JD Vance takes aim at Europe’s censorship beast



Vice President JD Vance’s inaugural overseas trip on Feb. 11 conveyed a clear message to our European allies. A new sheriff is in town, and the days of the federal government allowing European bureaucrats to abuse Americans’ free speech rights are over.

The European Union’s relentless drive to control speech, dissent, and technology is well documented. The EU’s Digital Services Act, enacted in 2022, empowers EU officials to pressure American social media companies into removing content deemed “illegal” or “harmful.”

Vance deserves plaudits for assuring the nation that the Trump administration is committed to ensuring that the digital square continues to be a force for prosperity and freedom.

From urging social media companies to censor “disinformation” to working to make the answers provided by artificial intelligence politically charged, the European Union shows little regard for freedom of speech, both for its own citizens and those of the United States.

It's easier for companies to establish a single set of standards around issues — like content moderation — than to have specific rules for each operating country. This phenomenon, now called the “Brussels effect,” is causing platforms to frequently remove posts pre-emptively, shadow-ban dissenting voices, and algorithmically suppress content to comply with EU regulations, even when such speech is lawful in the United States. In other words, the EU is effectively exporting its speech restrictions worldwide, compelling U.S. platforms to enforce European censorship standards and threatening free expression in America.

The Biden administration regularly censored American voices, so it’s no surprise that it remained silent when the EU implemented policies restricting free expression. These policies aligned with its own agenda, so why would it object?

Like the EU, the Biden White House sought to limit and control the growing AI industry. The administration specifically targeted AI-driven management software in the housing and hospitality industries. The infamously partisan Biden Justice Department claimed these AI programs allowed companies to collude and raise prices. But evidence shows the technology automatically adjusts prices based on market conditions, often lowering costs when inflationary pressures ease.

Fortunately, during his Feb. 11 speech at the Paris Artificial Intelligence Summit, Vance took a hard line.

Vance declared that social media platforms and AI systems developed in the U.S. would remain free from ideological constraints. “We will never restrict our citizens’ right to free speech,” he pledged. He also affirmed the U.S. commitment to AI as a driver of competition and economic growth, vowing to stop overzealous bureaucrats from stifling innovation.

The Trump administration’s strong stance against free speech violations is encouraging. The challenge now is ensuring that these ideals become political reality.

First, the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission should investigate any anticompetitive behavior driven by international regulatory pressure. If social media giants are colluding with foreign governments to suppress certain viewpoints, federal authorities must intervene to protect users’ rights.

To prevent covert compliance with EU regulations, the Trump-Vance Federal Communications Commission should strengthen transparency requirements for content moderation. Platforms must disclose when and why content is removed, preventing hidden censorship influenced by foreign bureaucrats.

Finally, Trump’s Department of Commerce should use trade agreements to block the EU from using regulatory pressure to dictate how American companies operate. By incorporating digital free speech protections into trade negotiations, the Trump administration can ensure that U.S. businesses are not forced to choose between European market access and their commitment to the First Amendment.

Vance deserves plaudits for assuring the nation that the Trump administration is committed to ensuring that the digital square continues to be a force for prosperity and freedom — not a scapegoat for regulators eager to impose control. Now, he just needs to make sure that the Trump-Vance executive agencies get to work — and soon.

They have their work cut out for them.

TikTok’s sinister sibling WeChat is the CCP’s real social media weapon



For years, the U.S. has debated whether TikTok poses a serious threat to privacy, democracy, and national security. This scrutiny is well founded — its vulnerabilities and potential for misuse are undeniable. But while TikTok dominates the conversation, a far more insidious platform has quietly evaded the spotlight.

With at least 4 million users in the U.S., WeChat's user base might pale in comparison to TikTok’s, but its potential for damage far outweighs its modest footprint. This is not just another social media app; it’s the backbone of China’s surveillance state.

The CCP’s go-to app

Owned by Tencent, a tech giant with undeniable ties to the Chinese Communist Party — 23% of its employees are reportedly members — WeChat functions as an extension of Beijing’s ideological apparatus. For Chinese citizens, both within and beyond the country’s borders, WeChat is not merely a tool for communication. It’s a digital leash. The app monitors messages, scans locations, and censors content deemed “politically sensitive” by Beijing.

Through China’s national security laws, Tencent is obligated to hand over any data that the CCP demands. These laws apply to servers in Hong Kong, which, contrary to its pre-1997 promises, has become another arm of Beijing’s authoritarian machine. For Chinese diaspora members in the U.S., WeChat is a lifeline to family and friends back home (more on this in a minute). But this connection comes with a hidden risk.

Straying from the party line can result in an account ban, cutting users off from essential communication, payments, and services. The message is clear: Stay in line, or face isolation.

