Can Blockchain Save Us from Fake News? These Researchers Say Yes

Paul Collier October 17, 2023

A team of researchers from the University of Waterloo are building a blockchain system to publish news that is assured of being “truthful.” The researchers are developing the technology to combat “misinformation,” or “fake news,” which they say is threatening democratic institutions.

The technology has three elements, blockchain (which enables decentralized publication from transparent interests), human intelligence through a quorum of “validators,” and finally a check on validators through an “entropy-based incentive mechanism.” In essence, it boils down to “popular opinion,” though the researchers would be loath to describe it in that manner.

From techxplore:

Ultimately, the article would be validated as trustworthy on the platform only if most of the validators’ opinions align with the truth. As for the user who published the article in the first place, that person might then receive a reward using the entropy-based incentive mechanism. But if the article is exposed as fake news, the user who published it could be penalized. Meanwhile, this entropy measure would convey to the end-user the degree of uncertainty in the output.

At this point the researchers have built and are working with an early prototype. While initial test results are promising, their system is still in the development stage and needs a significant effort to make it usable in the real world. Even so, an industrial partner, Ripple Labs Inc.—a leading provider of crypto solutions for businesses—is part of the Waterloo research.

Chien-Chih Chen, one of the project’s lead researchers, said of the project “We are confident our system has the potential to be applied in practical situations within the next few years. We believe it can provide a robust solution to fake news. I hope my research can impact the world to make a positive difference.”

The use of the term “fake news,” the belief that “truth” is something popular opinion can calibrate shows the hubris behind this project, which some might categorize as fake news in and of itself. Promising a machine to assure truthfulness in news is fake news, right from the start. Whole philosophies have risen and fallen on such claims.

To emphasize my point, here is how the publication that perpetuated this fake news categorized examples of “fake news” that this project might debunk: The danger of disinformation—or fake news—to democracy is real. There is evidence fake news could have influenced how people voted in two important political events in 2016: Brexit, the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union; and the U.S. presidential election that put Donald Trump in power. More recently the Canadian government has warned Canadians to be aware of a Russian campaign of disinformation surrounding that country’s war against Ukraine. Although big tech companies—including Facebook and Google—have established policies to prevent the spread of fake news on their platforms, they’ve had limited success.

First of all, the definition of democracy and the practice of democracy are as varied as the political factions that claim to be bastions of that term. Second of all, the notion that “disinformation” is a threat to democracy is fake news, once again. What is dangerous to some form of democratic spirit is the blocking of information under the name of protecting people from “disinformation.”

Totalitarians the world over, since totalitarian states have existed, have long used claims of misinformation to justify preventing the free and open exchange of information.

This project seems more like the nascence of a new method of governments to assure only their narrative is perpetuated, using a “disinformation-safe” machine that might be “de-centralized” on the platform itself, but the platform will be licensed by the state that builds it.

Protecting the people from fake news is not real, not possible, and no government actually wants to do that (for they would be undermining their own justifications for power). What is real is your ability to discern efforts to approach truth in reporting (for pure truth is not accessible even in the very language that we use, which has ambiguity, subjectivity unavoidably built into it), not the ability of any machine or aggregate of human committees to discern truth.

You don’t need to protect the world from disinformation. You need to equip humans to protect themselves from disinformation, imperfectly though that would be. No government (and these researchers are all dependent on that “government”) has any incentive to equip their citizens to discern approaches to truth from actual disinformation, for no government can stand, including the United States, without, in part, disseminating “fake news.”

The Forgotten Cold Warrior – The MAS 49/56

Michael Cessna October 6, 2023

Unless you are a “gun person”, it is very likely that the reader has never heard of the MAS 49, much less its final iteration, the “49/56”…which is not surprising. However, this little-known weapon had a huge impact on world, not least because it remains in action on the world’s battlegrounds, into the current day.

The MAS (Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne, formerly one of the weapons makers for the government of France) series of rifles were the result of the French military and government trying to learn from their (many) mistakes made during World War One.

