scholars also suggest that it contradicts canonical texts.
With that said, knowing the period during which it was written, the Book of Enoch provides interesting information about the evolution of Jewish beliefs during the Second Temple Period, in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt and under the pressure of Hellenization.

Self Protection Against Face Scanning Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:42:00 +0000

Anti Scan Face Mask

AI Overview
Protecting against face scanning involves disrupting infrared (IR) cameras and hiding facial features. Effective methods include wearing infrared-blocking glasses, specialized masks, or clothing with retroreflective materials that blind cameras. Other techniques include using face coverings (masks/scarves), hats to block overhead cameras, and using software to scramble photo data.
Physical Anti-Surveillance Methods
IR Blocking Glasses: These prevent cameras from seeing your eyes and can break smartphone Face ID systems. Some specialized glasses, like those from Reflecticles, can block infrared light.
Reflective Hats/Clothing: Clothing or hats made of retroreflective materials reflect light back at cameras, causing bright spots that disrupt algorithms.
Face Masks/Scarves: Covering the nose and mouth removes crucial identification points for AI systems.
"Invisible" Hats: Specialized hats (e.g., Invisible Mask) can project infrared light to disrupt camera sensors.
A New Mask Can Block AI Facial Recognition From Every Angle
A Dutch designer, Jip van Leeuwenstein, created a transparent, lens-like mask that blocks AI facial recognition from all angles by distorting key biometric markers like jawlines and eye spacing, while remaining transparent to human vision. Developed as part of the “Surveillance Exclusion” project, this tool protects privacy in public spaces by causing cameras to misidentify wearers, acting as a form of protest against AI surveillance.
Key Aspects of the Anti-Surveillance Mask:
[Transparent Design: The mask is clear, allowing people to see facial expressions and interact normally, unlike opaque masks.
[AI Confusion: It bends and refracts light, disrupting the specific, geometric mapping points (nose, jaw, eye spacing) used by AI cameras to identify individuals.
[Versatility: The mask is designed to disrupt recognition from multiple angles, including side and partial views.
[Context: The project, which has gained attention through tech and privacy forums, aims to highlight the growing invasiveness of automatic surveillance in urban environments.
This mask is one example of a growing field of "privacy tech" designed to challenge the ubiquity of AI surveillance systems in public infrastructure.
Created as part of his Surveillance Exclusion project at the Utrecht School of the Arts, the mask gently alters facial contours enough to confuse algorithms — all while keeping real human expressions clearly visible.
The innovative design quickly drew attention from tech enthusiasts, researchers, and media outlets, becoming a striking symbol of resistance against growing digital surveillance.
Digital and Tactical Protection
Digital Cloaking (Fawkes): The Fawkes app creates "invisible" modifications to your photos, which, when uploaded, scramble how facial recognition models identify you.
Makeup/Patterns: Using high-contrast or asymmetrical makeup/patterns can confuse computer vision models (sometimes called "Computer Vision Dazzle")
Avoid Over-Sharing: Limiting the number of high-quality, clear photos of your face online reduces the ability of services like Clearview AI to scrape your data.
Techniques to Avoid
Standard sunglasses: Many do not block the infrared light used by modern cameras.
Simple scarves: A flimsy scarf that does not change the structural appearance of the face may not work.
Small reflective stickers: Often ineffective against advanced surveillance cameras.

Also:

Stop Facial Recognition: Countermeasures for Mass Surveillance
Facial Recognition: How it Works
Now that you know some basics about biometrics in general, let’s focus on facial recognition in particular. Facial recognition is composed of two major phases. The first is facial identification and the second is facial recognition. Identification is determining “do I see a face” and recognition is determining “do I know who this face belongs to.”

Facial identification requires cameras and a good mathematical model of what a face is or isn’t. Traditionally these cameras were visible light cameras, but the need to function in low-light, especially in surveillance purposes, as well as the need to get high-grade contrast, means many operate in the near-IR spectrum, like night vision devices do.
Facial recognition requires the system to have an enrolled dataset. How exhaustive the dataset needs to be is dependent on the application.
Understanding the two-phase process and their components is key to developing countermeasures, which we will discuss later. But why would people want countermeasures in the first place?
The wide-spread deployment of facial recognition technologies, driven by machine learning (ML) and “artificial intelligence” (AI) systems is, in terms of threats to a free society, second only to the adoption of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). And, just like CBDC, the masses have been conditioned over time to accept aspects of it, or its forerunner, in their lives under the guise of “cool” or “convenient.” Some examples include:
Facial identification helping auto-focus the camera on your smartphone when you’re taking photos.
Facial recognition helping to automatically tag “friends” when you upload your photos to social media.
Facial recognition being used to unlock phones and computers.
Making it cool, fun, and convenient creates a situation where people actively, willingly, participate in feeding the data model. For years, people have been uploading photographs of themselves, friends, and family, to social media sites. These sites then introduced facial identification and allowed you to tag the face with who it belongs to. Eventually social media started offering to tag photos for you, which is fun and convenient, right? Well, it can do that because machine learning models were built and trained by people tagging photos.
Millions of photos are uploaded to social media and tagged every day. Facial recognition models are being perfected through this massive influx of data.
Think of all those photos of people, at different angles, in different lighting conditions, at different ages. If you wanted to build the perfect dataset for an automated facial recognition system, you couldn’t ask for a better one — certainly not the state DMV database or State Department’s database of passport photos.
But what about the model? Just having photos of individuals isn’t enough. Each image needs to be analyzed in order to build a mathematical model of that person’s face. These days, system designers are increasingly relying on technologies like convolutional AI to automate the creation of these models via processes which are opaque to them. However, in general facial recognition models are going to be based on the geometric relations between facial landmarks, such as:
Distance between eyes, ears, etc.
Breadth and length of the nose.
Bone structure of the face (cheek bones, brow ridge, etc.)
Additionally, some of these measurements will be based on measured or inferred depth. These measurements require good lighting and contrasts in order to assess, a situation which has led to no small amount of controversy in recent years. In recent years, there have been no small number of cases where facial recognition technologies, deployed for various purposes, have been accused of being “racist,” either because the sensors have trouble with darker-skinned subjects, or because the training dataset for the machine learning algorithms is predominantly white or Asian.