Spyware: The digital plague

For the broader U.S. population, this surveillance tool may feel distant, but its implications are anything but. The app’s reach doesn’t stop with its users — it’s a Trojan horse capable of compromising any device it touches, spreading spyware like a virus to those who never even downloaded it.

Researchers have raised alarms about WeChat’s capacity to act as a conduit for spyware, enabling the CCP to gain access to sensitive information from infected devices. Imagine a corporate executive receiving a seemingly innocuous message from a colleague who uses WeChat. That single touchpoint could be enough to compromise the executive’s device, granting bad actors access to corporate emails, proprietary data, or even trade secrets.

The danger multiplies exponentially when applied to government officials, contractors, or anyone handling sensitive national security information. A phone compromised by WeChat spyware could become an unwitting surveillance device, allowing hostile actors to listen in on conversations, track movements, or even activate cameras remotely. The potential damage is not hypothetical — cybersecurity experts have documented similar tactics deployed by China in other cases.

Now consider the scale. With millions of WeChat users in the U.S., many of whom interact with non-users daily, the app becomes a digital contagion. Each compromised device acts as a vector, spreading the infection farther, infiltrating networks, and bypassing traditional security measures.The question isn’t whether these vulnerabilities will be exploited — it’s whether they already have. After all, the CCP has already stolen the personal data of tens of millions of Americans.

Censorship and propaganda

Beyond its technical threats, WeChat serves as a tool for censorship and propaganda, extending the CCP’s ideological reach onto American soil. By monitoring and controlling the content its users share, WeChat ensures that dissenting voices are silenced while amplifying pro-CCP narratives. For instance, posts critical of Beijing’s policies — whether related to human rights abuses in Xinjiang or military aggression in the South China Sea — are swiftly removed or shadow-banned.

Moreover, during U.S. elections, WeChat has been used as a tool for spreading CCP propaganda, such as disinformation campaigns targeting Chinese-speaking voters in states like California and Texas. False narratives, including claims that certain candidates supported anti-China policies or would harm the Chinese community, were disseminated to sway opinions and suppress opposition. In other words, China has weaponized this app to sow discord and manipulate democratic processes in America.

The US response: A necessary ban

With all eyes on TikTok, WeChat, with its proven track record of facilitating censorship, spreading spyware, and enforcing ideological conformity, has flown largely under the radar. This double standard is not just shortsighted — it’s downright dangerous.

The United States has the capacity to address both threats simultaneously. Banning WeChat is not merely a matter of convenience; it’s a necessity for national security. Arguments against such action often center on the app’s aforementioned importance to the Chinese diaspora, who rely on it to stay connected with family and friends back home. But this reliance cannot outweigh the risks posed by its continued operation. It’s 2025, for crying out loud. There are numerous alternative communication platforms that offer secure, private channels for connection without the baggage of CCP surveillance.

Allowing WeChat to remain operational in the U.S. undermines both security and sovereignty. It gives the CCP a foothold in the digital lives of millions of Americans, creating vulnerabilities that can be exploited at any moment. If the U.S. is serious about countering China’s growing influence, banning WeChat must be part of the strategy.

Teens on a high-tech crime spree: Microsoft, Vegas casinos — who’s next?



These days, it has become almost mandatory to mock “the kids” — their TikTok obsessions, relentless “doom-scrolling” on Instagram, and “know-nothing” attitudes. They grunt, moan, and communicate via emojis, GIFs, and hashtags, emerging from their digital layers just long enough to make it to class or snatch food from the Uber Eats guy.

Imagine if these extremely talented kids, armed with nothing more than a smartphone and a few low-tech tricks, turn their attention to banks, hospitals, or even the power grids of entire nations.

Yet some of these zombies-in-the-making are up to something far more disruptive than scrolling or snapping selfies. They are infiltrating and embarrassing the world’s most powerful corporations. They've brought industry giants to their knees with a few low-tech tricks, social engineering hacks, and youthful persistence. “Can’t make it to dinner, Mom,” they scream, “too busy making Microsoft sweat.”

Advanced adolescence

Dubbed “advanced persistent teenagers,” these young hackers are not only one of the biggest threats to global corporations but also expose the shaky foundations of our digital world. Groups like LAPSUS$ and Scattered Spider may chase fame and fortune, but critically, their primary motivation seems to be the sheer thrill of it.

In recent months, they’ve pulled off some of the boldest hacks in modern history, targeting hotel chains, casinos, and tech giants using methods that would embarrass any cybersecurity expert. No sophisticated espionage here — just brash smash-and-grab tactics executed with clinical effectiveness.

It’s important to note that nations do not back these teens. They’re a ragtag band of virtual vigilantes who flaunt their hacks on social media with snapshots of breached systems and leaked data. They have taken the art of trolling to a whole new level.

