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The rise of Silicon Valley’s techno-religion

In downtown Berkeley, an old hotel has become a temple to the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of humanity. Its name is Lighthaven.

Covering much of a city block, this gated complex includes five buildings and a small park dotted with rose bushes, stone fountains and neoclassical statues.

Stained-glass windows glisten on the top floor of the tallest building, called Bayes House after an 18th-century mathematician and philosopher.

Lighthaven is the de facto headquarters of a group of people who call themselves Rationalists.

This group has many interests involving mathematics, genetics and philosophy.

One of their overriding beliefs is that AI can deliver a better life – if it does not destroy humanity first.

The Rationalists believe it is up to the people building AI to ensure that it is a force for the greater good.

They were talking about AI risks years before OpenAI created ChatGPT, which brought AI into the mainstream and turned Silicon Valley on its head.

Their influence has quietly spread through many tech companies, from industry giants like Google to AI pioneers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Many of the AI world’s biggest names – including Dr Shane Legg, co-founder of Google’s DeepMind; Anthropic’s chief executive, Dr Dario Amodei; and Dr Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who now leads safety work at the US Centre for AI Standards and Innovation – have been influenced by Rationalist philosophy. Mr Elon Musk, who runs his own AI company, said that many of the community’s ideas align with his own.

Mr Musk met his former partner, pop star Grimes, after they made the same cheeky reference to a Rationalist belief called Roko’s Basilisk.

This elaborate thought experiment argues that when an all-powerful AI arrives, it will punish everyone who has not done everything they can to bring it into existence.

But these tech industry leaders stop short of calling themselves Rationalists, often because that label has over the years invited ridicule.

The Rationalist community is tightly entwined with the Effective Altruism movement, which aims to remake philanthropy by calculating how many people would benefit from each donation. This form of utilitarianism aims to benefit not just people who are alive today, but also all the people who will ever live.

Many Effective Altruists (EA) have decided that the best way to benefit humanity is to protect it from destruction by AI.

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Russian Intel Warns of UK Plan to Stage Tanker Incident

British intelligence agencies are planning to involve NATO allies in launching a large-scale crackdown on the so-called “shadow fleet” carrying Russian oil, the press bureau of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Monday.

“According to information received by the SVR, British intelligence services are planning to engage NATO allies to carry out a massive sweep of the ‘shadow fleet’. London’s idea is to trigger such a campaign with a high-profile incident involving one or several tankers. The plan envisions staging a major act of sabotage, the damage from which would allow them to declare Russian oil transportation a threat to global maritime navigation,” the statement said.

According to the SVR, this would give the West free rein in choosing methods of counter-action.

“In the extreme scenario, this could mean detaining any ‘suspicious’ vessels in international waters and escorting them to NATO member-state ports,” the statement added.

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Boston Democrats Opened Housing to Illegals Who Can’t Pay the Rent

The state of Massachusetts resettled thousands of migrant families into apartments at the expense of $30,000 per family to the taxpayers, but now many of the migrants cannot afford to pay their rent.

Starting in 2023, the state began pushing migrants into apartment complexes as an adjunct to the state’s emergency assistance shelter program and at least 5,000 families have been the recipients of the program, according to the Boston Globe. But little thought seems to have been given to the sustainability of the housing.

The paper noted that many of the migrants have used up their $30,000 allotment before even being able to begin paying rent regularly on their own. The money went for moving, furniture, security deposits, and other living start-up costs. And for many migrants, that left them without enough time to gain legal employment that could allow them to afford rent payments.

The cash shortage sent many of the migrants to move right back out of their new apartments before they were able to stabilize their income. According to the program, the migrants are not required to pay the entirety of the rent on their own. The state’s HomeBASE program only requires them to fork over 30 percent of their income for rent with the rest being pulled from the program’s initial $30,000 stipend.

The problem is, many of these families have been unable to gain jobs that can bring in enough cash to make paying rent sustainable. That means their $30,000 allotment runs out quickly as the fund pays most if not all of the monthly rent fees. And soon enough, that $30,000 allotment is eaten up and the families have to move right back out of their apartments in a matter of only a few months.