Because this causes issues with applications that people want to work, such as device security or social media applications, these complaints tend to drive the state of the art in pushing facial modeling, advancing it in the general case.
The Facial Recognition Threat Right Now
Whether you’ve noticed it or not, facial recognition technology is already being used extensively in crowded public places, especially within countries that favor authoritarian control over citizens’ right to privacy.
In China, the future is now. Mass deployment of surveillance cameras hooked up to high-performance computing clouds, with massive datasets, provide an all-seeing eye. People caught merely jaywalking are identified and then put on digital billboards to humiliate them and force social conformity, all in keeping with their social credit system. Facial recognition is tied to digital ID and payment systems. You can go into a fast-food restaurant, walk up to the kiosk, be served, and have your account debited, all from facial recognition. Fun, cool, and convenient, right?
The much darker side is that while social justice warriors in the U.S. and Europe are misguidedly pushing to help make facial recognition technology better at identifying minorities, in China they have developed data models and algorithms which can identify, with a great deal of accuracy, the ethnicity of a person. This technology is being used specifically to target the frequently persecuted Uighur minority population in Western China’s Xinjiang province.
In the U.S., we have protections that China doesn’t have. When the first publicly documented case of police using facial recognition technology en masse came to light in 2001 at the Tampa-hosted Super Bowl, there was a wide-spread outcry about how it was a 4th Amendment violation. Of course, this was pre-Sept. 11, pre-PATRIOT Act, and before Snowden’s revelations that would make this seem like a blip. In the U.S. now, some cities have created ordinances banning the use of facial recognition technology, sometimes due to privacy implications, other times at least in part because of the seemingly disproportionately high false positive rate for minorities leading to incorrect identification and false arrests. (Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, for instance, rolled out their ordinances against facial recognition in 2020 so that police could not use it during the ongoing riots and protests).
However, there are areas of the U.S. where the rules don’t always apply. Borders and checkpoints are one. Automated immigration checkpoints comparing on-site snapshots to your passport photo are becoming well established in the U.S. and other rich countries, offering convenience for greater acceptance of the tech. There can be no doubt that facial recognition technology is being deployed in the surveillance systems of major airports as well.
The same mobile technology that was pioneered and rebuked two decades ago will continue to make appearances at major events and especially at protests. And even when real-time facial recognition isn’t in play, surveillance photographs can be compared to government and open-source data sets (all those photos you put on the internet) for identification. This tactic was heavily leveraged both by government employees and private-sector open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts and digital sleuths after the events on January 6, 2021, for instance.
The Threat in the Future
In the U.S., we’re highly suspicious of three-letter agencies hoarding and manipulating our sensitive data, but many of us hand that same data to social media and tech corporations without blinking an eye. Here, the threat of invasive facial recognition is less likely to come directly from the government and more likely to be privatized. As China is doing now, and as The Minority Report showed, we’re likely headed to a future where the profit-fueled surveillance we have long known in the online world will move to the real world. You’ll walk into a store, be identified, and then based on your likes and internet history, will be offered products in real time. Or, based on your Personal ESG score — a measurement of how environmentally friendly and socially conscious your lifestyle is perceived to be — you might even be told you can’t spend money there.
As the social acceptance of the technology grows until it becomes basic background noise like flushing toilets and flipping light switches, there’ll be fewer and fewer legal challenges, and eventually government surveillance will step up as well. Via “public-private partnerships” in the name of “public safety,” we’ll find the lines increasingly blurred.
What About Countermeasures?
Some systems are going to be harder to trick than others. How hard is going to be a function of how good the hardware is, how exhaustive the database is, and how sophisticated the model is. Saying for sure what will or won’t work is therefore hard. However, with some experimentation and research, I have a few things that I know will defeat some systems and may have success against others.
The Android application ObscuraCam can quickly edit out faces and other distinguishing marks. This is perfect for countering facial recognition and methods OSINT analysts might use.
Online Countermeasures
With regards to online countermeasures, the goal is to deny the creation of a good data model of your face. This can basically be broken down into two tactics:
First, is adversarial modeling. In machine learning, this essentially means spoiling the dataset with lies. You operate an account as yourself, or otherwise upload photos, but the photos are not of you. You then tag those photos as you, so the data model doesn’t associate your face with your person.
The second tactic, and one that’ll bring you much joy in your life, is to simply avoid playing the game. Get off social media. Spoil all your data, then delete your account. If you never had social media, all the better. Ask your family and friends not to upload photos of you. If they must, blur out the photos.
If you must swap photos online, use secure or covert communications applications to do it, and spoil the photos directly. Applications like ObscuraCam can take advantage of facial identification and pixelate or otherwise redact the photo when you take it. You can also use it to quickly obscure any other identifying information.
Despite obscuring a large portion of my face with this mug, A match was still made at a distance of an average distance of 0.53, which is near the threshold but still a match. A more sophisticated model would likely defeat this.
Real-World Countermeasures
Broadly speaking, there are three different categories of countermeasure we can use against facial recognition systems in the wild:
The first type of countermeasure attacks the ability of a system to detect a face in the first place. This is going to include anything from simple face coverings to purpose-driven clothing.
The second type of countermeasure is going to cause a false negative with facial recognition, after facial detection has occurred.
The third type of countermeasure is going to attempt to cause a false positive, making the system think that we’re someone else entirely. We’ll call this the “Mission Impossible” countermeasure.
Facial recognition: How to protect yourself from surveillance
With advances in facial recognition, surveillance culture is rising and remaining anonymous in public is getting difficult. In this in-depth guide, we explore how to avoid surveillance from face recognition and ways to protect yourself.
When you think of face paint and glitter, protecting yourself from facial recognition is not the first things that comes to mind, but events like Halloween and kids’ parties. And when you think about a face mask, you might have flashbacks to the COVID-19 pandemic. But believe it or not, these creative techniques, even as simple as a face mask, could help you improve your privacy through anti-facial recognition. In this deep dive, we explore different ways you can throw off facial recognition technologies to remain anonymous in public and protect yourself: whether you’re at a protest, a music festival, or walking in the street.
Surveillance through facial recognition systems is becoming increasingly smart and used globally. It’s not only present at protests or airports, but more worrying when you enter shops, get your car filled up, or go on your commute to work, it’s likely that CCTV and facial recognition technologies have captured your face.
In the UK, for example, the police scanned almost 4.7 million faces with live facial recognition cameras in 2024, which is more than twice as many as in 2023. This is worrying, especially considering that the UK isn’t recognized as a top surveillance state like China, for example.
While some might not be concerned if they live in a surveillance state, for others like minority groups, activists, protesters, or people who care about having privacy, ensuring they protect their identity against cameras and facial recognition software is necessary.
Even though recognition software is becoming smarter and harder to evade, there are still different ways to remain anonymous and steer clear of surveillance from this technology.
When it comes to protecting yourself, you need to be protected in two ways:
Protecting yourself from the surveillance of face recognition software.
Protecting your digital identity, which can be secured with these digital security tips that are especially useful for activists.
We have many in-depth guides which give the best tips to protect your digital identity and jack up the security of your tech devices – be sure to check out the links above and make use of the tips which also improve your privacy and security. Now, let’s deep dive into how to protect yourself from the surveillance of face recognition systems.
What is face recognition, and how does it work?
Face recognition was first created in Japan in 1969, and since then, it has been used globally. While some countries have stricter laws regarding who can use it and how it can be used, in other countries like China (think of the Chinese social credit system) and increasingly in the US and the UK, surveillance through facial recognition tech is becoming the new normal.
Simply put, facial recognition is a biometric identification system that uses machine learning to identify faces in photos, video footage, and even in real-time. This type of identification software is able to convert an image of one’s face into data, and then run it against already existing facial data in databases.
While the top, most advanced recognition tools can get 99.97% accuracy in ideal conditions, there are techniques to bypass these systems by feeding them faulty data. From painting your face in specific ways to wearing a COVID mask, glasses, and a hat.
If you decide to make use of the methods we explore below, we’d recommend doing further research into the type of recognition technology being used and its algorithm to ensure that you have a good chance of not being recognized. This is especially important because there’s not one anti-recognition method that’s bulletproof. Additionally, some techniques are creative and fun but could make you stand out, compared to others which will make you blend in more.
Computer Vision Dazzle: face paint, makeup & hair
Painting your face and applying makeup is not only for parties - you can even use anti-facial recognition makeup to camouflage your face and potentially trick facial recognition or facial detection algorithms in some cases.
The idea of using makeup as a camouflage to avoid facial detection was introduced by Artist Adam Harvey, who also created the open source anti-facial recognition toolkit. Harvey also coined the term Computer Vision Dazzle, CV Dazzle for short, when he discovered that it was an effective way to bypass the Viola-Jones face detection algorithm (commonly used in the past) but has since deprecated.
Because detection tools heavily rely on the dark shadowed areas of the face, like the dark areas under your eyes, your nose bridge, facial symmetry, and the shadow under your nose, if you strategically use makeup and hair on the dark and light areas of the face, you can change the appearance of your facial features. If done correctly, this creates asymmetries and potentially blocks facial detection tools. And because this blocks detection, facial analysis, recognition, and emotional analysis cannot be utilized.
Inspiring examples of CV Dazzle can be seen in The Dazzle Club, a collaborative project by artists Evie Price, Emily Roderick, Georgina Rowlands, and Anna Hart that ran from 2019 - 2021. The project was started after the forced admission of facial recognition software by Argent on the King’s Cross Estate in London where the four artists had been making art.
The idea behind The Dazzle Club, as explained by Emily Roderick, “Making embodied research into public space surveillance - drawing awareness of technologies and building new expressions of community and trust. Walks, films, texts and workshops pay attention to publicness and being seen.” Through interventions in public areas, like their silent walks through London while wearing CV Dazzle, the club highlighted and raised concerns around technology, data, and human rights, while also creating new expressions of collective creativity and trust. Note: If you
decide to embrace CV dazzle, we’d recommend doing in-depth research to ensure how you paint your face and the light and dark spots you camouflage are effective at blocking the probability of detection. It’s important to remember that there are different algorithms used for facial detection and facial recognition, which could require different techniques to hide yourself.
Accessories: sunglasses, caps & masks
There are also many accessories you can use, like a baseball cap, sunglasses, bandannas, or a COVID mask. Think along the lines of accessories that cover large portions of the face.
Face masks & bandannas
Using a face mask is still one of the easiest and most affordable ways to conceal your identity, while also not standing out from the crowd. If you’re protesting and would like to protect your identity from facial recognition and police surveillance, a simple face mask worn with sunglasses or a cap is a good solution. It’s important to be aware that face masks are not allowed to be worn in some locations or at specific events; this is dependent on the laws in your area. So before you opt for this, we’d recommend doing some research to check if you’re legally allowed to be wearing one.
If you’re tired of wearing a face mask (which is understandable) or if it’s illegal in your country, you could wear a bandanna instead – what’s nice with the bandanna is that you can choose to wear one that’s plain or one that’s fun and bright depending on what your needs are.
Caps & hats
Like the face mask, a cap or wide-brim hat is a quick and easy way to help conceal your identity, with the added benefit of protecting you from the sun. If you choose to wear one, make sure the brim is pulled low and avoid wearing caps with logos.
Anti-facial recognition glasses
You can opt for a regular pair of sunglasses, preferably large ones that also cover your eyebrows, or you can buy a pair of anti-CCTV glasses. The anti-CCTV glasses work in different ways by either blocking or reflecting CCTV infrared light (IR), and in return this disrupts the face recognition technology.
Creative frames
Today, there are even creative masks / frames you can wear. A beautiful concept is the Incognito Mask created by Ewa Nowak. This futuristic-looking frame worn around the face makes it impossible for facial recognition systems to measure the distance between and height of your facial features. Clothing
Avoid logos
Avoid clothing with big logos and slogans, and make sure your clothing covers up any tattoos or birthmarks as these can be tracked by the police. This is especially important if you attend a protest, as police are known to identify protesters based on their clothing.
Consider wearing all black
What you choose to wear depends on the place or event. Often all black clothing is a good choice because it helps you blend in, and if you’re attending a solidarity protest, this is usually the suggested color as well.
Anti-surveillance fashion
Yes, anti-surveillance fashion is a thing – it’s like modern-day camouflage! There are many clothing designs and projects that use special fabrics, designs, and patterns to confuse cameras, obscure key facial features and even block signals from tracking devices.
For example, you can get scarves and clothing made out of retro-reflective materials that work by disrupting a camera’s flash, making everything captured in the image go dark when captured in dark or dimmed lighting.
Take a look at these:
Stealth Wear and Hyperface by Adam Harvey
Anti-flash fashion by Ishu
Facial Weaponization Suite by Zach Blas
While anti-surveillance fashion is innovative and fun, it is often more on the pricey side, and it isn’t a bulletproof solution to remain anonymous from facial recognition.
Privacy isn’t easy, but it’s possible
When you think about privacy, there are many aspects to it. Think about it - privacy online to protect our digital identities, and privacy in the physical world to remain anonymous and private when doing our daily tasks. Unfortunately, since there are so many aspects to privacy, actively remaining private or knowing where and how to start can feel overwhelming.
While there is not one bulletproof method to ensure privacy and avoid surveillance through facial recognition software, there are things you can do as we’ve discussed above and it’s amazing to see that they can be creative and fun. Before adopting one of these, always do additional research about the best way to protect yourself from being identified, for example by checking out the excellent guide by the EFF. It’s also important to ensure that you not only protect yourself physically but also digitally. For example, by not taking your mobile device to a protest and using anonymous email like Tuta Mail.
At Tuta Mail we believe that everyone deserves privacy. Whether it be when emailing a friend, walking down the street, or protesting for your rights. As an end-to-end encrypted email provider, serving no ads and no tracking we are committed to not only offering free email that’s anonymous and private by design, but also to educate and inform everyone on the importance of privacy and security.
Together we can make the world a better place.

