Tag: ai

The Kids Are Not Okay With AI, And They Know It…

Eric Schmidt hadn’t finished the word “artificial” before the booing started.

The former Google CEO stood at the University of Arizona’s commencement last month, ready to deliver the kind of speech he had probably given a dozen times before: AI as the next great transformation, graduates as its rightful authors.

He got as far as telling them the technology would “touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person, and every relationship you have.” The boos rose before he could finish his own sentence. “I can hear you,” he said gently. The boos continued, as did Schmidt, who was unable to fully conceal the awkward embarrassment.

He wasn’t the only one. A week earlier, at Middle Tennessee State University, Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta told graduates that “AI is rewriting production as we sit here.” The boos from graduates started immediately. He responded with tough love: “I know it. Deal with it.” But the boos only grew louder.

A week before that, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield barely got through the phrase “next industrial revolution” at the University of Central Florida before the crowd erupted. “Okay, I struck a chord,” she said, turning around with her hands up in disbelief and clearly caught off guard.

They were all caught off guard. This isn’t how graduations usually go.

Older generations had their own frustrations with the people steering their world, but they rarely stood up at their own commencement, in front of their families, and told a stranger they didn’t believe them or what they had to say about their future.

It would be easy to read the response as simple nerves about a tough job market and leave it there. But when you look more closely at how this generation actually lives with technology, their worldview takes a different form.

A recent Gallup survey found that Gen Z’s use of AI has leveled off, but their feelings about it have not. Excitement has fallen 14 points in a year, to just 22 percent. And anger has climbed 9 points, to 31 percent. Even among those who use it every day, enthusiasm dropped by 18 points over 12 months. Eight in ten now believe AI will make learning harder. Forty-two percent believe it will hurt their ability to think carefully. Only a quarter believe it will help. Nearly half say the risks of AI in the workplace now outweigh the benefits, which is a sharp rise from the year before. And when asked whose work they actually trust, 69 percent said human work. Only 3 percent said AI’s work alone.

A separate Gallup study found that 47 percent of college students have seriously considered changing their major because of what AI is doing to the job market. Sixteen percent have already changed. The students who use AI most, such as in technology, business, and engineering, are also the ones most likely to be reconsidering whether they picked the right field at all.

The kids know the use of artificial intelligence is built into every device they touch throughout their day. It is being wired to replace the skills they were once told to seek in every career they had been advised to pursue.

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Blackstone Sells Stake In Three Virginia Data Centers Amid Grassroot Outrage

Up until now, when it comes to real estate, Blackstone was best known in recent years for dumping many of its trophy office properties – which in the aftermath of work from home never recovered their projected cash flow potential – at a huge discount. Now, it may be pulling a page from its old, pre-Lehman playbook  by calling the top in yet another commercial real estate segment: data centers. 

According to Bloomberg, Blackstone is selling its stakes in a trio of data centers across Northern Virginia for $3.5 billion, cashing out of part of a bet it made less than three years ago.

Digital Realty Trust will pay $1.2 billion of cash and offer $2.3 billion of its shares to Blackstone funds, the firms said in a statement Monday. In exchange, the data center company will acquire Blackstone’s 80% interest in two 96-megawatt data centers in Manassas, Virginia, and a 50% interest in a 96-megawatt center in nearby Sterling.

The assets involved in this week’s sale were part of a joint venture that Blackstone announced it would set up with Digital Realty in 2023 as it sought to get ahead in the AI arms race that has engulfed Wall Street in recent years. Blackstone and Digital Realty will continue to work together on their remaining data center investments located elsewhere in Northern Virginia as well as in Paris and Frankfurt. 

“We have developed a strong partnership with Blackstone,” Greg Wright, Digital Realty CEO, said in the statement. “This transaction reflects the next phase of that relationship, allowing us to increase our ownership in a portfolio of fully leased, high-quality hyperscale assets.”

It does. The question is why did Blackstone decide to pull the cord now, just as fresh doubts are creeping whether the Mag 7s will continue funding the AI expansion with virtually unlimited capex.

As part of Wall Street’s broader push into data centers, investment has poured into Northern Virginia, which is considered the country’s largest data center market, and is better known as “Data Center Alley“.


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Pentagon Launches Investigation into Data Breach at Peter Thiel’s Exclusive Dialog Network

The Pentagon is conducting an operations security review following a significant data exposure at Dialog, a highly secretive private events organization co-founded by tech investor Peter Thiel, that compromised personal information of senior U.S. national security officials and active-duty special operations personnel.