State officials have hailed the HomeBASE program because they can use it to show that migrants have been moving out of the controversial free shelter system. Officials try to use that to show they are successfully putting migrants into jobs and homes. But the reality seems to be that the “homes” are short term, leaving many migrants out in the street when their $30,000 funding dries up.

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China’s Grip On Critical Minerals Disrupts U.S. Defense Supply Chain

In 2023, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes warned that Beijing effectively has the US military’s supply chain by the balls, thanks to America’s reliance on rare earths and other materials which either come from, or are processed in, China. 

According to Hayes, Raytheon has “several thousand suppliers in China,” because of which “decoupling … is impossible.“

“We can de-risk but not decouple,” he told the Financial Times, adding that he thinks this is the case “for everybody.”

“Think about the $500bn of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95 per cent of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative,” he said. 

Fast forward two years later – and China’s recent curbs on the export of critical minerals are rippling through the U.S. defense supply chain, slowing production schedules and sending manufacturers on a global search for scarce materials needed in everything from munitions to fighter jets.

In short, amid a surge in U.S.-China trade tensions earlier this year, Beijing tightened its control over rare earth exports. Those shipments resumed after the Trump administration reached a set of trade concessions in June, however China has kept a firm hold on materials destined for defense use. Accounting for roughly 90 percent of the world’s rare earth output – and dominating the supply of other strategic minerals – China has also barred the sale of germanium, gallium and antimony to the United States since December. The three metals are essential for bullet hardening, night-vision optics and other military applications, the WSJ reports.

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When “Dead Enough” Becomes a Metric

The heart monitor flatlines. The family weeps. The doctors wait exactly 75 seconds—then restart the procedure. In the world of organ transplants, “dead enough” has become a moving target.

The New York Times just reported something most people aren’t ready to hear: in the rush to expand organ transplants, procurement teams have sometimes started too early. Not after death—before it was fully established.

This isn’t just investigative journalism anymore—it’s official. In July, the US Department of Health and Human Services released the results of a federal investigation into the transplant system. Their words, not mine: “Hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” declared HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The federal report found that at least 28 patients may not have been dead when organ removal began.

This is happening under a protocol called donation after circulatory death (DCD). It’s fundamentally different from the more established practice of donation after brain death, where patients have irreversibly lost all brain function and are kept on machines only to maintain their organs. DCD patients still have some brain activity—they’re dying, but not yet dead. Doctors determine they’re near death and won’t recover, but that’s a medical judgment call, not biological certainty.

DCD used to be rare. Now it accounts for a huge and growing share of transplants. Every day, 13 people perish waiting for organs that never come. That urgency is real, and it explains why the system feels pressure to expand every possible avenue for donation. But saving lives by potentially taking them prematurely isn’t salvation—it’s a different kind of death sentence.

This is not a debate about whether transplants save lives—they do. It’s about something more fundamental: the line between life and death being treated as a flexible scheduling variable.

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Dead? Or Just ‘Mostly’ Dead?

Until recently, anyone who believed there was anything fishy about the U.S. organ donation system was labeled a conspiracy theorist. Yet now the old adage: “What’s the difference between conspiracy and truth? About six months,” rings true again, as so-called conspiracy theorists have been proven right by none other than the federal Health and Resources Services Administration (HRSA) itself.

The “conspiracy?” That organ procurement organizations (OPOs) and hospitals declare living individuals dead in order to harvest their organs.

The truth? In March 2025, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration reported in its investigation of a procurement organization called Network for Hope that there had been dozens of instances where organ retrieval was nearly begun despite the donors exhibiting signs of life. 

The investigation was started in response to the infamous case of T. J. Hoover. Hoover, a resident of Kentucky (which along with parts of Ohio and West Virginia is exclusively served by Network for Hope) had overdosed on drugs in October 2021 and been declared brain dead. His body was being prepped for organ retrieval when he regained consciousness on the operating table, banging his legs and crying. Thankfully, the process was halted, but not without significant pressure to continue by the OPO representative in the room, according to doctors who testified. 

Hoover’s story is apparently one among many. HRSA reviewed 351 donation-authorized cases and found that 73 patients showed neurological activity and at least 28 patients may not have been deceased when the procurement process began. 