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How Safe is Your Face?
Europe and US states impose tough restrictions on facial recognition, while the US federal government hesitates. China moves full steam ahead.
When Milan’s Linate Airport introduced a “Faceboarding” facial recognition system — no boarding pass required, just a quick scan and you’re through — Italy’s data protection authorities reacted with horror. They suspended the system, citing “insufficient safeguards” for passengers who had not chosen to participate.
Both European and American approaches to the technology face a common challenge: how to move fast enough to stay competitive with China and other authoritarian states while moving carefully enough to preserve civil liberties.
The technology is advancing fast, driven by artificial intelligence. The market for facial recognition could reach $18 billion (€15.4 billion) by 2030, up from $8 billion today. Scanning a face is convenient compared to collecting fingerprints or encoding an iris. And many consumers like that convenience, whether it be for unlocking a device or boarding a plane where ID was previously required. But biometric data can also be abused, and governments and companies could abuse facial recognition to conduct mass surveillance. Studies show that facial cognition algorithms can be biased and inaccurate, more likely to misidentify people of color — and in particular, women of color.
In Europe, biometric systems must meet strict privacy requirements before they can operate. The US has no comprehensive federal law on facial recognition, though states are rushing to fill the void. Eighteen states have enacted statewide facial recognition technology regulations for law enforcement or broad public use, while three states have pending legislation under consideration or scheduled to take effect. The remaining twenty-nine states have neither active statewide FRT laws nor pending statewide FRT legislation.
China, for its part, has no qualms. It operates surveillance systems at a massive scale through projects like “Skynet” and “Sharp Eyes.” Beijing deploys more than 700 million cameras. In Shanghai, authorities are tripling the number of facial recognition cameras to allow tracking of 50 million citizens. A new National Identity Authentication Law went into effect on July 15, which encourages Chinese citizens to submit their true name and a facial scan, after which they would be issued a unique ID code used for all online accounts
Both the US and Europe want to avoid such mass surveillance.
Europe is tightening regulations. The new AI Act imposes strict obligations on “high-risk” systems, including biometric identification. Data extraction from CCTV or the internet to expand biometric databases is prohibited, unless it is targeted and users consent.
Even voluntary facial recognition schemes face tough European scrutiny. Airport operators in the EU often position biometric boarding as an “optional opt-in” for EU citizens, but data protection authorities and regulators push back. Authorities require robust consent flows, data minimization, retention limits, and data protection impact assessments before these systems can operate.
Penalties are stiff. When US facial recognition company Clearview AI scraped billions of images from social media, breaching European GDPR privacy law, Dutch regulators imposed a €30.5 million fine and ordered the company to delete EU citizens’ images. Austrian privacy group noyb filed a criminal complaint in Austria last month that could subject Clearview executives to personal liability and even imprisonment.
The US approach to facial recognition technology is market first, regulation later. No comprehensive federal law governs commercial or law enforcement use of facial recognition. Regulation remains a patchwork of federal proposals and state and local statutes.
Surveillance use is increasing in the US. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials reportedly employ facial recognition technology to scan motorists’ photos to identify undocumented immigrants. The FBI compares driver’s license and visa photos against the faces of suspected criminals, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
Federal attention is growing. In Congress, various facial recognition bills have been introduced, including a recent proposal requiring the Transportation Security Administration to inform passengers of their right to opt out of face screenings. So far, though, all have stalled.
America’s fragmented approach allows experimentation and fast deployment but creates inconsistent protections. A facial recognition system legal in one state may be banned in another. A practice permitted for private companies may be restricted for the police. This patchwork creates uncertainty for both technology developers and citizens.
Courts are giving broad leeway to roll out facial recognition. When spectators sued New York’s Madison Square Garden for using facial recognition to block entry, a 2024 federal court dismissed the case.
Major US technology companies have implemented some voluntary limitations. Microsoft’s “Responsible AI” standards and product controls include strict access requirements for biometric features and documented risk assessments. Amazon announced a one-year moratorium in 2020 on police use of its “Rekognition” facial recognition product. The company later extended those restrictions indefinitely amid public pressure.
The Milan airport case arguably shows democratic oversight working. An independent regulator reviewed a biometric system, found it lacking in safeguards, and shut it down. No one was arrested. That model — transparent rules, independent enforcement, and accountable decision-making — is slow. It is messy. It creates compliance costs. But it separates the West from China.

