Open Thread - 02-14-25 - A Big What If
I'm going to be a bit late getting this one out this morning. I ran across an article late last night that changed the course of my original intention for today's open thread. It's about something that's been on my mind for a while now and the article that I'm going to highlight makes a compelling case.
I hesitate writing about this because I'm having as much fun as anyone else watching the greedheads squirm on Capital Hill. The article is speculative in nature, but if correct may have profound implications.
I've written several times in the past about the current iteration of AI (Artificial Intelligence). AI is marketed as a game changer for humanity with powers attributed to it beyond it's present scope. It's given god-like properties by those doing the marketing as there's lots of money to be made from its applications. It is falsely advertised by its proponents like it is a sentient entity, which in reality, it is not and may never be.
AI is, in its essence and at the present, nothing but more or less a glorified search engine. It scrapes (copies) massive amount of data from the internet and deposits it into a database where it can be cross indexed to answer queries. So far, the data base, the internet, is one that we all have access to, but because of limitations we individually lack the ability to store all of the information gleaned from the source.
But, what if AI was able to scrape the mother-lode of all data and added it to a massive database? The mother-lode being all of the data from the US government. Imagine the power one could wield with access to all of governmental information at the tip of the fingers. Sounds like it would be impossible, right? How could anyone be allowed to access that data to the point where it could be scraped?
Let's take a look.
This sub stack article The Sack of Rome: Elon Musk's Digital Coup by Naomi Wolf explains it better than I ever could. Naomi Wolf has been vilified by both the right and the left over the years. She was a true blue lefty for most of her life, but just a few short years ago she switched sides to the right. I wont go into detail about that since many of you may already know that story. To me, all of that doesn't add up to a hill of beans if she can provide an intelligent argument on a subject that she is versed on.
The article is a bit long but I recommend that you read it in its entirety. I'll highlight some of the pertinent points.
For a week, I’ve been savaged on X (which technologist Elon Musk, of course, co-owns), for urgently trying to warn people about what those few days in early February, 2025, when Elon Musk and five or six young engineers were alone with their devices plugged in to all our nation’s data, may represent. These few days represent a Rubicon that can never now be un-crossed, during which data and IP (intellectual property) captivation may have made Musk (and the people with whom he now allies) more powerful than any President, including more powerful than President Trump; more powerful than any nation-state, more powerful than the WEF and the WHO, more powerful than any prime minister, and more powerful than any other CEO or leader of any other set of corporations.
Snip...
So, like a weary would-be Paul Revere, though imagine him sans horse and almost sans a voice, I am taking to one of the last free speech platforms, to try to explain in non-techie language, for all US citizens; certainly for Team Trump — whose overall agenda I still support, if the coup by Silicon Valley can be un-f—-ed; for our elected representatives, and for the courts, none of whom speak the language of digital data — the layers of danger represented by the Sunday in February on which Musk and his engineers were alone with our records, with no real oversight and no secure firewalls.
Snip...
President Trump would, he may have assumed, decapitate the deep state through through using Musk, and through data.
But by doing so, President Trump may have opened a door, unknowingly, in his own ramparts, to admit a lethal Trojan Horse.
Once Musk’s AI has all the government data, yes, President Trump is right, there will be no real need for Congress, and the bureaucrats will be disempowered.
But also — has Team Trump thought this through? — there will be little need for a US President either, and the US President will have relatively little power.
There will also be little need for real American citizens, and they too will have little or no power.
Snip...
Musk may now have the records of where everyone banks, with whom they may have loans or mortgages; he can combine these with records of where everyone lives, and who their dependents are; he can combine all that with records of what medical treatments they have now and had in the past, and in turn combine that with contracts for their businesses (which contracts in many cases will reveal protected trade secrets, such as the vendors of software for digital companies); Musk can combine these in turn with government contract details. He can also make a map with X rays of all of his business competitors; this would be a crime, according to Fitts, if a government employee did it, as he or she is prevented from using government content to his or her own separate financial benefit.
The separation of agencies’ datasets, under normal circumstances, and past privacy safeguards, all meant that no one could create a social credit score with the US government’s data, let alone use to it to target dissidents and critics.