These strategies recall the 2020 Twitter (now X) hack, where young hackers posed as internal IT support to gain access, exploiting employees’ trust rather than high-tech systems.

With a fake call here or a well-timed email there, LAPSUS$ and Scattered Spider trick employees into handing over the keys to the kingdom. Targets include tech titans like Microsoft, Samsung, Nvidia, and, more recently, several hotel chains and casinos, including MGM Resorts. Offering bribes or targeting individuals’ emails, the groups often start with minor accounts, which they use to worm their way into corporate systems. In a world where hackers are meant to lurk in the shadows, these teens are setting off flares.

Conflicted and confused

Should we shed a single tear for these corporate giants?

Many readers will scream “absolutely not” for entirely valid reasons.

Microsoft, for one, has long been associated with a number several sites. From wielding monopolistic power that crushed competitors to pushing software that seems more focused on control than innovation, the company has played the tech game with the heaviest of hands, and its relentless drive for data often crosses privacy lines that leave users feeling more surveilled than served. Also, as I write this, Microsoft is still pushing the DEI agenda with relentless enthusiasm despite most sane Americans wanting nothing to do with it.

Similarly, Nvidia, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world, is no stranger to scandal. The American company has faced a series of controversies that reveal a pattern of miscommunication and questionable practices. First, the GTX 970 fiasco left customers with a misleadingly marketed graphics card, where its supposed 4 GB memory turned out to be 3.5 GB of high-speed and 0.5 GB of slow memory, leading to performance issues. Nvidia's promised driver fix never materialized, leading to performance issues, forcing it to settle a class-action lawsuit. The GeForce Partner Program stirred antitrust concerns, since it incentivized exclusivity only to be canceled amid backlash. To be clear, it was canceled only because Nvidia was exposed.

The California-based corporation also attempted to restrict the reviewer Hardware Unboxed, prompting accusations of extreme overreach. Additionally, Nvidia was hit with an SEC fine for failing to disclose how much crypto mining bolstered its revenue, misleading investors.

Samsung, another target of the terrible teens, made headlines not too long ago when its Galaxy Note phones started blowing up — literally. It’s difficult to feel any sympathy for these companies, now getting a well-deserved taste of their own medicine.

At the same time, it’s worth asking what we should think about these teenagers. Are they digital Robin Hoods exposing corporate arrogance, or are they future terrorists refining techniques that could one day bring nations to their knees? Is Microsoft just a warm-up for thier own Manhattan Project?

Imagine if these extremely talented kids, armed with nothing more than a smartphone and a few low-tech tricks, turn their attention to banks, hospitals, or even the power grids of entire nations. Then it’s not just Big Tech elites taking the hit — it’s all of us. Suddenly, their antics are no longer a corporate headache; they’re a real-world threat. People could die. Lots and lots of people.

As we move further into the digital age, these “advanced persistent teenagers” serve as a sobering reminder of just how fragile our world truly is. For now, their exploits might seem entertaining, almost harmless, but the thrill could easily turn into a horror show — one where the power to stop it lies solely in their hands.

Big Brother’s bigger brother: The Five Eyes’ war on your freedom



“Think of the children.”

Few phrases have been more effective at dismantling rights and silencing opposition. It’s the ultimate rhetorical Trojan horse, bypassing rational debate to smuggle in crippling, inhumane policies.

Historically, cries of “save the children” have been a powerful tool to drive moral panics that systematically erode civil liberties.

The Five Eyes alliance — an Orwellian pact of surveillance states spanning the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — has perfected this tactic. Its latest campaign claims to protect children from harm. Don’t be fooled. The real goal is to invade every corner of your digital life. Marketed as a crackdown on platforms like TikTok and Discord, accused of radicalizing youth, these efforts pave the way for a surveillance system more destructive than anything seen before. Big Brother has a Bigger Brother.

Erasing encryption

Now, to be clear, TikTok is a serious problem. The app is a digital honey trap for the Chinese Communist Party, vacuuming up data and warping young minds with addictive content. But Beijing doesn’t have a monopoly on exploitation. The United States, alongside its Five Eyes allies, is quietly turning “protecting children” into a blunt instrument to crush dissent and invade every corner of your life. “Violent extremist content is more accessible, more digestible, and more impactful than ever before,” claims the Five Eyes initiative. This assertion may justify increasingly invasive measures under the pretext of preventing exposure to such content.

Which takes us to the heart of this initiative: a relentless assault on encryption — the very backbone of digital privacy. By undermining encryption, the alliance aims to tear down the barriers safeguarding your most sensitive information, from private conversations to financial records.