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Anti-Facial Recognition Glasses
Facial Recognition and Ghost Glasses
Facial recognition is a powerful tool used by many organizations globally, from governments and tech giants to casinos and fast food joints. It was designed to identify a person through digitally mapped facial features.
The growing use and development of facial recognition technology has raised some major concerns. Some people are worried about being identified without their permission and the risks that may pose to their privacy. There's also no guarantee that data collected by the software will be kept secure or used in an ethical manner.
Accuracy is another big issue. Some facial recognition tools have trouble processing the faces of women, older people, and/or those with darker skin. Wearing a mask or certain cosmetics can also make the software less accurate. This can lead to potential issues with false identification, racial bias, and discrimination.
Anti-facial recognition glasses (or ghost glasses) can make it harder for cameras to get clear photos of the wearer's face. If you want to protect your privacy and avoid having your image captured, ghost glasses may be worth a look.
Read on to learn more about facial recognition technology and the camera-blocking eyewear that may help thwart it.
What Is Facial Recognition?
Facial recognition software uses biometric data — such as the distance between the eyes and nose — to create a unique profile for an individual face. This profile is then compared to all the other profiles in a given database to determine if there is a match that can be used for identification.
Businesses and law enforcement organizations use facial recognition tech to bolster security and aid in investigations. Some companies also use it to better understand customer demographics and behavior.
You can see facial recognition software in action at airports and shopping centers, and when you use Face ID to unlock your smartphone. And your face has probably been tagged automatically in at least one photo on social media.
How Do Anti-Facial Recognition Glasses Work?
Ghost glasses use a combination of techniques to confuse facial recognition software, including:
Infrared-blocking lenses – Some privacy glasses have special lenses that reflect or block the infrared light that cameras use to capture images.
Reflective materials – Some glasses use reflective materials on the frames to disrupt facial recognition technology.
These blocking techniques make it harder for the camera to detect a person’s facial features. Without a clear image or biometric markers to map, it may not be possible for the software to create a profile for comparison.
Camera-blocking glasses sometimes come with different options for tinted lenses, frames, and styles. Some are designed to look like regular sunglasses while others have a more futuristic look. The best place to find them is usually through an online retailer.
Prescription options may also be available if you need vision correction.
Choosing the Right Pair
When shopping for anti-facial recognition glasses, you should consider the following factors:
Material – The lenses and frames should be made from quality materials that won't easily break or scratch. Look for brands with good reviews and high rates of customer satisfaction.
Fit – Glasses that fit comfortably on your face will provide better coverage and make it harder for cameras to capture a clear image. Consider trying them on or comparing measurements with those of your current glasses.
Usage – Think about where you'll be using the glasses most often. Are they for everyday use or just for specific situations? This can help you determine what lens tint and other features will be best.
Price – The price range for camera-blocking glasses can vary. Keep in mind that more expensive glasses aren't always better quality.
Style – Ghost glasses come in many styles and colors, so choose a pair that suits your personal taste and face shape.
UV protection – Some anti-facial recognition glasses also provide UV protection. If this is an option, make sure you get 100% UVA-UVB lens protection. This is an extra bonus if you plan to use the glasses outdoors.
How Effective Is Privacy Eyewear?
While anti-facial recognition glasses can make it harder for cameras to capture a clear image, they are not 100% effective. Some cameras may still be able to capture your face. This depends on your distance from the device and the surrounding light.
It’s also important to remember that facial recognition software is constantly evolving. This means that glasses on the market now are designed to block existing technology. But they may not be effective against future software updates.
Try Privacy Glasses
Ghost glasses can be a useful tool in protecting your identity and privacy, but they’re not completely foolproof. Surveillance technology is constantly evolving, and so are the methods used to block it.
The decision to use anti-facial recognition glasses should be made after careful consideration. With the right pair, you may feel better protected from the less noble uses of facial recognition technology.

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The fashion industry is helping fool face recognition software with new clothing designs
Are you concerned about facial recognition cameras monitoring your every move? Some large venues and arenas are using it as a security measure, claiming it ensures safety for guests and employees. However, the technology is also being used for surveillance and to block people from entering businesses.
As was the case for New Jersey native Kelly Conlan. Conlan was just passing through security at an event at Radio City Music Hall when security stopped her and refused to let her into a Rockettes show because their facial recognition software identified her as an attorney.
Although not involved with the case, Conlan works for the same law firm that has been involved in a personal injury litigation against a restaurant owned by MSG Entertainment, which also owns Radio City Musical Hall. The company decided that all attorneys working for law firms engaged in litigation against them are banned "from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved." More and more of these types of facial recognition incidents are happening nationwide. So what do you do?
Well, one start-up may have the answer to how you can stop this from happening to you. The company is called Cap_able, and its mission is to create wearable fashion that will help you to make the choice of whether you want your face analyzed by facial recognition devices or not.
What is Cap_able, and what have they created?
Through their Manifesto collection, Cap_able has created a line of hoodies, pants, t-shirts, sweaters and dresses that are embedded with artificial intelligence algorithms that thwart facial recognition software.
The facial recognition cameras will either fail to identify you completely or think that you are an animal embedded within the clothing pattern, like a giraffe, zebra or dog. This gives you more control over your body without having to worry about technological devices always monitoring you.
Model wears colorful dress during photoshoot
How are the designs made?
Co-founder and CEO Rachel Didero came up with the idea for these designs while studying for her Master's at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She had read a story about how tenants in Brooklyn fought against their landlord who wanted to have a facial recognition device at the entrance of their building and got inspired to create something that would give people a choice.
Combining fashion and engineering, Cap_able designs and tests each image with an object detection system called YOLO to see if they can beat a facial recognition system. They can then create a physical version of the pattern using a Computerized Knitwear Machine and create the final product using all Egyptian cotton.
Do the designs really work?
Didero says that, as of now, the clothing worked about 60% to 90% of the time when being tested with YOLO. Although Cap_able's algorithms are improving, they also have to keep up with the fast-paced, moving world of tech.
Facial recognition devices are being improved upon every day, so they certainly have their work cut out for them. And with the products starting at the price of $300, it may be a hard sell for the company. However, they make a valid point about the invasion of facial recognition and continue to work hard to improve their technology.
Model wears colorful sweater during photoshoot
Here in the U.S., there is currently no federal law requiring signs to be posted if facial recognition cameras are being used in a public or private place. However, some states and municipalities have laws and regulations regarding the use of facial recognition technology, and those laws may require signs to be posted. It is important for you to check with your local authorities to determine what, if any, requirements apply to the use of facial recognition cameras in your specific area.

