That has more to do with the massive computing needs of machine learning (AI). All the big tech companies are splurging on advanced NVidia chips and data centers for this.
Are the 4 percent of people who have confidence in Congress members of Congress or related to members of Congress? That’s the only way this number makes sense. Ditto for television news.
Interesting to see the small but consistent increases in almost all of the confidence scores in 2025 compared to 2024. The big picture, of course, is the abysmal drop in virtually all the confidence scores compared to 20, 30 or 40 years ago. But this recent positive blip calls for additional analysis. However small, it does not seem like random statistical noise, if only because of its positive tilt across so many disparate institutions. It will be interesting to see the figures for 2026 given the results of the Nov. 2024 elections.
I thought the confidence scores were interesting as well. Going up 4 to 6 points except for a few categories was very interesting. I would love to know the questions that were asked of participants to get these results.
I find it interesting that the U.S. institution for confidence that went down the most, from 9% in 2024 to 4% in 2025, was Congress. Kind of says something. As for lethal doxxing, I am reminded of the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on YOU. Fool me twice (or more), shame on ME!". Maduro was a one-shot, and I do believe that there was assistance from on-high within Venezuela itself. The chances of something like Maduro happening again elsewhere are far less likely, as other regimes have learned from this, and thus have taken appropriate countermeasures. Trump likes to cock-a-doddle-do (or doo) like a fat orange-haired rooster (graphic imagery again). We probably have played, no pun intended, our "Trump" card.
“Americans like what they deem to be successful foreign policy operations,” I don't know if it's that or people like see immediate justice. That's why John Wick and Jack Reacher are popular. People are so stomped on in their daily lives they like to see a hero acting like they want to act.
A statistic from your "confidence in" list made my day...TV news is at 12%. I dream of the day when commercial TV news will be replaced by other programming that will make no bones about being entertainment.
"In the case of al Qaeda, this was always the fear, that the War on Terror was a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ (though to be fair, its most famous leader was never replaced by anyone near as effective)."
Not so sure about this, at least outside of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. OBL denied involvement in 9/11 from the very beginning and the Taliban offered to turn him over to a neutral country if the US produced evidence of his guilt. Or something to that effect. Personally I believe him.
One, the very existence of "al Qaeda" itself insofar as it has been presented to the public by (mostly) western (and western-oriented) governments and intel/security services (and their captured media) is up for serious debate. The term "al Qaeda" translated in the correct context means "the base" which was shortened in casual usage from "the database."
"... Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians....
[snip]
“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.”
Abstract: Al-Qaida, according to many intelligence specialists, is not an organised terrorist group formed to fight the US, as the Bush administration has repeatedly alleged. An investigation into its past yields clues about its real nature.
In any case, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and all of those "Islamic extremist" groups are largely conjurings of western and Israeli intelligence/security services and positioned around the globe like a 'movable feast' when NATO or Israel want to foment instability in regions where there is a believable contingent of existing Muslims; this goes back at least as far as the breakup of, and subsequent civil wars in former Yugoslavia.
i am tired of people complaining about this admin who cannot do basic things like get rid of amazon and ring and chat. I feel like our country is just a bunch of whiners with limited education and zero accountability.
Another eye-opening post! Billions of dollars spent and yet the heads, metaphorically, grow back or are replaced by something more dangerous (i.e. many smaller heads that control more ground).
My theory has long been that everyone, including (and especially) Ellison and that bunch know that AGI via LLMs is never coming and that the agentic replacement of workers is a facade to force a buildout of the infrastructure to support an even more massive surveillance state.
Note today’s rants by Hegseth regarding Anthropic.
The mechanisms to both bar any Fed Contractor from all Gov work and install an operating Board of the government’s choosing has always been available under the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs). Biden had been BEGGED to use that power regarding Starlink / SpaceX when there was solid evidence that Musk was using Starlink to benefit (and advantage) Russia in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine.
You wonder why the “Government Efficiency” Brownshirts were laser-focused on breaking into the USAID SCIF? That’s where the evidence against Musk was compiled. Subsequently, that was the prime motivation to do away with USAID entirely (combined with a long standing GOP grudge against any form of international compassion). Millions of individuals are in the process of dying or have died as a result.
The Anthropic strongarming is a demonstration of what is to come regarding government contracts in general. Power (both metaphorical and physical energy), technology, and finance are being consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer manipulators. If your primary puppet’s (say Altman in this case) pyramid scheme is falling apart, seize the competition to keep their racket funded.
Historically, this period will be recalled (if at all) as the period in which we both funded and constructed the Panopticon to rule (and occasionally kill) us all.
Surprisingly little coverage of how Palantir is going full mask-off in the UK, BTW… “Libertarian”s, my ass. Thiel is the modern incarnation of Ernst Rohm. Let’s hope he meets the same end.
Well this definitely scared the shit out of me. Nobody should ever have this much power. It also makes me furious knowing more than ever now that we could've and still can help Ukraine more than we have.
Thanks, Ken. I guess this would explain the explosion of data centers across the country.
That has more to do with the massive computing needs of machine learning (AI). All the big tech companies are splurging on advanced NVidia chips and data centers for this.
Right, but Big Tech’s business model is war. I assume that’s what Rip Price means.
We've seen what psychopath Pete Headset wants to do with AI and that is no good, either.
OpenAI seemed eager to sign up once they kicked Claude AI down the curb for having ethical concerns.
Are the 4 percent of people who have confidence in Congress members of Congress or related to members of Congress? That’s the only way this number makes sense. Ditto for television news.