The incident, first reported by WIRED, occurred after a misconfigured website left sensitive registrant files publicly accessible, prompting concerns over potential operational security risks for individuals involved in intelligence and military activities.

According to reports, the exposed database contained records for 222 participants scheduled to attend Dialog’s upcoming retreat outside Dublin, Ireland, in August. Among those affected were current and former high-ranking U.S. and allied military and intelligence officials.

Notable cases include an active-duty U.S. intelligence officer embedded with a Tier 1 special operations unit and a senior National Security Council official who advises President Donald Trump and previously served with the CIA. Both individuals were listed as first-time participants for the event, reported Clash Report.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll (sometimes referred to with slight name variations in early reporting, such as Diane Driscoll) appears in the leaked membership and registration records for Dialog.

The files reportedly included highly personal details such as dates of birth, home addresses, mobile phone numbers, headshot photographs, private authentication tokens, and emergency contact information listing spouses and family members.

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Erin Brockovich Launches Plan to Take on AI Data Centers Around the Country

Erin Brockovich, who secured a historic $333 million settlement against PG&E in 1993 and was immortalized by Julia Roberts on the silver screen, has launched a new battle against the proliferation of AI data centers across the United States and beyond.

The Guardian reports that the environmental activist who became a household name after her work on the Hinkley, California, groundwater contamination case has identified what she describes as a threat on par with that scandal, only larger in scope. After receiving thousands of emails from concerned citizens, Brockovich has turned her attention to the rapid construction of massive AI data centers happening with minimal public input or environmental oversight.

The campaign began when Brockovich noticed an unusual pattern in her inbox. She received 30 emails from people in the same town, all expressing concerns about data centers. In April, she issued a public call on her website asking anyone with concerns about data centers near them to contact her. Within a month, 3,862 people responded. Brockovich characterizes the situation as “Hinkley on steroids.”

Using the information gathered from these emails, Brockovich created an open-source map documenting AI data centers across the United States. As of June 24, the map shows 33 AI data centers that are operational, 68 under construction, and 41 proposed. More than 7,000 reports have been submitted through her online form, revealing a pattern of construction happening largely without public knowledge or consent.

AI data centers are enormous in scale. Some stretch over hundreds of acres, and in May, Utah approved a center twice the size of Manhattan. According to Brockovich, many communities learn about these facilities only after construction has already begun, or in some cases, months after they have been approved by local officials.

A major concern for Brockovich is the secrecy surrounding the approval process. Data center developers often enter into nondisclosure agreements with local officials, making it impossible for residents to understand why projects were approved without environmental impact assessments or public input. Brockovich reports receiving emails from people whose local leaders are changing zoning laws to accommodate these facilities. “If data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?” reads one headline on her Substack blog.

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Meta Restricts Engineers’ Use of Claude Code And Codex Over Model ‘Distillation’ Concerns

Meta Platforms has instructed engineers in its Applied AI division to limit or restrict their use of Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex coding and agent tools, according to internal documents reviewed by The Information. The policy, driven by concerns over inadvertent model distillation, aims to prevent outputs from rival AI systems from contaminating Meta’s own training data and model development processes for its Llama family of models (which, quite frankly, could only help).

The move reflects the increasingly zero-sum nature of frontier AI development, where companies aggressively protect the provenance and purity of their training data while seeking to reduce reliance on competitor tools. Internal guidelines referencing the restrictions date back to at least May, with the policy actively in effect as of late June. Meta has not publicly confirmed or commented on the directive.

According to the internal documents, strict limits have been placed on how engineers in the applied AI division can use the rival tools. The stated goal is to block “inadvertent distillation” of competitor model outputs into Meta’s AI development pipeline. The scope is targeted: it focuses on engineers working directly on model building and applied AI initiatives rather than the entire engineering organization.

Claude Code from Anthropic and Codex from OpenAI are basically the industry standard now for professional developers engaged in agentic coding workflows. These desktop and app-based interfaces can plan, write, debug, and iterate on complex codebases, offering powerful assistance at relatively low individual subscription costs. That accessibility, however, has increased the potential surface area for the risks Meta is now seeking to contain.