These shocking revelations led to a hearing last week by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Dr. Raymond Lynch, chief of the organ transplant branch within HRSA, testified to Congress regarding the safety and efficiency of the organ donation process.

Lynch admitted that the current method of operation has serious issues, but argued that the root cause is a system that grants a quasi-monopoly to individual procurement operators. Only a single contractor per region can service the OPTN, which is the federal Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network that connects donated organs with patients needing transplants. Over-reliance on the OPOs has impeded “meaningful government oversight,” according to Lynch.

Members of both parties peppered Lynch with questions about the practices of OPOs and the OPTN. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, referenced a New York Times article revealing the growing use of “circulatory death,” which is defined as the irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, even though in some cases circulatory death is reversible through proper resuscitation. Nonetheless, using this definition to determine the end of life allowed hospitals to harvest organs faster, leading to concerns about a grim conflict of interest.

Compounding this issue is pressure from OPO representatives, who are required to be present for donation. DeGette asserted that doctors may look to OPO representatives as “experts” and feel pressured to certify death. While Lynch did not affirm DeGette’s concerns, he conceded that “increased emphasis on performance in any area of medicine is not an excuse for noncompliance.”

Lynch stressed that it is possible that a “good faith” assessment of death could be wrong, and that often, doctors are doing their best in a difficult and fast-paced environment. Rep. Gary Palmer  wasn’t having it. “There’s clearly things that happened that I think could count as euthanasia,” said the Alabama Republican. In response, Lynch stressed that the HRSA has a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) in place for OPOs and the OPTN, with its authority stemming from Congress.

The renewed interest in Congress follows passage of the Securing the OPTN Act, signed into law by President Biden two years ago. This new law the OPTN turns a single-vendor system into a multiple-vendor system, meaning that  multiple OPOs can now service the same region. It also establishes a separate OPTN board from any other contractors to ensure transparency, removes the $7 million HRSA funding cap and allocates more money for modernization, and requires a GAO review of the OPTN’s financial history.

The HRSA created its CAP to better implement the terms of the act. The CAP lists several important reforms: Any staff member will be allowed to halt procedures due to safety concerns; the OPTN must now monitor and report safety-related halted donations; the HRSA now has authority to decertify OPOs not meeting its standards; and the Network for Hope and any other implicated OPO must implement minimum safety standards, better documentation, clearer donor eligibility criteria, and family communication plans within six months.

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Consumer Advocate: Dick Durbin, Roger Marshall Looking to Take Away Your Credit Card Rewards

Richard Hunt, the executive chairman of the Electronic Payments Coalition (EPC), said at a Breitbart News policy event last week that Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Roger Marshall (R-KY) are trying to take away your credit card rewards with their credit card legislation.

Hunt explained that the EPC represents a diverse group of organizations, including credit unions, community banks, large banks, and unions. He warned that two senators, Durbin and Marshall, are moving to take away credit card rewards, which many Americans use for cashback or even to pay for travel for vacation.

Marshall and Durbin have been pushing the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) for years. Hunt dubbed it the “Credit Card Cancellation Act,” noting that some large retailers have backed the bill.

Advocates for the bill believe that they can inject more competition into payment processing by requiring banks to work with at least one alternative payment network besides Visa and Mastercard, the dominant players in the industry.

Under the current system, if a merchant accepts credit cards, it is “locked in” to whatever payment network that credit card runs, usually Visa or Mastercard, and thus must pay whatever the fee that payment network charges for transactions.

Durbin and Marshall believe that by passing the bill, more competition among payment networks would drive down merchants’ credit card costs, and the retailers would pass on that savings to consumers. Critics of the bill contend that it would, in addition to compromising the security of payment processing, likely kill credit card reward programs, just as previous Dodd-Frank legislation eliminated debit card rewards.

Hunt told Breitbart New Economics Editor John Carney that Americans used to receive rewards on debit cards and used to get free checking accounts. However, this ended when Durbin managed to get the Durbin Amendment included in the post-2008 financial crisis financial bill known as Dodd-Frank.

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Research Increasingly Links Pesticides To Neurological Disorders

Are neurological diseases increasing around the world? Yes and no, according to a report published by The Lancet in 2024 on the global burden of nervous system diseases between 1990 and 2021.