The push to weaken encryption has nothing to do with safety; it’s about control. Demolishing encryption protections doesn’t just expose Americans to government overreach; it also leaves them wide open to cybercriminals, identity thieves, and hostile foreign actors. And in a darkly ironic twist, it makes children — the very people these elites claim to be protecting — far more vulnerable to the same predators they claim to fight. Back doors in encryption don’t discriminate. They become open doors, waiting to be exploited by anyone who can breach them.

Learning from history

Historically, cries of “save the children” have been a powerful tool to drive moral panics that systematically erode civil liberties. In America, this tactic has repeatedly served as justification for policies that expand state power at the expense of individual freedoms. During the Red Scare of the 1950s, protecting children from communist indoctrination became a rallying point for sweeping censorship and loyalty oaths. Teachers were fired, school curriculums gutted, and free expression stifled — all in the name of shielding youth from so-called subversive ideas.

The Five Eyes’ latest initiative is nothing more than the same authoritarian playbook, updated for the digital age.

“The online environment allows minors to interact with adults and other minors, allowing them to view and distribute violent extremist content which further radicalises themselves and others,” it reads. This highlights the potential for mass monitoring of minors’ online activities, raising concerns about privacy and disproportionate responses. More troublingly, it sets the stage for invasive measures that target young people under the pretense of safety.

The emotional appeal of protecting youth is, yet again, being used to rally support for policies that concentrate power in the hands of the state. The pattern is unmistakable: Invoke fear, demand action, and chip away at freedoms in the process.

Same stuff, different decade.

The new scare

Today, it’s encryption in the crosshairs. Tomorrow, it could be the criminalization of dissent. Consider the language of the Five Eyes campaign, rife with vague terms like “malign actors” and “extremism.” These are not carefully defined threats but malleable excuses, broad enough to ensnare journalists, whistleblowers, or anyone daring to criticize those in power.

“Minors are increasingly normalising violent behaviour in online groups, including joking about carrying out terrorist attacks and creating violent extremist content.” The idea of monitoring and interpreting minors’ online jokes or behaviors could lead to punitive actions against young people for relatively harmless activities. Sharing a meme, for instance, could be misconstrued as evidence of radicalization, turning a harmless joke into a justification for invasive surveillance or even legal consequences.

The danger isn’t hypothetical. The United States already leads the world in invasive surveillance.

The initiative insists that a “renewed whole-of-society approach is required to address the issue of minors radicalising to violent extremism.” Such broad language could and should be interpreted as a mandate for expansive powers that infringe on individual rights and freedoms. This approach might involve mass data collection or enlisting private entities as de facto surveillance agents.

The danger isn’t hypothetical. The United States already leads the world in invasive surveillance. Think of the NSA’s PRISM program, exposed by Edward Snowden, which harvested Americans’ emails, messages, and browsing history under the flimsiest of legal pretexts. Weakening encryption will only supercharge this predation, turning every device into a surveillance tool.Yes, things are already dire — privacy is virtually nonexistent. But it can always get worse. The erosion of rights doesn’t happen all at once; it’s a slow, relentless grind, and complacency is its greatest ally.

America must push back against this descent. TikTok is not the only enemy. If the Five Eyes initiative succeeds, future generations will curse us for our cowardice.

Digital ID is coming: Will Americans lose freedom in the name of security?



America was founded on liberty and rights, but Big Tech and Big Government keep trying to take them away.

The latest example comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence is currently working to develop wide-reaching digital IDs. More specifically, NIST is collaborating with tech companies and banks to link mobile driver’s licenses with people’s finances. The broader purpose is to work toward developing a digital ID for everyone that centralizes all their personal information, supposedly to boost cybersecurity and provide more convenience for financial transactions.

The more digital ID is developed in America, the more alternatives to digital ID will become rarer, more complex to use, and, eventually, outlawed or severely restricted.

Working with various associations, the California DMV, the Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft, iLabs, MATTR, OpenID Foundation, and various large financial institutions, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, NIST has now contracted various digital identity specialist companies to implement the project.

According to NIST digital identity program lead Ryan Galluzzo, NIST’s advances are about allowing people to present ID in the most convenient and secure way possible while still allowing them to rely on traditional physical ID.

“We want to open up the use of modern digital pathways while still allowing for physical and manual methods whenever they may be necessary.”

By linking banking information with mobile driver's licenses, NIST will move one step forward to implementing a central digital ID that contains people’s private information. NIST promises that this new digital ID acceleration “will address ‘Know Your Customer/Customer Identification Program Onboarding and Access’ which will demonstrate the use of an mDL and/or Verifiable Credentials (VC) for establishing and accessing an online financial account.”