A Company Has Figured Out a Way to Make Facial ID Invisible To Detect Or See

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:32:00 +0000

Metalenz’s Polar ID face-scanning technology works even when the camera is hidden under the display.
We're all too familiar with the notch—the unsightly cut-in that graced many smartphones for years, like the iPhone X or the LG G7.
The notch has largely been replaced on today’s smartphones by floating punch-hole cameras that take up less space and look a little more futuristic, though notches are still prevalent on some laptops, like Apple’s MacBooks.
On the iPhone, Apple calls its floating pill-shaped camera system the Dynamic Island, which debuted on the iPhone 14. The iPhone still has the largest camera cutout today, due to its Face ID biometric authentication system. (Barring Google Pixel phones, the vast majority of Android phones don't offer a secure face authentication equivalent, so they don't need a bulky camera cutout.) This island could get much smaller, however, thanks to new under-display camera technology announced at Display Week 2026 from Metalenz, a optics startup from Boston.
A Primer on Metasurfaces
Metalenz’s optical metasurfaces technology is a flat-lens system that uses a fraction of the space of traditional multi-lens elements in most smartphones. You can read more about it in our original coverage of the company here, but in short, instead of refracting light through multiple plastic or glass lens elements—which improves image clarity, corrects aberrations, and brings more light to the camera sensor—metasurfaces use a single lens with nanostructures to bend light rays toward the sensors.
Metalenz says more than 300 million of its metasurfaces are already used in consumer devices today, replacing bulky traditional optics in time-of-flight sensors that capture depth information and assist with a camera's autofocus.
The company also pioneered a method to use these metasurfaces to capture polarization data. When light hits an object with specific material properties, it creates a unique polarization signature. Light reflecting off black ice has a different polarization signature from light reflecting off the road. Using machine learning algorithms, this enables a system that can quickly identify black ice on the road and alert the driver.
That's why the company developed Polar ID, a facial authentication platform to rival Apple's Face ID. With polarization data, its sensors can distinguish a real face from someone wearing an eerily accurate 3D mask of the same person, because the polarization information from light bouncing off a human's skin is unique compared to light bouncing off the silicone of the mask. Yes, it's even more secure than Google's face unlock system on Pixels, which can be spoofed with a high-quality 3D mask.

Metalenz announced a partnership with Qualcomm in late 2023 to scale it up, and now this Polar ID face-recognition system is finally ready for mass production. It will be deployed on consumer devices—laptops and smartphones—in 2027. Its rollout could mean that Android finally gets a Face ID equivalent, with components that use less space than Apple's TrueDepth camera system, and unlike Google's face unlock, it isn’t affected by bright light or dim environments.
“We've now proven with multiple third parties that have done testing that we meet the highest security standards they have in terms of performance, in terms of keeping out masks and any mask of any quality,” Rob Devlin, CEO of Metalenz, tells WIRED.
But the next step? Making those components disappear from view.
The Under-Display Camera
At Display Week, a display technology convention in Los Angeles, Metalenz showed off how its Polar ID system could work underneath an OLED display. You'll still have a selfie camera visible on the screen for, you know, selfies. But the Polar ID system would sit next to it under the display, where it’s effectively invisible.
This isn't the first time we've seen under-display cameras—Samsung famously employed one on several iterations of its Galaxy Z Fold folding smartphone—but image quality greatly suffers when the camera is stuffed under the display. This is likely why Samsung switched to a traditional punch-hole camera on its latest Z Fold7.
That isn't much of a problem with a sensor designed to capture polarization data. Devlin says the signal does get slightly distorted by hiding under the display, and you lose some intensity, but the polarization information largely remains unchanged. You can see in the example image above—the top three images are what the traditional Polar ID sensor sees, and the set below is what it sees when Polar ID is underneath an OLED display.
The display needs a thinned-out section to house the Polar ID sensor, meaning this system requires tight integration with the display manufacturer. But adding that thinner region should not affect panel quality. (Devlin says the company is in early conversations with a few of the bigger smartphone manufacturers but didn’t divulge details.) “You can't really even tell that there is a thinned-out region,” Devlin says about the display.
Over a video call, I watched a demo of Devlin testing Polar ID under OLED, and the system had no trouble authenticating his face or discerning when he was wearing a 3D mask.
“Folks have decided to differentiate along a continuous display versus Apple’s interrupted display,” Devlin says. “So I think this is also something that can really offer face unlock in a truly seamless manner—seamless in the sense that you don't even feel like you're securely unlocking your phone when you are.”
You can imagine that this under-display camera could prove useful not just in phones but in laptops that want to eliminate the notch for a continuous display. While Polar ID will arrive on devices in 2027, Devlin says the under-display version is likely an extra year out and should land in the market in 2028.
Smartphone companies have long been infatuated with an uninterrupted screen experience while minimizing the black bars around the panel, with some, like Samsung, exploring under-display cameras and others even trying pop-up cameras that mechanically rise up out of the phone's frame. It is likely why Android phone makers haven't fully adopted a Face ID-like biometric authentication system: The hardware was too bulky and expensive to justify interrupting a beautiful, edge-to-edge display. Polar ID’s solution might finally give them the security they need without the “island” they've been trying to avoid.

Also:

A New Lens Technology Is Primed to Jump-Start Phone Cameras
The optics in your smartphone have been pretty much the same for more than a decade. That’s about to change.
The camera on the first iPhone way back in 2007 was a mere 2 megapixels. And it only had a rear camera; there wasn't even a front-facing selfie shooter. Today, you'll find multiple cameras on the front and back of phones—some of them with sensors as large as 108 megapixels, like the biggest camera on Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra.
But while the sensor size and megapixel counts of smartphone cameras have increased considerably in the past decade—not to mention improvements in computational photography software—the lenses that help capture photos remain fundamentally unchanged.
A new company called Metalenz, which emerges from stealth mode today, is looking to disrupt smartphone cameras with a single, flat lens system that utilizes a technology called optical metasurfaces. A camera built around this new lens tech can produce an image of the same if not better quality as traditional lenses, collect more light for brighter photos, and can even enable new forms of sensing in phones, all while taking up less space.
A Flat Lens
How does it work? Well, first it's important to understand how phone camera lenses work today. The imaging system on the back of your smartphone may have multiple cameras—the latest iPhone 12 Pro has three cameras on the back—but each camera has multiple lenses or lens elements stacked on top of each other. The main camera sensor on the aforementioned iPhone 12 Pro utilizes seven lens elements. A many-lens design like the iPhone's is superior to a single-lens setup; as light passes through each successive lens, the image gains sharpness and clarity.
Image may contain Light and Electronics
“The optics usually in smartphones nowadays consists of between four and seven lens elements,” says Oliver Schindelbeck, innovation manager at the optics manufacturer Zeiss, which is known for its high-quality lenses. “If you have a single lens element, just by physics you will have aberrations like distortion or dispersion in the image.”
More lenses allow manufacturers to compensate for irregularities like chromatic aberration (when colors appear on the fringes of an image) and lens distortion (when straight lines appear curved in a photo). However, stacking multiple lens elements on top of each other requires more vertical space inside the camera module. It's one of many reasons why the camera “bump” on smartphones has grown larger and larger over the years.
“The more lens elements you want to pack in a camera, the more space it needs," Schindelbeck says. Other reasons for the size of the bump include larger image sensors and more cameras with zoom lenses, which need extra room.
Phone makers like Apple have increased the number of lens elements over time, and while some, like Samsung, are now folding optics to create “periscope” lenses for greater zoom capabilities, companies have generally stuck with the tried-and-true stacked lens element system.
“The optics became more sophisticated, you added more lens elements, you created strong aspheric elements to achieve the necessary reduction in space, but there was no revolution in the past 10 years in this field,” Schindelbeck says.
This is where Metalenz comes in. Instead of using plastic and glass lens elements stacked over an image sensor, Metalenz's design uses a single lens built on a glass wafer that is between 1x1 to 3x3 millimeter in size. Look very closely under a microscope and you'll see nanostructures measuring one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Those nanostructures bend light rays in a way that corrects for many of the shortcomings of single-lens camera systems.
The core technology was formed through a decade of research when cofounder and CEO Robert Devlin was working on his PhD at Harvard University with acclaimed physicist and Metalenz cofounder Federico Capasso. The company was spun out of the research group in 2017.
Light passes through these patterned nanostructures, which look like millions of circles with differing diameters at the microscopic level. “Much in the way that a curved lens speeds up and slows down light to bend it, each one of these allows us to do the same thing, so we can bend and shape light just by changing the diameters of these circles,” Devlin says.
The resulting image quality is just as sharp as what you'd get from a multilens system, and the nanostructures do the job of reducing or eliminating many of the image-degrading aberrations common to traditional cameras. And the design doesn't just conserve space. Devlin says a Metalenz camera can deliver more light back to the image sensor, allowing for brighter and sharper images than what you'd get with traditional lens elements.
Another benefit? The company has formed partnerships with two semiconductor leaders (that can currently produce a million Metalenz "chips" a day), meaning the optics are made in the same foundries that manufacture consumer and industrial devices—an important step in simplifying the supply chain.
New Forms of Sensing
Metalenz will go into mass production toward the end of the year. Its first application will be to serve as the lens system of a 3D sensor in a smartphone. (The company did not give the name of the phone maker.)
Devlin says current 3D sensors, like Apple's TrueDepth camera for Face ID, actively illuminate a scene with lasers to scan faces, but this can be a drain on a phone's battery life. Since Metalenz can bring in more light to the image sensor, he claims it can help conserve power.
Other good news? If it's a 3D sensor on the front of a phone for face authentication, Devlin says the Metalenz system can eliminate the need for a bulky camera notch jutting into the screen, like the one in current iPhones. The amount of space saved by forgoing traditional lens elements will enable more phone makers to put sensors and cameras beneath a device's glass display, something we'll see more of this year.
Devlin says the applications for Metalenz reach beyond smartphones. The technology can be used in everything from instruments for health care to augmented- and virtual-reality cameras, to the cameras in automobiles.
Take spectroscopy as an example. A spectrometer is used to finely detect different wavelengths of light, and it's commonly employed in medical assays to identify particular molecules in the blood. As metasurfaces allow you to collapse “a tabletop of optics into a single surface,” Devlin claims you can pop the right sensors in a smartphone with Metalenz to do the same kind of work.
“You can actually look at the chemical signature of fruit with a spectrometer and tell whether it's ripe,” Devlin says. “It's really not just an image anymore, you're actually accessing all sorts of different forms of sense, and seeing and interacting with the world, getting a whole new set of information into the cellphone.”