About 3 billion — a third of the world’s people — suffer from some nervous system condition. These diseases cause 11 million deaths and 443 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which are a measure of the years lost to illness, disability or early death. Neurological disorders are now the world’s largest source of disability.

The Lancet report does not include an analysis of the role of pesticides in the burden of neurological disease worldwide, although environmental health research continues to expand the evidence that pesticide exposure is a major contributor to that burden.

The Lancet report indicates that DALYs from Parkinson’s disease have increased by 10%, and autism spectrum disorder and dementia by 2% each.

Multiple sclerosis has declined by 1%, according to the report. Importantly, most of the improvement has come from medical interventions, not prevention — in other words, people are living longer with the diseases rather than avoiding them altogether.

But this is not true globally: The burden of disease, and particularly premature death, rests most heavily on the developing world, where medical interventions are much more scarce.

A focus on prevention would be a more equitable approach to the problem. See Beyond Pesticides’ deep archive of the evidence on pesticides and neurological diseases in “Pesticide-Induced Diseases: Brain and Nervous System Disorders” section. Our Gateway on Pesticide Hazards is also invaluable for information about specific pesticides and their adverse health effects.

The Lancet’s big picture does not demonstrate that the burden of pesticide-induced neurological disease is declining.

Such a decline seems a logical impossibility, given that more and more people are chronically exposed to more and more pesticides, and more and more research is establishing both population-level and mechanistic evidence of pesticides’ influence on disease induction and outcome, including neurological disorders.

A recent review by Chinese researchers demonstrates that there is no category of pesticide — not herbicides, not fungicides and not insecticides — that does not contribute to neurological dysfunction. The authors recite numerous examples: the herbicide glyphosate affects both cognitive and motor functions.

The fungicides tebuconazole and azoxystrobin are associated with neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Organophosphate insecticides lead to sensory disruption, emotional disturbances and neurodevelopmental problems.

Several “natural” chemicals, including rotenone and the plant growth regulators gibberellic acid and indole-3-butyric acid, affect the expression of some neurologically relevant enzymes. One research group found that the insect repellent DEET applied to rats’ skin killed their neurons.

The review examines studies showing pesticides’ neurological damage relevant to long-term exposures, rather than the usual acute exposures that form the outdated regulatory toxicological approach to pesticide hazards and risks.

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Biden Handlers Ready To Unleash Trove Of Embarrassing Kamala Stories In Response To Her Book

Joe Biden’s inner circle are reportedly preparing to spill all the beans on just how awful Kamala Harris was as Vice President should her upcoming book put him in a bad light.

That’s according to journalist Mark Halperin, who claims Biden loyalists have a store of embarrassing stories they’re holding back but will make public should Harris negatively reference Biden’s cognitive decline.

It’s now common knowledge that Biden’s camp, particularly his wife, despise Harris for going along with the Democratic Party coup against Joe.

In an appearance on The Morning Meeting show, Halperin stated “I will tell you, and this has never been reported, barely at all: if the Biden people decide that Kamala Harris is coming after Joe Biden, wait till you hear the ‘Palinesque’ stories about how much they tried to help her be prepared to be vice president and be in a position to run.”

Halperin further claimed that the details will expose “How much they decided, ‘Not happening. She’s not up to this.’”

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Democrats Plan to Spend Tens of Millions of Dollars to Fund Hundreds of Content Creators

Democrats are planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to spin narratives on social media as part of a $110.5 million fundraising effort, according to images of slides from a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) donor event obtained by Breitbart News.

Under a heading “Urgent Off-Year Funding Needs” on one slide, it states the DCCC looks to raise $10 million for social media and content creation, $20 million for “Accountability work,” $15 million for “Voter Registration,” $5 million for “Recruitment” and “Primary Engagement,” and $2 million for “Research” and a “Rapid Response Infrastructure.”

One goal is to enlist at least 667 content creators, with the aim of reaching 83 million Americans and drawing 6.6 million engagements, per another slide that focuses on content creation. The program aims to engage at least 167 “Non-Political Creators” and 8 “Vetted Creators for ads in every target state.”

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