Interesting to see the small but consistent increases in almost all of the confidence scores in 2025 compared to 2024. The big picture, of course, is the abysmal drop in virtually all the confidence scores compared to 20, 30 or 40 years ago. But this recent positive blip calls for additional analysis. However small, it does not seem like random statistical noise, if only because of its positive tilt across so many disparate institutions. It will be interesting to see the figures for 2026 given the results of the Nov. 2024 elections.
I thought the confidence scores were interesting as well. Going up 4 to 6 points except for a few categories was very interesting. I would love to know the questions that were asked of participants to get these results.
I find it interesting that the U.S. institution for confidence that went down the most, from 9% in 2024 to 4% in 2025, was Congress. Kind of says something. As for lethal doxxing, I am reminded of the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on YOU. Fool me twice (or more), shame on ME!". Maduro was a one-shot, and I do believe that there was assistance from on-high within Venezuela itself. The chances of something like Maduro happening again elsewhere are far less likely, as other regimes have learned from this, and thus have taken appropriate countermeasures. Trump likes to cock-a-doddle-do (or doo) like a fat orange-haired rooster (graphic imagery again). We probably have played, no pun intended, our "Trump" card.
“Americans like what they deem to be successful foreign policy operations,” I don't know if it's that or people like see immediate justice. That's why John Wick and Jack Reacher are popular. People are so stomped on in their daily lives they like to see a hero acting like they want to act.
Exactly
A statistic from your "confidence in" list made my day...TV news is at 12%. I dream of the day when commercial TV news will be replaced by other programming that will make no bones about being entertainment.
"In the case of al Qaeda, this was always the fear, that the War on Terror was a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ (though to be fair, its most famous leader was never replaced by anyone near as effective)."
Not so sure about this, at least outside of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. OBL denied involvement in 9/11 from the very beginning and the Taliban offered to turn him over to a neutral country if the US produced evidence of his guilt. Or something to that effect. Personally I believe him.
One, the very existence of "al Qaeda" itself insofar as it has been presented to the public by (mostly) western (and western-oriented) governments and intel/security services (and their captured media) is up for serious debate. The term "al Qaeda" translated in the correct context means "the base" which was shortened in casual usage from "the database."
"... Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians....
[snip]
“The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US.”
– Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48504792
Abstract: Al-Qaida, according to many intelligence specialists, is not an organised terrorist group formed to fight the US, as the Bush administration has repeatedly alleged. An investigation into its past yields clues about its real nature.
In any case, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and all of those "Islamic extremist" groups are largely conjurings of western and Israeli intelligence/security services and positioned around the globe like a 'movable feast' when NATO or Israel want to foment instability in regions where there is a believable contingent of existing Muslims; this goes back at least as far as the breakup of, and subsequent civil wars in former Yugoslavia.
Interesting Tom. Thanks.
i am tired of people complaining about this admin who cannot do basic things like get rid of amazon and ring and chat. I feel like our country is just a bunch of whiners with limited education and zero accountability.
Another eye-opening post! Billions of dollars spent and yet the heads, metaphorically, grow back or are replaced by something more dangerous (i.e. many smaller heads that control more ground).
My theory has long been that everyone, including (and especially) Ellison and that bunch know that AGI via LLMs is never coming and that the agentic replacement of workers is a facade to force a buildout of the infrastructure to support an even more massive surveillance state.
Note today’s rants by Hegseth regarding Anthropic.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-pentagon-pete-hegseth-feud/
The mechanisms to both bar any Fed Contractor from all Gov work and install an operating Board of the government’s choosing has always been available under the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs). Biden had been BEGGED to use that power regarding Starlink / SpaceX when there was solid evidence that Musk was using Starlink to benefit (and advantage) Russia in the early days of the invasion of Ukraine.
You wonder why the “Government Efficiency” Brownshirts were laser-focused on breaking into the USAID SCIF? That’s where the evidence against Musk was compiled. Subsequently, that was the prime motivation to do away with USAID entirely (combined with a long standing GOP grudge against any form of international compassion). Millions of individuals are in the process of dying or have died as a result.
The Anthropic strongarming is a demonstration of what is to come regarding government contracts in general. Power (both metaphorical and physical energy), technology, and finance are being consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer manipulators. If your primary puppet’s (say Altman in this case) pyramid scheme is falling apart, seize the competition to keep their racket funded.
Historically, this period will be recalled (if at all) as the period in which we both funded and constructed the Panopticon to rule (and occasionally kill) us all.
Surprisingly little coverage of how Palantir is going full mask-off in the UK, BTW… “Libertarian”s, my ass. Thiel is the modern incarnation of Ernst Rohm. Let’s hope he meets the same end.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25759699.palantir-uk-boss-louis-mosley/
Best to all. Great work, Ken.
What we need are way, way MORE "bleeding hearts". It's shameful, from a human rights perspective, to be anything else.
Well this definitely scared the shit out of me. Nobody should ever have this much power. It also makes me furious knowing more than ever now that we could've and still can help Ukraine more than we have.
Lethal doxxing also is good PR for the special operators industry.
Some expect the importance of special operations people to be diminished by cheap drones and robots.
The pipeline from special operations to 1% protection may also be affected by cheap automation.
At least that is what the techlordlings tell their fellow one percenters.
After all special operators are people. People have ethical boundaries.
'People have ethical boundaries.' Does that really apply in the pathocracy we are living in?
I'd rather be in the crosshairs of a special operator with a pulse than an AI kill machine.
The kleptocracy dreams (foolishly) of not needing people and being able to say the machine did it if they kill innocents.
Sure…