The Pope’s True Loyalty Is To Globalism, Not Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:22:00 +0000

They used to call it the “new world order” – A partially public and partially covert agenda to dismantle western civilization. Its purpose is to upend the global financial system, destroy liberty minded movements and eventually erase nations and borders to produce a single communist-like central government ruled by the elitist class.
Today, there are many names for this “beast system”. Some call it the “multipolar world order” even though it would not actually be multipolar. Others call it the “Great Reset”. But the NWO concept that has been promoted most in our post-pandemic discourse is the idea of “Multiculturalism”.
Multiculturalism has always been in the background, at least since the Obama years. It was right under the surface, waiting to be used as a vehicle to move the globalist vision forward. The American people have been prepped for it for generations. The Europeans are currently suffocating in it and it might be too late for them.
The strategy seems rather simple but it is actually a complex effort relying on numerous moving parts synchronized to maximum effect. The most important mechanism is narrative and social influence; the public has to be taught to accept multiculturalism as an inevitability. This brings us to the modern church and its abandonment of western values.
The Vatican’s Shift Into Multiculturalism
In recent news, Pope Leo XIV triggered widespread debate among conservatives when he offered up a thinly veiled attack on the Trump Administration, calling US strikes on Iran’s infrastructure akin to “war crimes”. Interestingly, Leo refused to condemn the wholesale slaughter of protesters by the Iranian regime until this week, likely due to pressure from conservative critics calling out the hypocrisy.
The Pope has been an avid critic not just of Trump, but conservative anti-immigration movements in general. In December of 2025 he argued:
“I know that in Europe there are, many times, fears that are present, but oftentimes generated by people who are against immigration and trying to keep out people who may be from another country, another religion, another race. And in that sense, I would say we all need to work together…”
This runs parallel to Leo’s statements in July of 2025, when he asserted that:
“The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges… She knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”
The treatment of immigrants as almost “divine” is a bizarre byproduct of the multicultural religion. This idea has been presented by several popes in recent decades, comparing refugees and illegal immigrants to the Holy Family traveling to Egypt to escape King Herod. In reality, Mary and Joseph were Roman subjects and merely traveled from one part of the Roman Empire to another. They were not “immigrants”, illegal or otherwise.
Keep in mind, the Pope lives within a secure compound protected by two miles of walls standing 40 feet high. The Vatican is one of the most restricted pieces of ground on the planet. Like most globalist elites, he never has to deal with the consequences of the mass immigration policies he supports.
For instance, the Vatican has refused to comment on the rising tide of crime and violence (including rape gangs) caused by mass immigration, specifically from Muslim countries. Nor has he commented on Islamic communities enforcing Sharia Law in Europe in defiance of integration.
In fact, Pope Leo pretends as if these problems simply don’t exist and that the millions of people opposed to third world migration are acting out of bigotry rather than a rational concern for the safety of their families and their culture.
And make no mistake, the Catholic Church has played an integral role in the spread of mass immigration. Under Joe Biden, the Catholic Church enjoyed over $200 million in direct grants for helping bring hundreds of thousands of migrants to the US. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was responsible for settling around 18% of all “refugees” and asylum seekers entering the US from 2021 to 2024.
The EU’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) has budgeted over $10 billion from 2021 to 2027 for organizations helping to settle millions of migrants in Europe, and a large portion of that budget goes to Catholic-based NGOs.
To many Christians the Pope still represents a central figure of influence despite the Vatican’s clear shift to the political left over the past several decades and its increasing abandonment of traditionalism. To non-Catholics (and wise Catholics), the office of the Pope is viewed as a Trojan Horse designed to destroy Christianity and the west from within.
The Vatican has grown into a purveyor of the progressive movement since the Vatican II reforms in the 1960s. These reforms including a focus on “interfaith relations” (universal religion) and a policy of detaching the church from its role as a pillar of western civilization. Today, 47% of Catholics vote Democrat despite the fact that woke ideology directly violates many of the most sacred Christian principles.
The Church’s interest in Muslim immigration spiked in 2010 under Pope Benedict XVI and they have been deeply involved with mass migration programs ever since, often in coordination with leftist politicians.
The Alliance Between The Vatican And The Luciferian Elites
Nothing woke up the masses more, in my opinion, than the nightmare of the Covid pandemic. During this crisis the globalists proudly proclaimed their intentions to lock down the world, enforce perpetual vaccine mandates, establish a medical tyranny and fast-track every NWO program imaginable.
One such program was the “Council For Inclusive Capitalism”, which I believe was the intended foundation for a global government; the top of the pyramid. The project was announced as a partnership between globalist controlled corporations, leftist NGOs, climate organizations, the Rothschild Family and, of course, the Vatican.
The Vatican’s mission within the council seemed to revolve around promoting socialism as “Christian adjacent” (This is a lie – Christianity encourages independent and voluntary charity, not forced charity through government taxation or atheistic collectivism). They were also tasked with forming a platform for a “universal religion”, or a union of religions.
The CIC took advantage of the hysteria surrounding the pandemic to advance the multicultural agenda as well as ESG (a program meant to use corporations to enforce woke ideology through social and financial influence). The project ultimately failed when the covid narrative fell apart.
The Council has since gone underground. However, in 2026 the Vatican Bank approved the appointment of François Pauly, a former Rothschild director, to lead its Board of Superintendence. The CIC is undeniable proof that the Vatican and associated leaders are intertwined with the luciferian elites. It is no longer a conspiracy “theory”, but a confirmed fact.
The Crusaders Were Right, The Globalist Pope Is Wrong
In 1095 AD at the Council of Clermont in France, Pope Urban II gave a speech on the relentless invasion of the Ottoman Turks which was threatening to destroy Europe and the last vestiges of western civilization. He appealed to Christian men to stand and fight, to stop the erasure of Christendom. For 300 years the Muslims had cut into the heart of the Holy Roman Empire, migrating and conquering as they went.
By the time of Urban’s call to arms, the Islamic caliphates had taken over 60% of all Christian lands and were on the doorstep of Western Europe.
Before this speech it was widely believed that Christians would not organize or fight. The success of Urban’s plea for action shocked the Pope himself. Thus began the First Crusade to save the west. In the end, the Muslims were pushed out of Europe, back to the Arab lands. Without the crusades we would still be living in the dark ages of a Muslim theocracy.
Nothing has changed since then in terms of the conflict. The western world is still completely incompatible with Islam. What has changed, rather, is the circumstances and the players. Today, the Vatican is a multicultural monstrosity working with people who, more than anything, want open borders, the dismantling of the west and the elimination of Christianity.
They clearly see Islamic immigration (and third world immigration from socialist nations) as a valuable weapon for cleaving the US and Europe. As I noted in my recent article “The US Separation From And NATO Is Long Overdue”, European globalists have used mass immigration to implant a foreign army to subdue and control the native population. It is a tactic as old as time – Political leadership using subsidized foreign hordes as a way to control their own rebellious citizens.
This is why they have ignored every reasonable call by the populace for reforms and deportations. This is why they ignore the rape gangs, the murders, the terrorism. They WANT these things to happen. That’s why they let the barbarians inside the gates in the first place. The Vatican and the Pope are a part of this agenda. As an institution, the Papacy was tasked with protecting the western world. If the Vatican is casting aside this sacred duty, then it no longer represents Christianity.

