AI is coming for your job, your voice ... and your worldview



Suddenly, artificial intelligence is everywhere — generating art, writing essays, analyzing medical data. It’s flooding newsfeeds, powering apps, and slipping into everyday life. And yet, despite all the buzz, far too many Americans — especially conservatives — still treat AI like a novelty, a passing tech fad, or a toy for Silicon Valley elites.

Treating AI like the latest pet rock tech trend is not only naïve — it’s dangerous.

The AI shift is happening now, and it’s coming for white-collar jobs that once seemed untouchable.

AI isn’t just another innovation like email, smartphones, or social media. It has the potential to restructure society itself — including how we work, what we believe, and even who gets to speak — and it’s doing it at a speed we’ve never seen before.

The stakes are enormous. The pace is breakneck. And still, far too many people are asleep at the wheel.

AI isn’t just ‘another tool’

We’ve heard it a hundred times: “Every generation freaks out about new technology.” The Luddites smashed looms. People said cars would ruin cities. Parents panicked over television and video games. These remarks are intended to dismiss genuine concerns of emerging technology as irrational fears.

But AI is not just a faster loom or a fancier phone — it’s something entirely different. It’s not just doing tasks faster; it’s replacing the need for human thought in critical areas. AI systems can now write news articles, craft legal briefs, diagnose medical issues, and generate code — simultaneously, at scale, around the clock.

And unlike past tech milestones, AI is advancing at an exponential speed. Just compare ChatGPT’s leap from version 3 to 4 in less than a year — or how DeepSeek and Claude now outperform humans on elite exams. The regulatory, cultural, and ethical guardrails simply can’t keep up. We’re not riding the wave of progress — we’re getting swept underneath it.

AI is shockingly intelligent already

Skeptics like to say AI is just a glorified autocomplete engine — a chatbot guessing the next word in a sentence. But that’s like calling a rocket “just a fuel tank with fire.” It misses the point.

The truth is, modern AI already rivals — and often exceeds — human performance in several specific domains. Systems like OpenAI’s GPT-4, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini demonstrate IQs that place them well above average human intelligence, according to ongoing tests from organizations like Tracking AI. And these systems improve with every iteration, often learning faster than we can predict or regulate.

Even if AI never becomes “sentient,” it doesn’t have to. Its current form is already capable of replacing jobs, overseeing supply chain logistics, and even shaping culture.

AI will disrupt society — fast

Some compare the unfolding age of AI as just another society-improving invention and innovation: Jobs will be lost, others will be created — and we’ll all adapt. But those previous transformations took decades to unfold. The car took nearly 50 years to become ubiquitous. The internet needed about 25 years to transform communication and commerce. These shifts, though massive, were gradual enough to give society time to adapt and respond.

AI is not affording us that luxury. The AI shift is happening now, and it’s coming for white-collar jobs that once seemed untouchable.

Reports published by the World Economic Forum and Goldman Sachs suggest job disruption to hundreds of millions globally in the next several years. Not factory jobs — rather, knowledge work. AI already edits videos, writes advertising copy, designs graphics, and manages customer service.

This isn’t about horses and buggies. This is about entire industries shedding their human workforces in months, not years. Journalism, education, finance, and law are all in the crosshairs. And if we don’t confront this disruption now, we’ll be left scrambling when the disruption hits our own communities.

AI will become inescapable

You may think AI doesn’t affect you. Maybe you never plan on using it to write emails or generate art. But you won’t stay disconnected from it for long. AI will soon be baked into everything.

Your phone, your bank, your doctor, your child’s education — all will rely on AI. Personal AI assistants will become standard, just like Google Maps and Siri. Policymakers will use AI to draft and analyze legislation. Doctors will use AI to diagnose ailments and prescribe treatment. Teachers will use AI to develop lesson plans (if all these examples aren't happening already). Algorithms will increasingly dictate what media you consume, what news stories you see, even what products you buy.

We went from dial-up to internet dependency in less than 15 years. We’ll be just as dependent on AI in less than half that time. And once that dependency sets in, turning back becomes nearly impossible.

