The Monster AI, Security, and Wars That Come Home
Links for Friday, June 6
Links
Today’s links involve the illusion of safety, a war coming home, and the monster we’re hungry to feed: AI, of course.
The Price of Security
Two pieces from Ken Klippenstein for your safe-seeking pleasure.
• Homeland Security’s Pre-Crime Push (Ken Klippenstein)
This is more than a pre-crime story. It’s a Palantir story, an ICE story and an AI story as well. Read the piece to see the many ways these efforts are expanding. Here’s the AI part:
Snitch fund and AI vie to stop attacks like Boulder …
[T]he ideology of anti-semitism and hate crimes … expands the battleground to what everyone thinks and says.
This week, former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced a new partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to come up with AI-methods to “predict and prevent” hate crimes in America, the battlecry that fits with the anti-hate industry’s worldview.
“My new initiative would use advanced monitoring tools to scour social media posts following during or after international emergencies,” Stringer said.
Yes, ICE is doubling its walking-around money to recruit informants among its long list of enemies; but AI? That’s coming after all of us. [emphasis mine]
File under “That game was over when the Patriot Act was signed.”
• Trump Taps Palantir to Spy on All Americans (Breaking Points)
This video is a must-watch,again with Klippenstein. Note the “pattern of life” discussion at 8:22. Ouch.
Combine this with the linked piece above. The game was over when the Patriot Act was signed — it was never going to be repealed, only expanded.
The NatSec state wants it all: power, data, all rights to all surveillance, all freedom from oversight, all self-regulation. Once Bush v Gore was accepted, the Court held the keys. Once the Patriot Act was signed, the security state had unquestioned police control. We live in cop country. The gates are closing fast. And few want to leave.
File under “The first taste is free. That applies to security too.”
The Monster AI
Let me say this about AI. Consider this my stake in the ground, my bottom line.
AI is not just a disaster for political health, though yes, it will be that. It’s also an absolute disaster for the climate. It will hasten the collapse by decades as usage expands.
Why won’t AI be stopped, given those consequences? Because the race for AI is not really a race for tech. It's a greed-driven race for money, a massive one.
Our lives are already run by those who seek money, especially those who already have too much. They've now found a way feed themselves even faster: by convincing people to do simple searches with AI, a gas-guzzling death machine.
No good will come from AI. Not one ounce.
The Palestine War Comes Home
• Exclusive: U.S. Intel Warns of “Enduring” Gaza Outrage (Ken Klippenstein)
Because the entire U.S. Establishment is complicit in Gaza mass murder — ponder that for a second! — the media has been twisting the facts behind the Embassy killings.
Yet privately, the security state understands the truth: The dead aren’t victims of “anti-semitism”; they’re collateral victims of the Palestine slaughter itself, the fact that it’s ongoing, the fact that it can’t be stopped.
Moments after the murder of two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington, virtually every political leader from Donald Trump to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez blamed the attack on antisemitism, a charge echoed by the media and law enforcement.
But a new intelligence report I’ve obtained from the Department of Homeland Security sees things differently — so much so that I was honestly shocked reading it.
Extraordinary in its candor, the report says what our leaders would not: that the attack was “motivated by the Israel-HAMAS conflict.” [emphasis mine]
Klippenstein links to the DHS assessment itself. Its first line, bolded, says this: “The 21 May attack that killed two Israeli embassy staff members at an event in Washington, DC, underscores how the Israel-HAMAS conflict continues to inspire violence and could spur radicalization or mobilization to violence against targets perceived as supporting Israel.”
Every word a true one. While reasonable people, like us, want all killing to stop, the world is not peopled with us. It’s peopled with Netanyahus, all his enablers, and all who will kill in response, trying to stop him.
File under “Murder, biting the hand that feeds it.”
• When Financiers Win, They Lose (Ian Welsh)
I’m a huge fan of Ian Welsh, not least because of his tightness of expression, the on-the-nose quality of his writing. For example, regarding our current economic system:
One of the simplest lenses to look at an industrial society is whether it’s run by financiers or capitalists. …
Capitalists need money so they can do things. Financiers do things so they can get money. To a financier it doesn’t matter how money is made, so long as they won’t go to prison. All that matters is rate of return.
A capitalist has something they want to do: Ford wanted to build cars. Edison wanted to invent. The Wright Brothers wanted to fly. They need money so they can do whatever it is that turns their crank.
Capitalists create great societies. Financiers destroy them.
People have been saying exactly this for decades, often in academese. Yet the plain fact is plain: Capitalists use money to do things. Financiers use things to get money. Welsh’s site is a must-read in my book.
File under “Rent extraction. It’s why you work and they don’t.”
Music
My two favorite Beethoven piano works are both from the “difficult” late period: Sonata 29 (“Hammerklavier”) and Sonata 32, his last. Both are magical works, and both are best heard played by Artur Schnabel.
But Schnabel recorded in the 1930s and this is more current. Marc-André Hamelin does a very good job in the video below, the sound is bright and the visuals are warm and pleasing.
I’ve queued this to start at the 4th movement of the Hammerklavier, mainly to feature the Bach-like fugue it contains. (Beethoven loved Bach, was raised playing his work, and came back to his music in this late part of his life.)
Note also the lyrical interlude at 20:24; it’s brief, but breathtakingly lovely. Not bad for a deaf man. Hope you enjoy this as much as I do.
For stylistic comparison, here’s a Schnabel version, recorded in the 1930s. It’s hard to find clean versions of Schnabel on YouTube. The fourth movement starts at 29:08. The fugue — complex, light and expressive — starts after the trill at 31:50.
Brilliant, far-reaching post, as ever. Thank you once more
I too like Ian Welsh, and also read that same post a couple of days ago. He generally has something to add to many far-ranging discussions. He mostly hits right on the target of what is important about a particular issue. I do find that he sometimes misses though, and found the particular post to be a miss. You caught it right in your quote: "Capitalists create great societies. Financiers destroy them."
For one thing, the line between "capitalist" and "financier" is so blurry I think it is a distinction without a difference. When Ford spends half a billion a year on stock buybacks, for instance, are they financiers or capitalists? But anyway, that's not my point.
My point is: while it may be true financialization destroys "great societies" (as has happened in the past, just look at the Dutch) -- and I don't intend to be mean in putting it this way, but -- I wish Ian would pick up a book and read about the history of capitalism sometime. Capitalism does not make "great societies." Capitalism is a totalizing system, just like feudalism was, and the only "great society" it can produce is for capitalists (or what at the moment are generally called oligarchs). If anything, it has been resistance to capitalism over the past couple of centuries that have made enough space for there to be "great societies," that is, for those of us who are not oligarchs.