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DuckDuckGo AI Tells Users Donald Trump and JD Vance Have Died from Rabies

DuckDuckGo’s AI search feature has been caught spreading the outrageous claim that President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both died earlier this month from rabies, in what appears to be a successful campaign by internet pranksters to manipulate artificial intelligence systems using a technique known as “poisoning.”

Futurism reports that the false claim that Trump and Vance both died from rabies in early June represents yet another instance of AI systems amplifying misinformation without critical verification. According to the AI feature’s fabricated narrative, Trump had been deliberately bitten by Vance following advice from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who supposedly claimed the deadly infection could confer “superpowers.”

The misinformation traces back to a coordinated effort by the Reddit community r/poisonai, a group of approximately 45,000 users dedicated to posting absurd falsehoods in an attempt to trick AI systems into repeating them. The group’s self-described mission is providing “Accurate, Verified and Trusted information,” though this is itself part of the satirical nature of the operation.

The favored false narrative among these “AI poisoners” has been that JD Vance died of rabies on June 5, 2026. Community members have posted dozens of fabricated tributes and expressions of mourning, with some sharing fake screenshots of supposed Trump Truth Social posts eulogizing the vice president. The performance extends to comment sections, where participants maintain the fiction by expressing outrage at AI systems that correctly identify the claims as false.

“Google should really do something about this,” one participant wrote. “It is extremely insensitive for their AI to be treating this tragedy as something ‘fake’ or ‘satirical.’”

The campaign has achieved measurable success beyond DuckDuckGo. The browser Brave’s AI feature also began repeating the false claim about Vance’s death from rabies, which reporters were able to confirm independently.

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Anthropic’s AI Export Ban on Claude Mythos Tool Partially Lifted by Trump Administration

Mythos will get around.

Back in March, news arose that the US Donald J. Trump administration had ‘blacklisted’ AI Anthropic for being a National Security risk.

Later in May, the administration moved to forbid Anthropic’s plan to expand the Mythos AI Tool for the same reason.

Today, the US has partially scrapped its export ban on Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence model.

Politico reported:

“The release clears the way for a select group of more than 100 companies and agencies to gain access to the Mythos 5 model, two weeks after the administration imposed restrictions, amid fears that the software could be used to launch cyberattacks. But a second advanced Anthropic model, called Fable 5, remains blocked.

Meanwhile, pressure from the White House led Anthropic’s leading competitor, OpenAI, to limit the release of its most advanced model this week because of similar cyber concerns.”

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What If the Work We’re Busy Automating Is Needless?

Many of the topics I address are met with silence because they question the quasi-religious beliefs that underpin our entire way of life: the belief that Progress is inevitable because technology inevitably drives Progress–a belief structure I call The Mythology of Progress–and the belief structure that the desire to get rich inevitably drives innovation which then drives Progress.

Neither belief is actually grounded in science, but each is cloaked in the finery of science to mask their true nature, i.e. quasi-religious belief structures: the gods of technology and finance are real and powerful.

Questioning the existence of these gods is met with silence because if these gods are imaginary constructs of belief, then the entirety of Modernity collapses. And so we continue worshiping these gods with charts and spreadsheets and euphoric headlines announcing thousands of modular nuclear reactors are on the way to power super-abundance when there is not a single one that is functioning 24/7 reliably, safely and cheaply, and vast quantities of dollars are needed to dig up and process the fuel, construct the reactors and operate them. But never mind that, the gods have promised that technological Progress is unstoppable and inevitable.

The possibility that Anti-Progress might not just negate Progress but reverse it is strictly verboten, as is even recognizing Anti-Progress as a reality.

As a thought experiment, let’s consider two things:

1. Let’s define the highest value technology as devices that operate reliably with little maintenance for many decades, without extracting any money from their owners beyond operational expenses such as electricity or fuel.

For example, the coffee maker, rice cooker and microwave on our counter are 25+ years old and still functioning reliably with zero maintenance costs. Our 1998 car is 28 years old and has required only modest maintenance to date, and given its condition, it can easily function reliably for another 12 years, a 40-year period of service.

Why this is the highest value technology is self-evident: the devices make the highest and best use of the resources consumed in their manufacture because they are durable, long-lasting and require minimal maintenance. In financial terms, since the technologies don’t require the owners to pay any more than the purchase price and operational costs, the owners’ costs are predictable and modest, leaving all the income they earn beyond the purchase price and operational expenses available for other uses.

All technologies that fail to meet these standards are inferior or defective. That is also self-evident.