AI will be manipulated

Some still think of AI as a neutral calculator. Just give it the data, and it’ll give you the truth. But AI doesn’t run on math alone — it runs on values, and programmers, corporations, and governments set those values.

Google’s Gemini model was caught rewriting history to fit progressive narratives — generating images of black Nazis and erasing white historical figures in an overcorrection for the sake of “diversity.” China’s DeepSeek AI refuses to acknowledge the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Uyghur genocide, parroting Chinese Communist Party talking points by design.

Imagine AI tools with political bias embedded in your child’s tutor, your news aggregator, or your doctor’s medical assistant. Imagine relying on a system that subtly steers you toward certain beliefs — not by banning ideas but by never letting you see them in the first place.

We’ve seen what happened when environmental social governance and diversity, equity, and inclusion transformed how corporations operated — prioritizing subjective political agendas over the demands of consumers. Now, imagine those same ideological filters hardcoded into the very infrastructure that powers our society of the near future. Our society could become dependent on a system designed to coerce each of us without knowing it’s happening.

Our liberty problem

AI is not just a technological challenge. It’s a cultural, economic, and moral one. It’s about who controls what you see, what you’re allowed to say, and how you live your life. If conservatives don’t get serious about AI now — before it becomes genuinely ubiquitous — we may lose the ability to shape the future at all.

This is not about banning AI or halting progress. It’s about ensuring that as this technology transforms the world, it doesn’t quietly erase our freedom along the way. Conservatives cannot afford to sit back and dismiss these technological developments. We need to be active participants in shaping AI’s ethical and political boundaries, ensuring that liberty, transparency, and individual autonomy are protected at every stage of this transformation.

The stakes are clear. The timeline is short. And the time to make our voices heard is right now.

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.

Trump’s Deal Is Only The First Step At Countering China’s Strategic Moves In Panama

Rubio's visit to Panama resulted in the first foreign policy victory for the Trump administration, but there is more to be done.

Tulsi Gabbard flip-flops on Section 702 — Trump's DNI pick now supports much-abused surveillance authority



Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard has changed her position on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the warrantless surveillance authority that was used to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign and was exploited by the FBI hundreds of thousands of times to spy on American citizens.

Gabbard told Punchbowl News last week that she will support the controversial act if confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's director of national intelligence.

Section 702 allows the government to spy on foreign nationals outside the U.S. with the compelled aid of electronic communication service providers. While supposedly outward-facing, if an American contacts or is contacted by a foreign national over email, social media, or the phone, the American's communications could potentially be tapped, searched, and stored without a warrant.

Blaze News previously reported that the FBI has admitted that there were at least 278,000 "unintentional" backdoor search queries of the 702 database for the private communications of Americans between 2020 and 2021 alone. Among those citizens swept up into the warrantless 702 searches were Jan. 6 protesters, congressional campaign donors, and BLM protesters.

'Politicians talk a good game about civil liberties.'

In her final days as congresswoman for Hawaii, Gabbard joined Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in advancing a bill that would have repealed the Patriot Act and killed nearly all provisions of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

Gabbard said in a video at the time:

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution very specifically prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant based on probable cause. But over the last two decades, in part because of information revealed by Edward Snowden, we now know that there have been ongoing breaches of our civil liberties through programs that were instituted through the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, which basically allowed agencies within our government to conduct mass illegal surveillance on Americans without a warrant or probable cause.

Years later, Gabbard, still apparently a critic of Section 702, noted in a speech at CPAC, "Too many politicians talk a good game about civil liberties, but when it comes time to cast that vote on things like getting rid of secret FISA courts and protecting our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy, they vote on the side of the power elite and against liberty."

In an apparent effort to win over elements of the power elite in the U.S. Senate, Gabbard has adopted a new view on the spying authority.

Gabbard confirmed her flip-flop in a statement to CNN on Friday, noting, "Section 702, unlike other FISA authorities, is crucial for gathering foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons abroad. This unique capability cannot be replicated and must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans."

"My prior concerns about FISA were based on insufficient protections for civil liberties, particularly regarding the FBI's misuse of warrantless search powers on American citizens," continued Gabbard, who Trump previously indicated would champion Americans' constitutional rights in the role. "Significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress to address these issues. If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans' Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people."

'IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS.'

This consequential about-face may improve Gabbard's chances of confirmation in the U.S. Senate. Her embrace of Section 702 has already won over Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R), a longtime supporter of the controversial spying power, who told NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday that Gabbard's flip-flop "was a very important piece."

"She voted against that in the House when she was a member of the House of Representatives and had said she wanted changes," said Lankford. "She's now coming and saying, 'Those changes have been done,' because even since she was in Congress, there have been quite a few changes that we've made in Congress to make sure we're protecting the civil rights of Americans."

Lankford previously suggested in a Wall Street Journal podcast on Wednesday that Gabbard should abandon her opposition to the 702 program.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, similarly appears pleased by Gabbard's change of heart, telling Punchbowl News on Thursday, "Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI."

Trump implored Republicans to "KILL FISA" as it was nearing its expiration date last year, noting, "IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN."

To the great satisfaction of the Biden White House, the Republican-controlled House voted 273-147 in favor of reauthorizing the surveillance bill on April 12, 2024.

Despite the rejection of multiple proposed amendments that might have protected American citizens' privacy from the spying authority Gabbard now supports, Republican Sens. Lankford, John Barrasso (Wyo.), John Boozman (Ark.), Katie Britt (Ala.), Ted Budd (N.C.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), John Cornyn (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.), John Kennedy (La.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Pete Ricketts (Neb.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), John Thune (S.D.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), and Todd Young (Ind.) and former Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) joined forces with Democrats to ensure its reauthorization.

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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.

How Pokémon Go made you an unpaid employee for years



Pokémon Go creators told users they wanted them to catch all 1,025 characters in a fun, augmented-reality version of their cities. What they actually wanted was an army of bots to take pictures for them all over the world to help develop their product.

Niantic L, the former Google subsidiary that created Pokémon Go, has used gamers to contribute to its mass library of images for nearly a decade in order to hone its artificial intelligence mapping models.

A country essentially has no choice but to participate in espionage in its own streets.

Users contributed to Niantic’s “Scaniverse” by enabling an option in Pokémon Go that would place the adorable monsters in the user’s real world so that when a user looked at their phone, it appeared as if the Pokémon character was standing on their street, in their park, or at the local store.

Niantic said this feature was “completely optional,” and people had to “visit a specific publicly-accessible location and click to scan.”

Despite the feature being optional, the product’s volume of downloads (anywhere between 600 million to one billion) has allowed for more than enough data to extrapolated.

“We have trained more than 50 million neural networks, with more than 150 trillion parameters, enabling operation in over a million locations,” Niantic boasted in a blog post. “We receive about 1 million fresh scans each week, each containing hundreds of discrete images.”

That blog post was edited after a slew of bad press, and added, “Merely walking around playing our games does not train an AI model.”

It’s not clear however, what exactly a “discrete” image means.

The real product

Niantic’s Large Geospatial Model could seemingly be used as a competitor to, or addition to, Google Street View/Google Maps.

Where Google Maps may be able to show users the front of a monument or the entrance to a park, Pokémon Go trained its AI model with thousands of images — from single locations — to precisely determine the terrain, dimensions, and maneuverability of an area.

The true meaning behind Pokémon Go’s scraping of user data does not seem to be to know where players are going or who they’re with, it’s simply that Niantic seemingly wanted to find a way to have tens of millions of people develop it product for it.

The price for Pokémon licensing pales in comparison to having limitless employees around the world, who love their jobs yet at the same time don’t when they are working.

“Pokémon Go is just the beginning,” Return’s James Poulos said. “When it comes to the high-tech grey zone of interactive digital overlays, this fast-evolving frontier mixes and blurs military intelligence and law enforcement data with commercial and recreational applications.”

It seems obvious that Niantic is moving toward using this data for augmented-reality glasses and further personalizing user experience in a new form of consumerism. The same way social media platforms or Amazon use a unique advertising ID to suggest that new pair of mittens, Niantic hopes its AI model will not only “help with navigation” but also guide users through the world, answer questions, and provide “personalized recommendations.”