The project will move forward in three main steps. According to NIST, it will aim to standardize and promote “digital ID standards” while still respecting and maximizing “privacy and usability.” This digital ID project is currently in the build phase.

With technology that now analyzes how people walk and breathe and their irises, to identify them beyond a shadow of a doubt, and phones and GPS systems geolocating individuals at almost every moment of the day, digital ID is ripe for abuse by an authoritarian government or malicious actors. The easier it becomes for a citizen’s important data to be accessed by law enforcement, government, or bad actors, the closer we get to a digital panopticon in which citizens are constantly tracked and subject to potential suspicion while having no recourse to alternative methods of payment or identity.

This move forward linking mobile driver's licenses with banking is bigger news than it appears on the surface. While it can be easily justified and explained as necessary, innovative, and forward-thinking, the more digital ID is developed in America, the more alternatives to digital ID will become rarer, more complex to use, and, eventually, outlawed or severely restricted. What starts as an incentive or benefit all too often becomes a mandate and a requirement down the road. NIST’s moves to build up a more powerful and connected digital ID will inevitably lead to Americans becoming less free, regardless of how these policies are framed or how much of a positive spin they are given.

Why religion will save us from automated warfare in the digital age



The technology now exists to render video games in real, playable time computationally — a first achieved with the classic pixelated first-person shooter Doom.

Don’t yawn — this isn’t just a footnote in the annals of nerd history. Elon Musk promptly chimed in on the news in the replies to promise, “Tesla can do something similar with real world video.”

We are now governed by people who seem hell-bent on preserving their power regardless of the cost — people who are also getting first dibs on the most powerful AIs in development.

The military applications of this latest leap forward are obvious enough. A person at a terminal — or behind the wheel — enters a seamless virtual environment every bit as complex and challenging as a flesh-and-blood environment … at least as far as warfare goes. Yes, war has a funny way of simplifying or even minimizing our lived experience of our own environment: kill, stay alive, move forward, repeat. No wonder technological goals of modeling or simulating the given world work so well together with the arts and sciences of destruction.

But another milestone in the computational march raises deeper questions about the automation of doom itself. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced that the company has “witnessed our first AI-to-AI crypto transaction.”

“What did one AI buy from another? Tokens! Not crypto tokens, but AI tokens (words basically from one LLM to another). They used tokens to buy tokens,” he tweeted, adding a 🤯 emoji. “AI agents cannot get bank accounts, but they can get crypto wallets. They can now use USDC on Base to transact with humans, merchants, or other AIs. Those transactions are instant, global, and free. This,” he enthusiastically concluded, “is an important step to AIs getting useful work done.”

In the fractured world of bleeding-edge tech, “doomerism” is associated with the fear that runaway computational advancement will automate a superintelligence that will destroy the human race.

Perhaps oddly, less attention flows toward the much more prosaic likelihood that sustainable war can soon be carried out in a “set it and forget it” fashion — prompt the smart assistant to organize and execute a military campaign, let it handle all the payments and logistics, human or machine, and return to your fishing, hiking, literary criticism, whatever.

Yes, there’s always the risk of tit-for-tat escalation unto planetary holocaust. But somehow, despite untold millions in wartime deaths and nuclear weapons aplenty, we’ve escaped that hellacious fate.

Maybe we’re better off focusing on the obvious threats of regular ordinary world war in the digital age.

But that would require a recognition that such a “thinkable” war is itself so bad that we must change our ways right now — instead of sitting around scaring ourselves to death with dark fantasies of humanity’s enslavement or obliteration.

That would require recognizing that no matter how advanced we allow technology to become, the responsibility for what technology does will always rest with us. For that reason, the ultimate concern in the digital age is who we are responsible for and answerable to.

As the etymology of the word responsible reveals (it comes from ancient terminology referring to the pouring out of libations in ritual sacrifice), this question of human responsibility points inescapably toward religious concepts, experiences, and traditions.

Avoiding World War Autocomplete means accepting that religion is foundational to digital order — in ways we weren’t prepared for during the electric age typified by John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It means facing up to the fact that different civilizations with different religions are already well on their way to dealing in very different ways with the advent of supercomputers.

And it means ensuring that those differences don’t result in one or several civilizations freaking out and starting a chain reaction of automated violence that engulfs the world — not unto the annihilation of the human race, but simply the devastation of billions of lives. Isn’t that enough?

Unfortunately, right now, the strongest candidate for that civilizational freakout is the United States of America. Not only did we face the biggest shock in how digital tech has worked out, but we also have the farthest to fall in relative terms from our all-too-recent status as a global superpower. We are now governed by people who seem hell-bent on preserving their power regardless of the cost — people who are also getting first dibs on the most powerful AIs in development.

