I was under them impression that just using the internet in America might subject you to domestic surveillance.

$omehow this flew under most people’s radar when Trump took office the first time around, so here’s a helpful reminder:

2016: Peter Thiel said to be playing key role in filling health, science posts under Trump. https://archive.is/2023.08.31-231401/https://www.statnews.com/2016/12/20/peter-thiel-donald-trump-science/

Thiel has also been speaking to organizations pushing possible candidates, among them a working group that includes FasterCures, Research!America, and the Coalition for Life Sciences.

“He’s got pretty broad influence,” said one individual close to the transition team, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The individual said Thiel was very focused in particular on the FDA, NIH, Health and Human Services, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

“Look, if Mr. Thiel wants to privately fund research, then he should do it,” Harris said. “We’re talking about the NIH, we’re talking about taxpayer dollars, and I think you treat taxpayer dollars differently than private dollars.”

And if you’re thinking something along the lines of “so what, doesn’t mean he actually ended up having that much influence,” I would suggest you look into Trump’s current Science Advisor who the press realized, (also almost a decade ago), holds no science credentials.

A Peter Thiel Protégé Is Leading Trump’s AI Strategy Against China

Trump’s pick for science adviser is a rarity among his nominees — he’s not controversial

For $ome reason, in 2025, the press had no questions about Kratsios’ ability to steer American science towards greatness 🙃 Considering how he did in his defacto role the first time around, I would argue he should have been considered an extremely controversial pick;

In March of 2020, Kratsios was tasked by Trump to use cutting edge technology to tackle COVID misinformation and track early cases of the virus in the U.S. in order to keep it from spreading.

According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, top tech trade groups and companies participated in the call, including Apple, Cisco, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, the Consumer Technology Association, the Information Technology Industry Council and others.

Representatives from multiple federal agencies also participated in the call, including the National Institutes of Health, Department of Labor, Department of Education and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The meeting revolved around how the tech industry can better coordinate with the government to get out authoritative facts about the coronavirus while cracking down on the spread of bunk cures and conspiracy theories spreading online.

Officials also discussed how artificial intelligence could “make it easier for medical researchers” to review data about the coronavirus, according to a readout.

…🙃

And you bomb elementary schools? You both fucking suck. Maybe go to hell so you two can spend eternity together holding hands and having pissing contests over who’s the lesser evil.

Up next:

The dumbest fucking timeline that just keeps on giving

These systems were trained on 4Chan, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter posts and comments. They weren’t trained on military communication, guidelines, etc.

They know more about Call of Duty than they know about actual warfare. What the fuck do you think they’re gonna recommend?

Honestly, this applies to the entire DOW under Hegseth. The fact that we even have to use a term like “double tap” to describe genocide and war crimes committed by the U.S. and have Marco Rubio tweeting about it with fucking emojis is so fucking disgusting and shameful, but also part of the propaganda they’re relying on to sell this back to their base.

It down plays the seriousness of the entire situation, and makes naive people feel much safer than they should. Almost like a stranger in a van offering candy to kids, so that by the time they realize they’re in danger it’s too late.

Propaganda aside and more to the point of why it’s so dangerous, you might find this article posted a while back interesting. You’re absolutely right, and the point should really be brought up all the time, but it never is.

We’ve always know war is good business. If you can create eternal war, you never have to worry about peacetime getting in the way of your profits. So how can you create the world where war never has to end.

Private Tech Companies, the State, and the New Character of War https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/12/ukraine-war-tech-companies

Mass surveillance and social media now generate huge amounts of data during war. At the same time, the widespread availability of the smartphone means civilians carry around advanced sensors that can broadcast data more quickly than the armed forces themselves. This enables civilians to provide intelligence to the armed forces in ways that were not previously possible. Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins label this a “new war ecology” that is “weaponizing our attention and making everyone a participant in wars without end . . . [by] collapsing the distinctions between audience and actor, soldier and civilian, media and weapon.” In this ecology, warfare is participatory. Social media platforms such as TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Telegram are no longer merely tools for consuming war reportage; militaries accessing and processing open-source data from these platforms shapes the battlespace in real time by contributing to wider situational awareness.