Having a complex understanding of environments will allegedly give people the opportunity to be more “informed and engaged with their surroundings,” the company also claimed.

Why they need you

Niantic explained that without users, it wouldn’t be able to piece together proper measurements and unseen sides of any given object or location.

For example, Niantic revealed that its geospatial model is unable to properly navigate winding streets in an old European town, where elevation fluctuates and objects have unidentical sides.

The company explained, “Appearance changes based on time of day and season ... the shape of many man-made objects follow specific rules of symmetry or other generic types of layouts — often dependent on the geographic region.”

Much of the task, kicked to the consumer, has been finding a way to see what objects or locations look like from different angles. This “spatial understanding” is nearly impossible from satellite images, street view cameras, or AI models, especially for off-the-road locations.

This inability to visualize “missing parts of a scene” was indeed the missing link for Niantic to properly place objects using augmented reality or even send a robot through unmapped terrain.

Eerily, the latter will help autonomous bots navigate these off-road locations.

“The robots are coming,” Poulos explained. “While citizens will doubtlessly seek out boundaries where humanoid machines don’t tread, in the meantime, they need internal guidelines for navigating the physical world, and they need them fast.”

“Slurping up data provided en masse by unsuspecting augmented-reality players is a logical place to turn,” Poulos added.

Much like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Niantic is hoping the future coincides with AR glasses. Along with that comes the need to be able to recognize and place things in the real world.

The company even referred this connection to the real world as the “future operating system.”

What could go wrong?

When asked about a possible military application for its geospatial model, Niantic’s senior vice president of engineering, Brian McClendon, said he could “definitely see it.”

“I think the question is would there be anything that they would do with it that would be outside of what a consumer or a Bellingcat want to do with it,” he added, according to 404 Media.

One obvious application in war time would be using an enemy’s spatial mapping against them. If one country had its every nook and cranny mapped out, that data could be sold to a foe to develop a complex understanding of that country’s terrain.

This would make a grand strategy far easier to implement for nations with this information that those without such information.

However, McClendon said such use would “obviously” be an issue if it was “adding amplitude to war.”

He then noted the project is “months or even years away” from any kind of product but failed to answer whether or not the user data would be sold.

"There will be important questions that arise and we’ll tackle those responsibly and thoughtfully."

Niantic’s team, unlike many in the upper echelon of the tech space, doesn’t seem to have any direct ties to intelligence agencies; CEO John Hanke, art director Dennis Hwang, director Tatsuo Nomura, and the aforementioned McClendon are all former Google employees and Silicon Valley veterans.

While this data seems poised for nefarious use, as it stands, all signs point toward ruthless capitalism.

"Unfortunately, you're going to see more and more of this in the AI era,” said Josh Centers, editor in chief of Unprepared.life.

“Tech companies have been collecting stockpiles of random data for years, often unsure of what to do with it. Now, the answer is obvious: Feed it to a [language model] and see what it comes up with."

This collection of data gives a multinational corporation seemingly more power, in at least one sense, than a government or standing army. A country essentially has no choice but to participate in espionage in its own streets.

Most countries, anyway; Russia didn’t seem to approve of the notion of Pokémon Go from the start, as in 2016 it pushed out its own version of the app focusing on Russian culture and history.

Niantic eventually pulled Pokémon Go from Russia and Belarus in 2022, allegedly in response to the war in Ukraine.

It’s entirely possible, however, that Russia didn’t want it in the first place. Did it know?

Report: Your Bank Might Be Spying On You For The Feds

Americans should be deeply concerned that our government and financial institutions are not only spying on us but also potentially abusing their power to target Americans for their political views.

Biden admin has been using banking institutions to spy on Americans without warrants: House report



Congressional investigators released an interim report Friday detailing some of the creative ways that the Biden administration has apparently sidestepped the legal process in order to spy on and track American citizens, particularly those who have expressed opinions and political views unfavorable to the powers that be.

The report was released just days after Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, told Joe Rogan that scores of tech founders were de-banked under the Biden administration through a politically motivated effort he referred to as "Operation Choke Point 2.0," an apparent update on a scandalous Obama Department of Justice initiative.