Now that protection is gone.
Snip...
The Broligarchs were after the most valuable tranche of un-monetized data in the world -- that of the US Federal Government.
Elon Musk’s special alone time with our data may be a big part of that.
Does Team Trump fully understand all of this?
Again, Musk could have easily identified waste, fraud and abuse — and gotten the man for whom he works, all the same exciting headlines — legally and securely.
He made the decision not to do so.
This begs the question:
Why not?
I'm still on the fence about this, but if Naomi is right it portends potential dire consequences for us all.
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
this is a work in progress. I wrote it in a rush this morning and will tweak and add to it of and on to make it more cogent.
I have been shouting warnings about Elon Musk ever since he bought Twitter. That he isn't who he shows himself to be. That's just a gut feeling on my part. I know he's a hero to many and frankly, as I stated in this OT, I'm having great fun watching heads explode by his revelations.
At the same time I still look at Musk with a side eye, some of his ideas are quite frightening and the way he's entered the world stage is suspect.
Anyway, I wanted to throw this out there for your perusal. There may or may not be something to it, but if there is it could have significant consequences for us all. If there isn't anything to it, and Naomi is wrong, then more power to Elon Musk in his attempt to uncover waste and fraud.
Hi JtC.
I check in weekly now. Walter Isaacson wrote a very good biography on BORG (Musk) titled Elon Musk. I had Musk tagged as an idiot-savant megalomaniac from Day One. I was familiar with Isaacson's work so figured I would tackle this one. Know thy enemy, etc. The mindset of BORG is the same old malevolent garbage that's cursed recorded human history throughout the centuries. He's also human, and does have weaknesses. tRump is nothing more than a figure headed bobble doll. Someone needs to get him a decent makeup artist. He looks like a badly made up corpse. Sadly, our Congress and SCOTUS is riddled with corruption, but this Project 2025 has been on-going for at least 50+ years. AI is a joke. Anywho, I'm rambling. You take care! Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Time will tell...
whether he's a saint or a villain. I'm still on the fence about that.
Naomi Wolf points out that Trump may have been duped with an "exposing waste and corruption" ploy to gain access to the holy grail of data.
Let's hope she's wrong.
Thanks for stopping by.
As you pointed out, AI is little more than a search engine
.
granted it is a very big and very fast data conglomerator, but the idea of a
human designed machine replacing individual human thought processes
is a stretch. We have already witnessed the use of this tech commercially
marketing products and concepts to info consumers at a vast scale.
Quantum computing is beyond most peoples grasp. Perhaps the Chinese
Deepseek, being open sourced, will expose the intents of the programmers?
It is hard to describe, but I still trust gut reactions. Rationalization has its limits.
Thanks for the OT!
question everything
It goes a little deeper...
than just a search engine.
Naomi Wolf is positing that if Elon Musk is actually scraping the US government data that he has access to, then he could use that info to make himself king of the world.
Just for one example, he could bypass the actual government and set up his own kingdom, if you will. He could use all of the various data to set up his own social credit score system which could essentially cut anyone off from society that transgresses from whatever policies he may set.
Add this to his projects of Neuralink, SpaceX, Starlink, Twitter and his Everything App and it doesn't take much imagination to see where this might lead to.
I wouldn't be
at all surprised if Elon has something other than altruism in mind.
The backlash is beginning. We'll know that he's gone too far when he is suddenly reported to have committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head three times while slipping on a banana peel while holding his hair dryer in the shower as his private jet crashes, or some such.
All of this will have significant consequences for us all, whether some aggrieved party offs him or he gets to run roughshod for the full 4 years. I have no idea what those consequences will be- but the infinite databases of all our foibles have always been there, ripe for the picking. The only question was who would pick them, and when.
From the Moody Blues:
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Could all government...
workers be fired, including the president, and the government run by AI? Is that where we're headed?
Or maybe a parallel rogue shadow government run by AI?
Think about that one, my friend.