Bugs Were Supposed to be the Future of Food. Now, the Industry is Collapsing.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:06:00 +0000

How the farmed-insect frenzy lost its buzz.
“We have to get used to the idea of eating insects.”
This proclamation came from, of all people, an insect researcher. Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke pitched eating bugs in his 2010 TED talk as critical to sustainably feeding a growing human population, because insects have a much smaller carbon footprint than beef, pork, and chicken.
To make his point, he even featured photographs of what might be a common meal in this bold new future: a stir-fry with mealworm larvae, mushrooms, and snap peas, finished with a chocolate dessert topped with a large fried cricket.
Three years later, the United Nations published a comprehensive report that echoed many of Dicke’s ideas and argued that insects could be a more eco-friendly food source not just for humans, but also for livestock. The report received widespread media coverage and helped to trigger a wave of investment from venture capital firms and governments alike into insect farming startups across Europe, the US, Canada, and beyond, totaling some $2 billion.
There’s a ring of truth, it turns out, to the conspiracy theory that the globalist elites want us to eat bugs.
This money was pouring into insect agriculture at a time when investors and policymakers were hungry for new models to fix the conventional meat industry’s massive carbon footprint. And what’s more disruptive and novel than farming and eating bugs?
You personally might recoil at the thought of eating fried crickets or roasted mealworms, but many cultures around the world consume insects, either caught from the wild or farmed on a small scale. And while grubs don’t feature prominently in current paleo cookbooks, our paleolithic ancestors most certainly ate plenty of bugs.
But the past decade has shown that even if you build an insect farm, the global market may not come. Of the 20 or so largest insect farming startups, almost a quarter have gone belly up in recent years, including the very largest, Ÿnsect, which ceased operations in December.
All told, shuttered insect farming startups account for almost half of all investment into the industry. “Things have gone from bad to worse for the big insect factory business model,” one insect farming CEO said late last year in a YouTube video.
And Vox can exclusively report that plans to build a large insect farm in Nebraska—a joint project between Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat company, and Protix, now the world’s second largest insect farming company—are indefinitely on hold.
Beyond the financial woes of the insect farming industry, some philosophers worry about the ethical implications of potentially farming tens of trillions of bugs for food, as emerging research suggests insects may well have some form of consciousness and hold the capacity to feel pain and suffer.
“Evidence is building that there’s a form of sentience there in insects,” Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at the London School of Economics who leads the Foundations of Animal Sentience project at the university, told me last year.
But it looks like they may not have too much to worry about. In spite of the initial hype surrounding the bug farming boom, the insect agriculture industry has learned just how difficult it is to compete with the incumbent, larger animal-based meat industry—and that, perhaps, it never really made sense to try doing so with bugs.
Insect farming is similar to other types of animal farming. The insects reproduce, and the offspring are raised in large numbers in factory-style buildings. Many of the same welfare concerns for farmed chickens and pigs are present on insect farms, like disease, cannibalism, and painful slaughter. In the case of insects, the creatures are killed by a variety of means. They might be frozen, baked, roasted, shredded, grond, microwaved, boiled, or suffocated.
In 2020, insect companies farmed an estimated 1 trillion bugs, and the most commonly farmed species today are black soldier fly larvae, mealworms, and crickets.
While some people might tell researchers they’re open to adding bugs to their diet, these smallest of animals remain a novelty food in the US and Europe, as opposed to a commodity capable of displacing wings or burgers.
“The human food market, basically, has not materialized,” Dustin Crummett, a philosopher and executive director of The Insect Institute—a nonprofit that researches the environmental and animal welfare implications of large-scale insect agriculture—told me. “Only a tiny fraction of farmed insects are used for human food.”
But insect farming startups haven’t only sought to put insects on our plates or grind them into protein bars; many want to sell insect meal (ground up insects) as feed for other farmed animals. It’s a sustainable alternative, they argue, to the soy fed to factory-farmed chickens and cattle, much of which is grown on deforested land. Insect meal could also replace fishmeal (largely composed of small, wild-caught species, like anchovies and sardines), which is fed to farmed fish and heavily contributes to overfishing.
This approach of farming insects for livestock feed, however, isn’t materializing either, and much of it comes down to cost.
According to a 2024 analysis published in the journal Food and Humanity and co-authored by Crummett, the cost of insect meal is about 10 times that of soybean meal and 3.5 times that of fishmeal, a major cost gap that is unlikely to narrow anytime soon.
Insect meal is so expensive, in part, because feeding insects is expensive. Farmed insects are typically fed agricultural “co-products”—like wheat bran and corn gluten—most of which is already fed to livestock, and so insect farmers have wound up in competition with big meat companies to buy up these ingredients. This simple fact weakens the narrative often driven by insect farming startups that they are putting food scraps that otherwise would’ve been thrown away to good use.
“Organic waste from the industry becomes feed for insects,” Protix’s website reads. “This circular food production mirrors nature’s circle of life.” But this is misleading; Protix feeds its insects ingredients like oat husk and starch, which are typically used in traditional livestock feed anyway. “It doesn’t really make sense to buy chicken feed to feed insects to feed to chicken,” as one insect farming startup founder told AgriTech Insights a couple of years ago.
And it’s not guaranteed that insect meal will be more sustainable than soy or fishmeal. According to a UK government report, the environmental impact of insect farming depends on a number of factors, including what insects are fed and whether startups power their farms with fossil fuels or renewable energy.
Energy usage explains a lot of the industry’s cost challenge. Farmed insects require warm temperatures, and in Europe, where so many of the startups are based, energy prices have sharply risen in recent years.
To lower costs and develop new revenue streams, some insect farming startups have pivoted to become “waste management” companies, too. Rotting food waste in landfills is a huge source of global greenhouse gas emissions, and insect farming companies can earn money by taking it off other companies’ hands and letting bugs eat it.
But here, too, the industry has run into obstacles, including strict EU regulations around what can be fed to insects and an inconsistent product. When insects are fed food waste, their final nutritional profile can vary widely depending on what they’re fed, but livestock feed companies need nutritional consistency.
And it turns out that even the largest and most powerful companies in the space can run into hard, economic realities when trying to rear bugs on waste en masse.
In late 2023, America’s biggest meat company, Tyson Foods, announced it had invested an undisclosed sum of money in Protix, a large Dutch insect farming startup. That Tyson was putting its weight behind it seemed like much-needed proof that insects could be the future of food, as so many startups, investors, and researchers had claimed.
The two companies planned to build a massive insect farm together near Tyson’s cattle slaughterhouse in Dakota City, Nebraska. At the insect farm, Protix would raise and kill around 70,000 tons of larvae annually—what I estimate to be approximately 300 billion individual insects. The bugs would feed on cattle paunch, partially digested plant matter removed from the stomachs of cattle slaughtered at Tyson’s plant. After a few weeks of feeding on the animal waste, the larvae would be slaughtered and ground up into insect meal, destined to become food for pets and livestock.
It was a way for Tyson to “derive value” from its waste, as it told CNN.
Now, Vox can exclusively report that Tyson Foods has withdrawn its air permit application to build the plant, and the plant itself is “on hold indefinitely.” That’s according to email exchanges last December between Tyson Foods and the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment, which were obtained through public records requests by the nonprofit Society for the Protection of Insects.
Tyson and Protix did not respond to questions for this story.
The companies’ stalled plans aren’t unique in the insect farming space.
In early 2024, Innovafeed—currently the largest insect farming startup—opened a pilot plant in Decatur, Illinois, in partnership with ADM, the massive food and livestock feed manufacturing company. The US Department of Agriculture awarded Innovafeed a $11.7 million grant to turn insect waste into fertilizer at the plant, but a year and a half after it opened, it suspended operations, citing funding challenges.
Through a public records request, Society for the Protection of Insects obtained over 600 pages of documents pertaining to the grant, though about half of it is redacted, including much of the environmental review and Innovafeed’s commercial records. Last week, the organization sued the USDA over the heavy redactions, arguing it’s in the public’s interest to fully disclose the details of the deal.
The USDA declined to comment on pending litigation, and Innovafeed did not respond to questions for this story.
The biggest blow to the industry yet came late last year when the largest startup of them all—France-based Ÿnsect, which had raised over $600 million, representing nearly a full third of the sector’s funding—ran out of money. And a quarter of that backing had come from the French government. A recent whistleblower investigation alleged severe mismanagement at Ÿnsect’s production facility that led to filthy conditions and health problems for workers. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
As insect farming startups struggle to stay afloat, their main trade group—the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed (IPIFF)—is going so far as to call on the European Union to mandate publicly funded food services, like school cafeterias, to buy insect meat and publicly owned farms to buy insect meal to feed to their animals. IPIFF didn’t respond to an interview request for this story, nor did the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture.
As for the outlook of the insect farming sector, more startups will probably go under in the years ahead, and for the survivors to continue on, they may need to leave Europe and North America for warmer climates and lower operating costs.
But the rise, fall, and resettling of the industry isn’t uncommon in the agricultural technology field, Crummett says. Vertical farming, for example, seemed like a great idea on paper, but it’s been an economic failure.