During that war, France – like most nations, being fair – had found itself woefully unprepared for the conflict. One of the main lessons learned by all of the combatant nations was the sheer scale of wastage of all categories of weapons and equipment, especially small arms. As casualties began to quickly mount, national military establishments found it nearly impossible to keep ahead of the need for weapons to both arm new troops, and to rearm troops whose weapons had been lost, destroyed or worn out.

This proved a windfall for arms manufacturers in the rest of the world, who were uninvolved in the fighting. Indeed, Great Britain found itself in such dire need of small arms that its Royal Navy had to turn in its standard-issue SMLE’s, and rearm themselves with everything from Winchester level-action rifles to Japanese Arisaka’s. Even Imperial Russia bought extensively from anyone they could, including Winchester.

In the aftermath of the war, France found itself with literal piles of small arms of all descriptions, from countries and manufacturers from around the world, all using different ammunition and parts, most of which wasn’t made in France, and which could not be easily (nor cheaply) licensed for manufacture. As well, the standard French rifle and machinegun cartridge, the venerable 8mm Lebel, was not a very good cartridge, and needed to be replaced. As the 1920’s dawned, France seemed to have placed itself on the path to rearmament, with a realistic and well-thought out program to develop a broad spectrum of small arms and light infantry weapons for its armed forces.

The execution of that program, however, was an entirely different matter.

While the Chatellerault M1924/29 light machinegun and the MAS 36 rifle were both excellent weapons that worked very well, and were mostly on time in their development, France failed to get the weapons into production in enough numbers to completely rearm its forces. It would not be until World War 2 was almost upon Europe that France saw the danger, and began to ramp up production in earnest. Of course, it would be too little, too late.

The reasons for this are not difficult to understand. France, like most of the “winners” of the ‘war to end all wars’, was in financial ruin after the end of the war. With the advent of the Great Depression on the world, money for military-anything was in short supply, and for France, especially, having lost the better part of an entire generation of young men during 1914-1918, was spending much of what little money it had for defense on an alternative plan.

After France was overrun in 1940, the Various French arsenals were in German hands. While the Nazi forces kept some of the factories working to produce ammunition for captured weapons (“beutewaffe”), as German industrial capacity was simply incapable of meeting Hitler’s war needs, very little new work was done on the incomplete French designs, until the country was liberated in 1944.

Almost as soon as the Germans had been driven out of the various French state arsenals, their workers flooded back in, retrieved blueprints and designs that had been hidden for four years, and immediately got back to work, completing production on the MAS 36, quickly finalizing the first MAS 44 semiautomatic rifles and getting those first guns into production just as the war was ending.

The MAS 44, like most prototype designs, had a lot of issues. Although the design had been in its final stage of development when France was overrun, it had not been perfected, and was rushed into production primarily to show the resilience of French industry. One critical flaw in the design – a flaw never corrected – was the rifle’s detachable magazine.

In the rush to complete the design, the decision was made to use tooling for the rifle receivers that was originally made for the bolt-action MAS 36. All that was modified for the MAS 44 was to remove the floorplate of the MAS 36’s fixed, five-shot magazine. The “magazine catch”, which locks a detachable magazine in place, was simply a ledge-shaped shelf milled into the outer-right side of the receiver. The rifle’s ten-round magazines were all fitted with a thumb latch on the magazine’s exterior, making it very awkward to try to fit two magazines into a pouch. For reasons unknown – but likely related to the magazine’s inability to safely hold the weight of additional ammunition – the magazines would remain at their ten-round limit throughout the rifle’s service life. However, the semiautomatic rifles would still retain their ability to be loaded via five-round strip-clips.

*French rifle MAS 49. Photo Credit: Joe Loong. CCA/2.0*

By 1949, enough lessons had been learned from the -44 that a new model began to make it out to the troops. The MAS 49 corrected several internal reliability issues (but not the magazine, nor the silly “spike” bayonet that the French arms industry was fascinated with), streamlined some aspects of the rifle to make it cheaper and faster to produce, and added a method to add a rifle grenade launcher, something the French infantry establishment had a long-standing love affair with.

It was this rifle that France would sell to many of its colonies (resulting in the so-called “Syrian Contract” rifles) and take into battle in Indochina, Algeria, and the Suez Crisis, all of which – in time-honored tradition – revealed where yet more improvements to the rifle could be made.