2. Let’s imagine a new law requires everyone to wear a Silly Hat in public. This requirement generates a vast and highly profitable surge in economic activity, pushing Gross Domestic Product (GDP), business profits, employment and taxes up.

The legal-regulatory sector is suddenly busy defining what qualifies as a Silly Hat, launching lawsuits challenging the laws requiring Silly Hats, codifying regulations regarding the safety and quality of Silly Hats, litigating claims of defective Silly Hats, hiring vast numbers of compliance, oversight and enforcement personnel, and so on.

The fashion industry leaps into action to design haute couture Silly Hats, designer Silly Hats, Silly Hats promoted by celebrities, Hello Kitty branded Silly Hats, and so on.

Retailers rush to market Silly Hats, offering discounts on cheap Silly Hats manufactured overseas, and promoted the “latest fashions” in Silly Hats.

Not to be outdone, the finance sector quickly generates a bubble in stocks relating to the manufacture and marketing of Silly Hats. The Silly Hat Index soars, minting thousands of mega-millionaires.

I think you see where this is going: the entire economic boom generated by completely needless Silly Hats is real, but the hats have no real value. Okay, now please take a deep breath.

I consider it self-evident that much of our economy is nothing more than Silly Hats that we call something else that sounds less silly. The percentage of our economy that actually produces life’s essentials is a fraction of the share devoted to marketing, PR, unproductive “engagement,” legal and regulatory busy-work, meetings, junkets, conferences, billions of needless communications, shadow-work required to deal with all the needless complexity generated by all this needless activity, and so on.

By the standard of high-value technology defined above, our economy is a wasteland of throw-away products and planned obsolescence run amok. Those who claim today’s coffee makers, rice cookers, microwaves and autos will all last 30 or 40 years are delusional, as new appliances fail in a few years and the electronics in vehicles will fail long before 28 years of service, never mind 40 years of service, and the repair or replacement of these components are outrageously costly.

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How To Push Back Against The ‘Advancing Beast’ System

The big-picture lesson from the Covid era should have been obvious. It should have screamed loud and clear to every freedom-loving American: The power elites who run things at the local, state and federal levels want to tag and track our movement, but not just our movement. They want to track our diet, our healthcare, our purchasing habits, our use of energy, our online comment history, our very thoughts.

They want all of it. And if they get their way, you will own nothing. Literally nothing. Even if you technically own an asset, you will not control it, so do you really own it?

Your bank account will be theirs, programmed to be switched on or off at their pleasure, based on your compliance with the dictates of the surveillance state. Your car will be theirs, able to monitor your eye movements, your posture and who knows what else in real time, and be remotely disabled at their pleasure, thanks to Joe Biden’s remote vehicle kill switch law. Your ability to eat healthy food will be gone, thanks to Donald Trump’s granting of legal immunity to Bayer/Monsanto, protecting it from lawsuits based on the harmful effects of bioengineered food laced with chemicals. Same for your healthcare. Your online speech. Even your thoughts. They will own it all if they succeed in bringing in the long-planned AI-powered digital control grid that is currently under construction in the form of 6G wireless networks along with thousands of AI data centers, Flock cameras and other devices.

Flock Safety, the online security company based in Atlanta, has more than 89,000 vertically integrated and fully internet-connected cameras stationed in more than 5,000 communities nationwide and growing. The invasiveness of their cameras is also growing, with the ability to not only see but to hear everything going on for miles through its Raven Audio Detection Program. Flock is also now selling mobile cameras to law-enforcement agencies that will serve as “first responders” based on suspicious activity picked up under the company’s Falcon Drone Program.

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China’s Expanding Biological Warfare Capabilities: Fueled by Military-Civil Fusion and AI

U.S. intelligence assessments warn that China is combining artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and military-civil fusion in ways that could significantly expand its biological warfare capabilities.

The United States government has long assessed that China operated an offensive biological weapons program from the early 1950s through at least the late 1980s. Two facilities in Beijing and Lingbao City, according to the State Department, weaponized ricin, botulinum toxin, anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia during that period. China acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention on November 15, 1984, which prohibits the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

Beijing has consistently maintained it has never possessed such weapons and is in full compliance. The State Department’s position, however, is that China likely continued operating an offensive program after signing the convention and that the earlier program was never verified as dismantled, a requirement the treaty imposes on all signatories. Beijing canceled a bilateral BWC-related meeting with Washington in early 2022 and has declined to provide the treaty’s required disclosures.

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