Scary as automated conflict indeed is, the biggest threat to the many billions of humans — and multimillions of Americans — who would suffer most in a world war isn’t the machines. It’s the people who want most to control them.

White House defends censoring Facebook content 'to protect public health'



A White House spokesperson said the Biden administration encouraged Mark Zuckerberg's Meta platform to be responsible, despite the tech entrepreneur saying he was "pressured" to "censor" specific content.

The House Judiciary Committee recently published a letter from Zuckerberg about repeated demands from the Biden-Harris administration to censor content, even satire, related to COVID-19 and vaccines.

'This administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety.'

Zuckerberg wrote that in 2021, "senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree."

When asked, the White House washed its hands of the ordeal and declined to acknowledge Zuckerberg's use of terms regarding censorship and pressure.

"When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” a White House spokesperson said, per the Guardian.

The White House official then attributed responsibility to tech platforms for making "independent" choices about the content posted on their apps.

"Our position has been clear and consistent," the statement continued. "We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present."

— (@)

The White House provided the same statement to media members across the board.

The administration's denial of any form of censorship flies in the face of what social media companies such as Elon Musk's X platform, which released the Twitter Files, have learned. Those documents exposed the federal government's interest in suppressing certain stories, such as those related to the Hunter Biden laptop.

Zuckerberg also complained about the same issue in his letter to Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

Zuckerberg wrote the "FBI warned" his company about "potential Russian disinformation" regarding the Biden family and Ukrainian energy company Burisma in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

The CEO admitted that his team "temporarily demoted" stories posted on his platforms.

He also said it had since been made clear that "the reporting was not Russian disinformation."

Also, during the same term, the Biden-Harris administration attempted to form a Disinformation Governance Board to monitor speech. In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security shut down its controversial disinformation board after widespread backlash that it was reminiscent of Soviet-style control of public discourse.

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Google, Gavin Newsom, and a woke university will partner on news and journalism. What could go wrong?



Last Wednesday, California’s state legislature announced a $250 million deal to partner with the big tech giant Google to fund local journalism and artificial intelligence research. In a draft summary released to Politico, the bill aims to “strengthen democracy and the future of work in an Artificial Intelligence future through a public-private partnership between Google and the state of California. Canada, France, and others have passed similar legislation to fund newsrooms in their countries, but California’s marks the first of these public-private partnerships in America.

Amidst declining demand for journalists and increasing layoffs in the industry, Google will contribute $55 million and California’s taxpayers will contribute $70 million toward the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism’s “News Transformation Fund” to provide financial resources to local newsrooms over the course of five years.

Instead of being charged for utilizing local news outlets’ content, Google acts as a quasi-investor, allowing the company to potentially advocate for its big tech agenda by shaping the direction of journalism to fit its narrative.

Google will also continue to provide $10 million annual grants to newsrooms, in addition to millions more for an AI accelerator program that proponents of the legislation claim will allow journalists to use and adapt to new technologies.

In a statement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) wrote, “This agreement represents a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and bolstering local journalism across California — leveraging substantial tech industry resources without imposing new taxes on Californians," and added that "the deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy."

However, others worry that the current iteration gives too much power to Google and that the added funding for the AI program will do more harm than good to journalists.

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit advocating for aggressive antitrust and anti-monopoly policies, threw shade at the deal, calling it a “backroom deal” that “is bad for journalists, publishers, and all Californians.”

Union leaders, including leaders of the Media Guild of the West, the NewsGuild-CWA, and others also released a statement titled, “California's journalists do not consent to this shakedown” to voice their opposition to the bill since “the future of journalism should not be decided in backroom deals.”

“After two years of advocacy for strong antimonopoly action to start turning around the decline of local newsrooms, we are left almost without words,” they stated. “The publishers who claim to represent our industry are celebrating an opaque deal involving taxpayer funds, a vague AI accelerator project that could very well destroy journalism jobs, and minimal financial commitments from Google to return the wealth this monopoly has stolen from our newsrooms.”

Previously, Google staunchly opposed iterations of the bill and claimed that it would “put support of the news ecosystem at risk.” The original bill would have forced Google and other big tech giants to contribute a portion of their advertising revenues to local journalists and newsrooms in exchange for their content, whereas the current bill relies on a public-private partnership.

Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnerships, said that the previous bill would “create a ‘link tax’ that would require Google to pay for simply connecting Californians to news articles. … If passed,” Zaidi added, the bill “may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”

So Google decided to retaliate and temporarily blocked and blacklisted local outlets’ content from appearing in its searches, emulating its own tactics in response to similar legislation in other countries.

Later, California gave up and stripped the bill of its tax and replaced it with the current public-private partnership. As a result, Google and other big tech giants cheered for the bill’s success since the current iteration essentially grants Google access to influence local news outlets’ content in exchange for some funding, further expanding the company's monopoly power.