Americans' financial data reveals a great deal about their political viewpoints, interests, vulnerabilities, and locations. The new report from the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, titled "Financial Surveillance in the United States: How the Federal Government Weaponized the Bank Secrecy Act to Spy on Americans" noted that "because of this data's usefulness, federal law enforcement agencies increasingly coordinate with financial institutions to secure even greater access to Americans' private financial information, often without legal process."

Congressional investigators began looking into the process after a whistleblower alleged that Bank of America voluntarily and without legal process provided the FBI with a list of names of Americans who used a BoA credit or debit card in Washington, D.C., around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, protests. A former senior FBI official, Joseph Bonavolonta, later confirmed the testimony of the whistleblower, retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill.

While law enforcement is normally barred from inquiring into financial institutions' customer information, at least without going through proper legal processes, federal agents apparently found a workaround: Highlight as "suspicious" client characteristics common to intended targets — such as criticism of gun-grab policies, vaccine mandates, COVID-19 lockdowns, and the Deep State — and encourage financial institutions to file Suspicious Activity Reports. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network compiles these reports into a searchable database.

'This could lead to widespread abuse of power and debanking.'

The Weaponization Committee indicated Friday that last year, the FinCEN database was accessed by over 14,000 government employees for more than 3 million warrantless searches.

According to FinCEN's latest annual report, nearly 15.42% of active FBI investigations in fiscal year 2023 were directly linked to SARs and Currency Transaction Reports. At least 4.6 million SARs and 20.8 million CTRs were filed last year.

The new report from the House Judiciary Committee, which relies on over 48,000 pages of newly reviewed documents and three new transcribed interviews, underscored that federal agencies have increasingly worked "hand-in-glove with financial institutions, obtaining virtually unchecked access to private financial data and testing out new methods and new technology to continue the financial surveillance of American citizens."

The report claims that:

  • the FBI manipulated the Suspicious Activity Report filing process "to treat financial institutions as de facto arms of law enforcement, issuing 'requests,' without legal process, that amount to demands for information related to certain persons or activities it considers 'suspicious'";
  • FinCEN coordinated with the FBI to lean on financial institutions to comb through their data and file SARs on hundreds of Americans "without any clear criminal nexus"; and
  • while on paper an advisory body to the Treasury Department on matters pertaining to the Bank Secrecy Act, the BSA Advisory Group has become "a tool for federal law enforcement and financial institutions to monitor the private, financial data of American citizens" — a tool set to become more invasive and more powerful in the hands of federal law enforcement operatives.

The report concludes, "All Americans should be disturbed by how their financial data is collected, made accessible to, and searched by federal and state officials, including law enforcement and regulatory agencies."

Congressional investigators emphasized that with e-commerce ascendant and the use of cash growing increasingly less common, "the future leaves very little financial activity beyond the purview of modern financial institutions or the government's prying eyes."

The Weaponization Committee added on X that "without safeguards, this could lead to widespread abuse of power and debanking."

The report was not, however, all doom and gloom. Lawmakers highlighted potential legislative reforms that could be undertaken to curb the potential for continued and worse abuse, including

  • raising the threshold for currency transaction reports from the $10,000 mark to $60,000, as a means to reverse the CTR's transformation from a program about criminal activity into a government surveillance program;
  • amending the BSA to require that banks notify a customer that an SAR was filed, provide a justification, and offer the flagged client the opportunity to respond to the corresponding allegations;
  • restore Fourth Amendment protections to American's financial records, requiring law enforcement obtain a warrant to gain access to Americans' private financial information;

"Federal law enforcement has shown that it will leverage any opportunity to operate outside the bounds of the statutes that govern access to Americans’ financial data," said the report. "Absent adequate congressional oversight and legislative reforms, it is likely that countless more Americans will be subject to financial surveillance and potentially federal investigation, all without ever knowing about it."