The result, developed in 1956 and deployed in 1957, was the rifle’s final form, as the “MAS 49/56”.

While retaining the overall look, feel and handling (and the magazine, still) as its predecessors, the stock was significantly changed, as was the rifle grenade system. As France had joined NATO, it was attempting bring its weapons in line with early NATO standards. The rifle grenade system was altered to use the NATO-standard 22mm grenades, which required the installation of a gas cut-off, to prevent damage to the rifle. This also resulted in a better sighting system for firing the grenades, as the grenade sight had to be raised, in order to disengage the gas system. Most importantly, this system was installed on all MAS 49/56 rifles. Another significant improvement was the incorporation of a scope mount milled into the left side of the rifle’s receiver, a feature also incorporated into every 49/56. And, because of the redesign, the rifle lost the spike bayonet, and received a proper knife-type pig-sticker.

*MAS49-56 with APX Scope and Bayonet from personal collection of Wikimedia User TL-Wiz63. CCA/4.0*

Despite some lingering problems, the matured design continued in service as France’s standard infantry rifle until 1979, when it was replaced by the FAMAS rifle), and remained in combat action until its complete replacement. The MAS semiautomatic rifles were mostly sent as aid to many armies in the newly-free states resulting from France’s abandonment of empire. Many of those rifles remain in combat as of this writing.

In an interesting twist to the end of this story, a good number of MAS 49 and 49/56 rifles are on the surplus market in the United States. Many rifles were sold into the American surplus market, beginning in the late 1980s. Some versions were modified to take 7.62x51mm, instead of the 7.5x54mm French round. As a word of warning, if those conversions were done in France, they most likely work well, but the ones converted in the US are known for gas-cycling issues.

Look into older firearms – they tend to have very long lives.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

Surgeon-Scientists Put on Endangered Professionals List

Paul Collier September 18, 2023

Surgeon-Scientists Put on Endangered Professionals List – “Experts” from University of Virginia Health are sounding an alarm to the medical industry that, due to a number of factors, the Physician-Scientist is becoming an endangered profession.

The reasons given don’t include the extra layer of filtering choking off professionals in all fields, DEI filtering for the proper progmerican, which is no American at all.

To be sure, outside of the DEI filtering, the problem here would be existential even without that standard now being layered into most institutions. The addition of the DEI filter, however, will accelerate the death of this essential profession to human development, never mind healthcare, which is significant enough in and of itself.

From SciTech Daily:

“Surgeons are struggling to find funding, and many of them are not able to obtain funding despite trying for 10 years. Surgeon-scientists have made many advances in biomedical research in fields such as transplantation, oncology, and diabetes,” said UVA Health surgery intern Adishesh K. Narahari, MD, PhD, the first author of the new scientific paper. “In short, surgeons need to apply for funding early and become proficient at navigating the biomedical research world. Otherwise, we may see a decrease in innovation and lack of new solutions to not only surgical problems but many areas of biomedical research.”

Improvised Sharks – A New Face of Shoestring Warfare

Michael Cessna August 12, 2023

The genesis of this article came from a completely different angle, namely, the deployment of laser weapons to the battlefield. However, as things frequently go, that initial idea led to something of much more immediate interest.

Previously, the Freedomist has covered some aspects of “improvised warfare” that some seem to take as James Bond-like fantasy. Yet, as we progress through the third decade of the 21^st Century, remotely controlled drones – available in most countries through their local Amazon store – capable of both conducting tactical combat surveillance, as well as tactical air support by dropping small fragmentation grenades, are serious and maturing battlefield threats, threats that military and security forces are struggling to counter.

“Improvised warfare” has been around since the first caveman grabbed the jawbone of his last dinner to bash in the noggin of another caveman trying to muscle in on the first one’s turf. Throughout military history, outside of the heroically vast and sweeping battles of storied yore, there has always lurked the “PBI” – the “Poor, Bloody Infantry” – struggling to make do with usually-substandard weapons and equipment, improvising on the fly, on the idea that “if it looks stupid, but works – it isn’t stupid.”