Instead of being charged for utilizing local news outlets’ content, Google acts as a quasi-investor, allowing the company to potentially advocate for its big tech agenda by shaping the direction of journalism to fit its narrative.

Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, praised California lawmakers and the tech and news industry for collaborating to support local journalism. “This public-private partnership builds on our long history of working with journalism and the local news ecosystem in our home state, while developing a national center of excellence on AI policy,” Walker said.

Similarly, Jason Kwon, chief strategy officer for OpenAI, stated, “A strong press is a key pillar of democracy, and [OpenAI] is proud to be part of this partnership to utilize AI in support of local journalism across America.”

The elites dream of turning America into China. Sadly, they're succeeding.



This week, Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, took advantage of a new meme to make an old point that is gaining new importance: “You can’t make us China if we China ourselves first.”

The idea, which goes back at least to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s infamous 2010 China-for-a-day daydream, is simple enough: The Chinese seem to have figured out how to harmonize technology with unity, resulting in massive growth for the people and massive privilege for elites; can’t we take a cue from Beijing and do that too?

The solution there is to overthrow America with a new, digital-age America, one that borgs up the country and its people just as much as China and the Chinese, but in our own unique way.

The joke is that, of course, Friedman didn’t really want to become China; he wanted to have his American cake and eat it too, and so does just about everyone else who looks over the sea with envy at China’s apparent mastery of political reorganization on digital-age terms. Because the quickest way to become China is to let China remake us in its image, and well ...

The wishcast takes on a different tenor: If only our elites could “pull a China” here, all on their own! But here, the obstacles morph too. It’s sinking in that we’re not very good at becoming China, and for this, our elites are happy to blame the American people, who are proving harder to pacify than expected, and time is running out.

There’s another obstacle: China is trying to unseat the U.S. as the dominant, definitive global power. This suggests the things our elites envy about China can only be achieved by overthrowing America’s global dominance, which, in turn, threatens American elites.

For us in the West, there’s really only one path to that kind of collectivist unity. Many insist that’s communism, but communism — at least as we’ve known it — is just a halfway step.

Communism, as we’ve known it, gained power and adherents by positioning itself against not just Christianity but all religions. That proved to be reasonably effective for a time — for about as long as radio and television dominated our technologically mediated environment.

That environment made human imagination the most powerful force in the world — a world where, of course, the soft atheist communist song “Imagine” became the most popular, echoing John Lennon’s earlier contention that “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first — rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary."

America’s imagineering elite built digital technology to consummate post-religious America’s capitalist-powered communism around the world. Yet alarmingly, that project failed, and China’s post-religious capitalist-powered communist project started to really take off.

This is because digital collectivism vibes very well with the religious frameworks established at the origin of the Chinese civilization-state. After the end of the Cold War, Chinese elites began putting effort into demonstrating to themselves and their people that, basically, Western communism suffered from certain internal problems that China didn’t have to deal with because of its deep civilizational anthropology and cosmology.

America certainly does not share this deep origin, to say the least. The spiritual origins of American civilization are Protestant, and since the beginning, the anarchistic tendencies of the Southern colonists and the theocratic tendencies of the Northern colonists have created a complex and conflicted identity that only leaves one absolute path toward authentic “native” collectivism at the national scale: that of the established church.

Of course, that’s squarely at odds with our Constitution. So the real challenge faced by American elites trying to beat China at its own game of usurping American global dominance in the digital age is to answer the riddle, “When is a church not a church?”

It is deeply sensed, if rarely ever articulated, that the answer to this question will unlock the ultimate cheat code — imposing a theocracy on Americans that will allow the elite to digitally collectivize quickly and powerfully enough to replace the old America’s global dominance with that of the new, boxing out China before it can win the world.

And for the elite, this approach had better work, because no other alternative seems to exist. It’s an all-or-nothing gamble.

And so, in the struggle among different elite factions for control over deciding which theocracy is established through the church that is not a church, two candidates for institutionalized worship, drawn from the deep religious substrate of the West, have swiftly risen to the top of the pack.

The first is Justice, the god of the woke, a queered version of Zeus who’s all about bringing infinitely prideful yet interoperable identities under one perfect arbiter to rule them all. The second is Enlightenment, the god of tech, which increasingly worships the convergence of all interoperable things into a single, infinitely illuminating intellect.

You can see that interoperability and infinity dominate both these creeds, and as we all see, most techies are willing to worship the god of Justice so long as the god of Enlightenment (and its priests) has pride of place, and most wokies are willing to worship the god of Enlightenment so long as the god of Justice (and its priests) has pride of place.