If one believes that
AI actually *works*, then perhaps. I know that it doesn't, so that scenario isn't really on my radar. Besides, there will always be some human greedheads that will want to sit on top of the heap and skim all that they can- so there's another reason that I don't think that literally everything will be replaced by AI. Greed is far too powerful a motivator for H. sap. And at that level of greed, I would expect open warfare between the oligarchs before they'd ever get their personal AI fully ready to go. Elon may think that he's a shoo-in for that role, but he's a rank amateur compared to many of the old guard.
However, if they do decide to let an AI run everything, we'll all be dead shortly afterwards- because AI is wrong so often, prone to hallucination and invention of non-facts, and generally untameable and therefore unusable. I would expect our AI master to launch everything in the first hour or so, just to be rid of us. And in that case, at least my nightmares will end.
I was speaking with a long time supplier used by my employer, and they told me that in order to reduce costs they were laying off their cadre of experts, and were instead going to use their brand-new AI "expert system" to answer all customer questions. I told them "Nice doing business with you", and immediately removed them from our approved vendor list (as well as contacting some of said experts to see if they wanted a new job). Their competitors will appreciate the business, I'm sure.
Not a fan, and will never be.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I can see...
a scenario where AI is used for most of the mundane things that bureaucracies currently do, with a president or committee or bureau that makes the actual decisions. Other than that, no, AI doesn't work in its present form as far as actual "thinking" goes.
That is true.
And such systems already exist; they've been being fed vast amounts of data by Carnivore, Altivore, Fairview, ECHELON, PRISM, STORMBREW, and the many other Total Information Awareness programs run by the defense/intelligence communities since the late '90s. There's a locked room in essentially every major telephone exchange and internet provider point-of-presence just for that purpose, feeding its take off to the agencies who desire it. And there are several data centers like this one, just sponging up all that yummy data to make available to its "customers".
I remember this episode all too well:
I was working there at the time, but left not long after that.
If Elon wants to provide a true service with his newfound MasterOfAllDigital powers, he could simply out all these programs. Give them names, and let people know what DARPA and the three-letter agencies have been doing for all these years and how much has been spent on it.
The problem for him is that he'd be unalived within minutes. So all we have on our side is the EFF. And I don't think that that's enough...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
This is a really good assessment
of AI. And yea, I don't trust AI at all.
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
A week ago
I had the same thought as Naomi Wolf. If the Muskrats job is to rout out government waste, why is it the very first thing he did was steal all our personal information. Does he suspect us all of wasting the governments money? If that wasn't scary enough, now he wants to impeach the judges that have put a temporary hold on DOGE actions.
After the first few weeks of the current administration, one thought keeps going around in my head, this isn't going to end well for any of us that are not in the big club.
I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.
It's not clear...
that Musk has stolen any data since supposedly he was only granted "read only" access to the data which would theoretically prevent him from copying any information. But, do we really know?
I've seen it speculated upon all over he internet that Trump was selected to bring on the Great Reset. I'm not sure I agree with that, but if the financial system collapses and a CBDC is implemented then that could be a glaring clue.
Let's hope not.
Musk's kids had write access
that is known. wrote new paths to access the Treasury system. Also plugged in hard drives.
That is known info. How many of the computer systems they accessed this was done in is not known.
I haven't seen that...
do you have a link to prove they had write permissions? You don't need write permissions to make new "paths" nor to plug in hard drives.
It leaves out Trump
He and Musk are a partnership. I'm sure it's not just a download of information, but a lot of backdoor continuous real time accumulating of data. It could be used as predictive, manipulative or both. As an enforcement tool imagine you woke up and couldn't use any of your credit cards or do any banking, your phone didn't work, you couldn't log on to the internet. The FBI is asking questions of your employer. No charges, just asking questions.
or
You order something online, and you, everyone, gets a different price for an item. Same for insurance or renting an apartment, or car. Or you log onto a search engine and the things you search for is tailored just for you. Not by your choices but by where the search engine wants you to go. This becomes 100% normal. We make choices by the information we have. If we're fed information that steers us, how will we know, where will we go? America is being remade right in front of us, and we don't know how to stop it.