Also:

Bug Out: the Insect-farming Industry Is Collapsing, for Reasons That Aren’t Hard To Guess
Perhaps the greatest revelation of the Department of Government Efficiency, apart from the sheer, staggering scale of the pork, was just how much of it was being funnelled through USAID—and, of course, where it was going and to whom.
All of a sudden, we discovered that literally everything awful in the world—from drag-queen storytime in Vanu’atu and sex-changes for dwarfs in Morocco, to research into rare aardvark viruses and cat-torture in China—all of it was being paid for with US taxpayer money via USAID.
Fancy that!?
So why not insect-farming too?
It certainly fits the bill. It’s evil and disgusting and runs counter to all our deepest, most fundamental instincts; it serves no real purpose except to degrade, humiliate and elicit sniggers—if not uproarious laughter—from those who came up with the idea and would never, under any circumstances, do it themselves.
In short, it’s perfect.
Well, I did a little digging and, to my surprise, it doesn’t look like the US taxpayer was propping up the global insect-farming industry, not really. USAID made a “request for information” in 2022, meaning it was looking for input on how it could invest in the industry, but other than that it was just a few small-scale projects in places like Uganda, Madagascar and Indonesia to help farmers feed their livestock with black soldier flies or dispose of waste by feeding it to worms—stuff like that.
So, it’s just a coincidence that insect-farming is on its last… legs, ahem, after Kekius Maximus took his gold-plated chainsaw to the United States Agency for International Development.
Anyway, none of this changes the fact that insect-farmers are, indeed, in very deep trouble.
A long article on Mother Jones examines the industry’s woes in detail, from its early days with so much promise, when billions of dollars poured into startups from venture-capital firms and governments; to today’s dismal prospects. In recent years, almost a quarter of the 20 largest insect-farming startups have now failed, including the biggest, Ynsect, which came tumbling down last December.
“Things have gone from bad to worse for the big insect factory business model,” one unhappy CEO said in a YouTube video.
Plans for further expansion, including the building of a massive insect farm in Nebraska by Tyson Foods, have been placed on indefinite hold.
As if to add insult to injury, moral philosophers are now proposing that, far from being ethical, bug-farming on an industrial scale is, like traditional farming, deeply immoral. Insects, apparently, have some form of consciousness, feel pain and may even have opinions about the final season of Stranger Things.
I pondered the question of insect sentience this morning while I sat on the toilet and watched a woodlouse meander across the bathroom floor. Frankly, I’m not convinced. But if moral philosophers—a useless lot, for the most part—can make life harder for insect-farmers, then I’m happy to let them do it.
End cruelty to mealworms! Worker ants of the world, unite—you have nothing to lose but your chains!
Energy-price increases have played a big role in the industry’s misery, driving up the cost of heating the enormous warehouses where the insects are farmed. Costs are especially high in Europe, where more sensible energy policies could have been devised by a four-year-old child with water on the brain.
It also turns out feeding insects is expensive—maybe even more expensive than feeding some larger animals, like fish. We were told the opposite.
But, of course, the biggest problem is that nobody wants to eat insects. Obviously. It doesn’t matter how many times we’re told “cockroach milk” is the next superfood, or that we have to eat crickets instead of chicken to save the planet from global boiling, people just don’t want to do it.
In large part, the problems of the insect-farmers are the problems of the so-called “alternative protein” industry more broadly.
Nobody wants to eat “plant-based meat” either, or “plant-based eggs,” or “lab-grown meat” or any other eldritch abomination spawned in a bioreactor and dressed up as a cruel mockery of Mother Nature’s perfection.
During the pandemic, the makers of these products started to change tack as it became clear sales were flagging and projections laughably optimistic. They turned from claims about taste and health benefits—which nobody really believed—to manipulation and shame-based marketing. The most notable example was the barf-inducing “Help Dad” campaign from “oat-milk” brand Oatly. Tragically unhip fathers were confronted by their broccoli-haired kids and put through a plant-based struggle-session at the fridge door. Dad’s crime? Reaching for a cold glass of cow’s milk instead of Oatly.
Unsurprisingly, despite market research that suggests shame is the best way to market oat milk and insects, consumers aren’t buying it. So long as there are free-market mechanisms driving what ends up on store shelves, consumers will keep on buying the real thing instead.
Which is why pressure groups are now trying to get government to step in and force consumers to buy insects. The International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed is calling on the European Union to mandate that taxpayer-funded food services, including school cafeterias, sell insect “meat” and that publicly owned farms feed their animals insectmeal—ground-up insects. Other groups are trying to do the same thing in the US.