As a result of their work in Ukraine, a slew of companies like Palantir have drawn media attention.9 While commercial interests have rarely aligned neatly with geopolitics, circumstances are changing; private technology firms increasingly occupy, manage, and in some cases dominate the digital infrastructure upon which militaries now rely. States themselves have fostered this shift through selective deregulation and outsourcing of technology development. These dynamics are visible in the war in Ukraine and in the wider geopolitical contest over the global digital stack. As we argued in “Virtual Sovereignty,” a paper we published in International Affairs, this influence has major geopolitical consequences for how states use power.

What is at stake, beyond the conflict itself, is the nature of state sovereignty. The ability of states to govern, defend, and act independently is increasingly mediated by private technology firms and global finance. This is not entirely new. States have long relied on private contractors, but the kind of dependency has changed. Unlike traditional arms manufacturers, today’s defense-tech firms control the digital platforms, data flows, and algorithmic systems that underpin military decisionmaking. At the same time, civilian platforms like Telegram and TikTok shape the informational terrain of conflict, influencing how wars are perceived and fought.

Maybe he’s telling the truth and by "prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” he means human responsibility is strictly prohibited.

I’m no AI, so take this with a grain of salt, but my own facial recognition training tells me that’s not the facial expression of somebody who makes a habit of being very open and honest

Democracy was literally the remedy for it and we’ve allowed democracy to be removed from the hands of the many in favour of the few.

Exactly, the entire point of having a government is supposed to be to protect society from these people.

•Thiel has been equally explicit. In a now-infamous 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, he declared that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” But he’d made the point in far greater detail in an earlier essay on Strauss, in which he argued that elites must use “esoteric” doublespeak to hide their true intentions from the masses who wouldn’t and shouldn’t understand the plans their natural-born leaders were making for them.

I hate to say this, but the Internet is not the same as it was back when I was growing up.

You always had the possibility of stumbling across a bad actor. Now the billionaire tech broligoply who own most social media are the bad actors. How many websites did you visit where the person running the website has been caught repeatedly trying to psychologically manipulate and control the masses via disinformation?

Back in the day, nobody would be doing whatever the fuck it is these people are doing with kids and their pedo adjacent targeted ads and chat bots bc they would be afraid of being sent to jail for cp

Why does it need to take decades though?

I bet if there were actual consequences for this shit, like in the form of seizing assets from the broligarchs who run these companies, and giving them to the victims of their creations, the issue would be solved very quickly.

Also, having people upload their ID seems like just another obvious surveillance ploy/invasion of privacy in the name of safety. These people who have given us nothing but reasons not to trust them, just keep offering us more and more solutions to the issues that they’ve created.

“We’re doing this for your own good. You should say thank you.”

It’s so fucking creepy. It’s not just making people dumber, its literally exposing kids to sexual content and sexualizing children in advertisements aimed at adults.

At what point is it ok for all of society to demand these people either be put in jail or at least exiled from the rest of society?

Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’, campaigner says

Meta CEO Zuckerberg blocked curbs on sex-talking chatbots for minors, court filing alleges

Regulations are keeping your businesses from thriving? The ones you seem to be building to intentionally cater to pedophiles and harm children? Half of these creepy ass broligarchs are already confirmed to be in the Epstein files.

They’re pretty open about what they want the future to look like, and the shit they’ve already got going, like the inescapable 24/7 surveillance where they can pick and choose the victims they want to legally abduct and traffic is just the beginning. And we’re supposed to just pretend we’re all fucking stupid enough to go along with it?

Attending the summit, Kratsios, the White House representative, addressed middle powers’ fears. “Real AI sovereignty means owning and using best-in-class technology for the benefit of your people,” he said. “Complete technological self-containment is unrealistic for any country, because the AI stack is incredibly complex. But strategic autonomy alongside rapid AI adoption is achievable, and it is a necessity for independent nations. America wants to help.”

“America is the only AI superpower willing and able to truly empower partner nations in your pursuit of meaningful AI sovereignty,” he went on. “American companies can build large, independent AI infrastructure, with secure and robust supply chains that minimize backdoor risk. They build it; it’s yours.”