Exactly...
as I stated in my OT last week, we are witnessing the Great Reset in real time.
The question Naomi poses is: will it be the federal government that imposes the reset along with CBDCs and digital IDs and a social credit score, or will it be Elon Musk using a rogue AI government?
Either way, I don't like it.
It will probably
be both. Surveillance of financial transactions, of movement by phones, automobiles, cameras..of any electronic communication. All that would be exploitable by either, and by sharing more than double the amount of information on us.
I can see an new underground economy developing that would not be traceable, and hopefully ways to become opaque to outside observation. How, I don't know but Musk and Trump will end up with their own bureaucracy, that as it ages will look more and more like the one we have now, and be just as inefficient. It's the way of bureaucracy everywhere.
The big attraction of the cryptocurrency scams, bitcoin,
etc. is they leave no physical records. Criminals love them, and have since they were first introduced.
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Not worried about described scenarios sometime in the future.
All of them are occurring now in the United States. Many of the practices have been happening for multiple years. Naomi Wolf's article describes her own recent experiences and worries. She is not an isolated example. If as a society we only react to Musk's actions all the other existing players will continue to expand their expanding ability of collecting data and using the information.
Many individuals and groups do not object or change their behavior until it happens to them in a negative manner. Ironically many rush to use the newest technology and assist in improving the tools for data aggregation, manipulation techniques and control capabilities.
Maybe with the Musk saga more citizens will wake up and see the fencing slowly tightening around them. If Musk is collecting data for future profits and control, he is not the first and wont be the last. Change begins first with individual actions in our own lives.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Musk's grandfather was very much into this
https://youtu.be/_sLxZPM9JYI
Technocracy.
I don't know how to do this link better. I am sorry.
Edit to fix typo
I think Musk loves this idea
the theory is that a few intelligent people divide the planet earth up between them. Each rules his own fiefdom.
Edit to fix typo
I've stated...
several times in the past that it appears like the world is going to be divided up into regions ruled by billionaire or trillionaires. Kind of like the book 1984.
In the past we called them Monarchies and Noblemen.
The multigenerational families who maintained control of a population and land. In Democracies the politicians must answer their donors and sometimes voters. In business CEOs must answer their investors and sometimes customers
The full interview is interesting. If short of time it starts when speaking about the advantages of a monarchy.
Prince Alwaleed: Trump’s Tariff’s, DeepSeek, & Going From Fox News’ Biggest Investor to Backing X (58:12 starts at 46:29) Discussion on monarchies as stable governments.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Thanks...
for the video, soe, will watch later.
Thanks for stopping by and good to see you around and about.
Good morning Granma...
I embedded the video for you.
Thank you! nt
part of the problem highlighted here
.
.
is in making the argument it is "our" government
that is going to the fat farm. We have no real power
over what "our" government does for us. And those
who have power over the acting government decide
which policies are put in place by their puppets. I mean
sure, the tech billionaires may make a play, but they will
have to negotiate with the other players for control.
FIRE in the whole
question everything
It's been speculated...
that there's already a power struggle among the world's oligarchs. But they forget that there's more of us than there are of them.
@JtC The Haves are
The Haves are forgetting or don't get international climate change. It is at/or approaching crisis point. Nature could care less about human mental sewage rising to the top.
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
When tectonic plates begin to shift
everyone feels unsteady on their feet. Those who championed the idea of a massive shift of the deep state secrecy and illusion of stability/control/stability may have forgotten the adage of “being careful of what you wish for”, and are only just now considering the possibilities of unintended consequences.
It’s much too early to know where we are actually heading, and where we will all end up. Because I have been convinced that, absent a major reigning in of the unaccountable puppeteers, that we were bound for a very bad end indeed, it seemed to me worth the risk. One can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, neither can a revolution be actualized without some uncertainties, doubts and fears being part of the mix.
What has already begun will take on a life of its own. So be it.
“The story around the world gives a silent testimony:
— The Beresovka mammoth, frozen in mud, with buttercups in his mouth…..”