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Trump's potential pick for FBI director haunted by Russiagate, 'security state' loyalties



FBI Director Christopher Wray's 10-year term does not expire until 2027. President-elect Donald Trump is, however, expected to replace him upon taking office. While Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump said is "a very talented guy," might be in contention, the two men whose names keep popping up in discussions of a potential successor are former National Security Council official Kash Patel and former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers.

Establishmentarians have piled on Patel, characterizing him as inexperienced, revenge-driven, and "dangerous."

While Rogers, who specialized in organized crime as a special agent at the FBI's Chicago office, has so far avoided similar abuse, Trump loyalists and critics of the American intelligence community have expressed concerns about his past associations with individuals and censorious groups antagonistic to Trump; his historic support for surveillance programs; and the role he apparently played in pushing Russiagate.

Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon asked Mike Benz, the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, this week why the "MAGA right" would be "particularly upset about a guy like Mike Rogers, who in normal times would be looked at as a fine, center-right candidate put up by a Romney-type Republican administration?"

'You can't really have a compromised candidate.'

Benz, keen to see Patel nominated, suggested that Rogers' involvement with the Atlantic Council — "probably the number-one apex predator in the entire censorship industry" — and his help advancing Russiagate were disqualifying.

"The relationship between the Justice Department and the FBI is the same relationship that's shared between the U.S. State Department and the CIA. They need to be constantly in sync," said Benz.

"You can't really have a compromised candidate where one person supports the president and the other person is looking to put a knife in the president's back. That is simply untenable when you're dealing with the kind of special, compartmentalized operations that happen at the FBI level."

The Daily Caller reported that Rogers is not only a member of the Aspen Cybersecurity Institute, a left-leaning think tank, but also served as an adviser to the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy initiative, spearheaded by a former foreign policy adviser to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and aimed at tackling supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The ASD launched the Hamilton 68 Dashboard in 2017 to monitor hundreds of then-Twitter accounts allegedly linked to Russian influence efforts online — a project likened by investigative reporter Matt Taibbi to "digital McCarthyism that was repeatedly used by establishment media publications as a source to push the Russian influence and interference narratives that Democrats, in turn, exploited during Trump's first term."

According to Taibbi, when Twitter executives attempted to recreate the group's list of accounts, they determined that the accounts were "neither strongly Russia nor strongly bots," and indicated that "there is no evidence to support their statements that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops."

When pressed for comment, Rogers' spokesman Chris Gustafon said in a statement to the Caller, "President-elect Trump is once again assembling a fantastic administration to help the American people and Make America Great Again."

Wikileaks, which has been highly critical of Rogers as an FBI director aspirant, suggested that the ASD was a "central player in efforts to tie President Donald Trump and his supporters to Russian interference in the 2016 election" and that the Hamilton 68 Dashboard's "true purpose appeared to be casting suspicion on Trump supporters and reinforcing claims that his presidency was illegitimate."

Wikileaks also highlighted how in 2018, Rogers advocated for the suppression of a Republican memo critical of the FBI's spying on the Trump campaign.

Rogers told NPR at the time the memo should not be released because

you're only going to get a small part of the picture. And so what they're purportedly alleging is going to come out in the memo today is that there was some misconduct on behalf of FBI agents and some DOJ officials, lawyers at the Department of Justice, in the application for something called the FISA, which is the secret court that does counterintelligence, espionage cases, terrorism cases, where it needs to be in a classified setting.

Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, responding to a video of Rogers apparently joking with Hunter Biden "intel" letter signatory Michael Hayden about having Edward Snowden assassinated, tweeted, "There's literally no worse appointment possible than choosing Mike Rogers for FBI Director, or for any government position. He's the single most devoted loyalist to the US Security State and all of its multi-faceted abuses. It doesn't get worse than Mike Rogers."

While Rogers' past remarks and associations may serve as red flags for the president-elect, Trump endorsed him in March for his unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan — months after the former congressman and defense lobbyist criticized the Biden Justice Department's "war" against Trump.

Patel endorsed Rogers for Senate in April, saying he would "hold the FBI and DOJ accountable."

"I am a big fan of Mike Rogers, and should there be an opening [for FBI director], he would be my choice," said Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R).

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, "Mike Rogers is a terrific guy. I don't know Kash Patel."

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