… Are you fucking kidding me. America wants to help? America is being held hostage by these shitbag oligarchs. It needs help.

Also, American companies can build large, independent AI infrastructure, with secure and robust supply chains that minimize backdoor risk?

Who TF are you kidding with this bullshit. Nobody paying attention to any of the bullshit DOGE did (that we know about so far) under the anti-regulatory administration you work for. Given you’re the big AI policy guy, and you paved the path for everything DOGE did it in 2025, during your run in Trump’s first administration, this should really be considered your fault as much as it is Musk’s fault for taking the bait, and becoming the fall guy on behalf of you and your mentor Peter Thiel.

•2018: The White House promises to release government data to fuel the AI boom

What a brilliant fucking idea Michael Kratsios had in 2018, what could possibly go wrong?

•2025: DOGE’s access to federal data is ‘an absolute nightmare,’ legal experts warn

•2025: DOGE is putting the country’s data and computing infrastructure at risk, HKS expert argues

Cyber security expert Bruce Schneier worries that DOGE’s access to highly sensitive information is giving bad actors a chance to take advantage

But that’s the opposite of what Kratsios sez Merican tech is good at…? Is he lying? How could we ever know?

•2026: Government Data Breach Sparks Fears Millions May Need New Social Security Numbers

Yeah…, seems like pretty solid evidence these people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, and they never have. Or alternatively, if they do, their interests are purely selfish. They never should have been trusted with power, and if they weren’t such sociopathic narcissists they wouldn’t be able to maintain a straight face while telling such bold faced lies to the rest of the world.

I’ve always wondered if your personal version of heaven or hell in the afterlife boils down to the deepest parts of your self and lingering consciousness tied to the neurochemical and electrical activity that happens after cardiac arrest.

You know how our sense of time is so warped when we dream, and you can fall asleep for just a few minutes but from your perspective a dream can feel so much longer?

I figure if there was ever the perfect time for your subconscious to come back and either bite you in the ass with guilt, shame, and regret for all the the things you’ve done that you never set right, or alternatively, maybe give you a sense of comfort if you feel you have made peace with your life on earth, it would probably be during this time.

Think of it like being in an isolation tank. Maybe some fuzzy outside information still makes its way in to influence what’s going on inside of the tank, but mostly it’s just you and your thoughts for (what feels like) all eternity.

I feel like he would just buy his luxury in prison like Pablo Escobar.

I think the worst punishment for people like Thiel and Musk would be to have their assets seized and any future wages garnished to be paid to the victims of their crimes, while they’re forced to attempt to survive in the society they’ve helped create.

The consequences they face will serve as an example and deterrent for others like them and one of two things would happen. Billionaires suddenly experience empathy/gain a conscience and conditions improve for all of society, or, billionaires continue to maintain the conditions they’ve created while one by one falling victim to their own creations. Most likely they check themselves out very quickly rather than attempt to survive the nightmare they had no problems inflicting on others. Either way equals a net gain for society.

I could use an extra $2500.

Thanks a lot DOGE. So clearly Elon Musk gives every American compensation, we get new numbers and have all of our credit history wiped clean to start new right? Bc otherwise this just means we’ve all been massively fucked by Trump and his band of idiots

“AI will replace a humanities degree, so don’t bother going to college,” says billionaire who went to college. “I need you to use your hands to build batteries for my shitty AI that doesn’t work.”

It’s being spent on Military AI not just AI

And it’s not just going into Palantir it’s going into every Palantir wannabe startup, and they’re making claims to advertise their product that sound like some jackass at DHS is responsible for making up bullshit tailored to the individual startup

And who even knows maybe laying all the groundwork and data centers only for AI to tank in the majority of fortune 500 companies that tried it was always the plan so that you have an easy excuse to pivot fully into militarized police tech and surveillance everywhere you have these data centers.

Yes! It is so sad this seems like such a bold move, but we’ve just become so fucking conditioned to bullshit politicians gaslighting us about why everybody else is just going to have to go without in order to keep giving handouts to the most entitled and useless pieces of crap just because they’re already wealthy.

Why? Allegedly because they generate more money… But do they really? Have they ever?