After all, true absolute justice on Earth requires a superhuman intelligence capable of constantly computing, adjudicating, and ruling on all micro-injustices. Only the merger of the human and the machine into a cyborg collective allows this. The outlines of a church unlike any other begin to emerge. Woke and tech harmoniously combine into one big cyborg theocracy ... one big enough even to ingest China itself.

That’s the plan! And that’s why, without being able to turn to a church that is a church yet does not establish a theocracy, Americans trying to rescue their country and their humanity will find themselves falling back darkly on only what weapons they manage to cling to.

Big Brother Ford awarded patent to snitch to cops when you speed



Ford, once an icon of American innovation, now wants to take the lead on another emerging and upcoming trend — mass surveillance.

In January 2023, Ford filed a patent application for a new technology that would allow it to track the driving behavior of vehicles on the road and report speeding violations to law enforcement. Vehicles would have cameras that activate if they detect speeding vehicles nearby and capture high-quality images of the offending vehicle and its identifying features, such as license plates or accessories attached to the offending car. Then, those images and GPS data would be shared with local law enforcement to decide whether to initiate a chase.

Many believe that these cameras violate drivers’ privacy. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise that corporations and governments worldwide already have methods to spy on their citizens. Governments have been found to hack into private individuals’ phones through software provided by corporations, and the NSA admits to purchasing Americans’ sensitive data.

Local law enforcement has always partnered with corporations to surveil the public by installing cameras to detect speeding and running red lights. These cameras have come under fire for their questionable legality and efficacy, spurring some states to ban them.

Car makers already have a habit of violating drivers’ privacy. A New York Times reporter found that General Motors 'tricked millions of drivers into being spied on' by tracking detailed driving data and adjusting insurance rates accordingly; those with supposedly poor driving behavior would see their rates increase.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill to ban red-light cameras in 2019, two years after KXAN, an Austin-based NBC affiliate, reported that almost all cities with red-light cameras had illegally issued traffic tickets. Their investigation also found that drivers paid the city of Austin over $7 million in fines since the cameras were installed, and cities in Texas made over $500 million from the cameras since 2007.

For now, Ford’s new camera idea remains a patent application, so it's not certain whether we’ll see F-150s snitching on you for going five mph over the limit, even if Ford is granted the patent. But if it does become reality, we’ll probably see F-150s snitching on you for no reason at all. After all, if red-light cameras are faulty, why won’t Ford’s camera be?

A bad habit

Car makers already have a habit of violating drivers’ privacy. A New York Times reporter found that General Motors “tricked millions of drivers into being spied on” by tracking detailed driving data and adjusting insurance rates accordingly; those with supposedly poor driving behavior would see their rates increase.

As a result, lawmakers urged the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on car makers’ privacy violations. In a letter to the FTC, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) accused GM, Honda, and Hyundai of spying on drivers and selling data for pennies. In the letter, they claim that Honda sold data from 97,000 cars, at a rate of 26 cents per car, to Verisk, a data analytics provider for insurance companies, between 2020 and 2024. Between 2019 and 2024, Hyundai sold data from 1.7 million vehicles, at a rate of 61 cents per car, to Verisk.

“The FTC should hold accountable the automakers, which shared their customers’ data with data brokers without obtaining informed consent, as well as the data brokers, which resold data that had not been obtained in a lawful manner,” the two senators urged.

Car makers aren’t the only ones scheming to snitch on drivers, though. Popular apps like Life360, a location-sharing app popular for families with teens, are accused of selling families’ data to insurance companies. Despite being advertised as an app that helps improve families’ safety, it violates families’ privacy. In 2021, one former X-mode employee claimed, “Life360 had the ‘most valuable offerings due to the sheer volume and precision’ compared to other sources of data,” according to the Verge.

MyRadar, a weather forecast app, and GasBuddy, which finds the cheapest gas stations, are also accused of violating privacy for profit.

Some insurance companies are finding ways to gather driving data without buying it from someone else. Progressive, for example, has a product called the Progressive Snapshot. Drivers voluntarily attach the device to their vehicles, allowing Progressive to track their driving behavior. Each time the device detects a hard brake, it will beep, encouraging drivers to alter their behavior on the road.

Progressive claims that safe drivers will be rewarded with discounts, but it's uncertain whether it will benefit most drivers. People who work in big cities must deal with bumper-to-bumper traffic during rush hour, causing them to brake harder or unexpectedly. Even though frequent hard braking is out of their control, they may see their insurance rates increase.

Fortunately, Progressive Snapshot is a voluntary program. However, insurance companies already have ways to track driving behavior without alerting their customers. In an era that feels eerily similar to Orwell’s "1984," it's only a matter of time until all Americans realize they’re being spied on.