The Adam and Eve Story, Chan Thomas 1963
Yes, well stated...
the masses are being lead by their noses, but do we really have to go in the direction they want us to go in? I still believe that we, the people, truly hold the power if enough of us say "Not just no, but hell no". To me, that is the great uncertainty.
Thanks for weighing in ovals, great to see you out and about.
As far as I can tell, AI is garbage
And it's garbage intended to deprive intellectuals of the ability to make a living from thinking. "Gee, why should I hire a human to think for me when a machine will do it for free?" we are supposed to ask. The obvious answer, a byproduct of this sort of reasoning, is that the human is capable of wisdom whereas AI can only do simulation.
Prove me wrong.
"The Democratic Party has been focused too much on pleasing people who matter too little in this society." -- Chris Cuomo
It is true...
that AI is garbage in its present form and I hope it stays garbage. It isn't sentient and may never be.
To prove you wrong would be proof that AI is sentient, no thanks to that, my friend.
Good morning Johnny. If one were to gather all
the information in human repositories, including history and all wrong theories and predictions, their bases and outcomes and feed it into an insanely numongous neural net what would you get? There is, imho, a small but finite change it wo evolve into a genius, a small chance it would be an indio, a small chance it would be a psychopath and a very great likelihood that it would simply be noise. There have to be algorithms to teach it what all the noise was and what it was supposed to do with it, it needs to know info from instructions and a ton of basics. All of that shit needs to e updated and refined. To be an ubermensch it would require beaucoups untermenchen, especially if we are looking for it to manifest goal directed behavior, Lotsa little human servants servicing the machine telling it what and whom to look out for and what to do to them, who to reward and how and who to punish and how. Lots of humans each fully capable of goal directed behavior on their own. Enter the worm.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Heh...
you just described the Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
ah, but typos like rm * are so very, very likely to occur n/t
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Alarming article but...
I suspect it's correct, and I hope it isn't. I don't like Elon Musk, never have. And I don't think he's out to do good, he's just out to grow his already immense power and wealth. And ruling the USA and most of the rest of the world would do that, wouldn't it?
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Yes...
and many of his so called "genius" projects reflect his ambitions.
I can't identify a single person here
...who sounds like they are conversant with the evolution of working artificial intelligence as it currently exists. I don't think anyone ha expressed the ultimate goal of the AI exploration and development. I hear lots of horrific Orwellian plots describing what the "sinister" motives behind AI really are. But I hear no conclusions about what the dedicated army of young scientists and experienced creators around the world are trying to achieve. Nothing about the shared vision that inspires them to work so hard, nothing about what they are trying to achieve for the sake of humankind.
There's nothing wrong with that, unless you are trying to define what AI is, and what it does. As a combined voice, everyone sounds really, really worried and frightened about something. And from what this voice says, I gather that comes from a paranoid vision invented in its own imagination. I'm guess here, because this vision bears no resemblance to AI as it exists and is evolving on this planet. So, I ask myself, what is the harm in that? There is no harm. It's like ghost stories being told around the campfire. There is, however, some of risk due to potential self harm that emerges from paranoia that builds in isolated groups.
"Paranoia that builds in isolation" describes with grave precision exactly what has happened to the United States. In the case of the US, however, its bizarre responses to its own delusions about the motives of people in other nations does manage to harms and kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, somewhere on the planet.
But C99 is not a risk to the world. It doesn't matter to anyone if we drown out all opposition to our beliefs. It could matter if we learn AI deeply enough to develop a credible voice that can influence the AI development path. We have artists and makers here who can understand the ways that artificial intelligence can help us envision and express the human experience in constructive and productive ways.
Let's not say "AI is a glorified search engine." That is a nonsense cliche. Everyone here can easily reach far beyond a prejudice that is born from a void of current information. In the US, any scientific achievement that comes from a foreign rival is described as "a new technology that was invented to steal your personal information." This is one of the critical ways that the US constantly inflicts brain damage upon US adults and children. This type brain programming has harmed US society and degraded the nation.
Thanks for...
your input on a different vision, P. It's much appreciated. That's what c99 was meant to be about.
If only the psychopaths and sociopaths that run governments would heed your advice.