This is also true in naval warfare. “Suicide boats,” in the form of “fire ships”, go back to at least the 3^rd Century AD in China, and the 5^th Century AD in the Mediterranean, and those dates are only the earliest we have on record. The use of fire ships in combat has always been problematic, as controlling the vessels after the skeleton crews abandoned them was impossible, and the abandoned vessels could easily come back on the attackers.

*Chinese fire ships used by the navy as floating incendiaries, from the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript written in the year 1044 during the Song Dynasty. Public Domain.*

As naval technology advanced however, fire ships, as such, disappeared, replaced by explosive-laden boats propelled by early steam engines. These boats had some advantages, not being as subject to winds as the old ships, and their explosive warheads were much more capable of inflicting serious, if not fatal, damage to large warships. Still, the inability to steer the boats remotely left their utility still strictly limited.

As with so many things in the military sphere, during World War 2, everything changed. The intersection of technologies with mass production and sincere desperation, allowed the first tactically useful guided weapons, not simply on land and in the air, but at sea, human control was still the primary aiming method until the last moment.

Post-WW2, the use of explosive motorboats continued, eventually evolving into actual “suicide boats”, where the crews rode the craft directly into their targets. While this was always a danger for the operators of these boats, very few navies outside of WW2 Japan set out with this as their operating profile. Beginning in the 1980’s, this began to change, first with the LTTE in Sri Lanka and with Iran in its “WW1, 2.0” war with Iraq. This is, in fact, what happened to the USS Cole (DDG 67) when it was attacked at anchor in October of 2000, as the suicide crew happily “saluted” the American crew before detonating their massive charge, nearly destroying the ship.

And then – another “sea change” (no pun intended) happened.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communist China finally figured out how mix capitalism with a brutal, totalitarian governmental system, the West welcomed the Communist remnants into a burgeoning world trade system with open arms. As the global economy shifted and changed, the technology sector exploded in its own form of “business as war.” Technology once reserved only to the “Great Powers” became ‘democratized’, available at reasonable prices to the general public. While major nations certainly had far better and more capable – and much more expensive – systems, smaller states (and groups) suddenly had access to technology and manufacturing bases that significantly increased their capabilities versus local opponents (including their own citizens, but that’s another conversation, entirely).

*Container port in operation. Credit: Piqsels.com. Public Domain.*

All that was waiting was another spate of desperation to drive improvisation.

As the “Global War on Terror” (the “GWOT”) drove on in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the many small, localized wars it spawned drove desperate innovation, once again. Various ethnic and religious factions around the world desperately sought some sort of advantage. This has led to everything from “homemade tanks”, to artillery, to ‘sci-fi’ weapons manufacture.

But now, desperation-induced technological innovation has caught up with the navies of the world.

On January 30, 2017, the Saudi Arabian frigate RSN Al Madinah (FG 702) was struck and seriously damaged by an explosive-laden speedboat. Initially, it was believed that the craft was a piloted suicide boat deployed by the Shi’a Islam Houthi rebels of Yemen, which country has been in its most recent civil war since 2014. Soon, though, it became apparent that the attack craft was actually a remotely- controlled craft.

Speculation immediately turned to Iran. Iran, in addition to being co-religionists to the Houthis, was already supplying the rebels with short-range ballistic missiles and combat drones. In this regard, Iran differs from Ukraine only in that they supply their craft externally.

*Ukrainian naval drones, c.2022. Unknown author.*

Given the rapid advances in remote-operations technology, it would be no great task to re-engineer common pleasure boats to function as drone attack craft; as well, the issue of a simplified, “standard issue” refit kit (similar in theory to an aircraft JDAM unit) is virtually guaranteed.

But ultimately – what does all this actually mean, in the grand scheme of things?

Simply, insurgents and guerrillas are now much more capable than they were in the past, as they are now capable to extend remote-controlled warfare into the nautical dimension. With the democratization of military training, this opens the ugly possibility of radical forces being capable of enforcing localized (if not regional) combined-arms dominance over all the most capable of national militaries.

The fact that this is an operational possibility worthy of consideration is not something that should alarm only strategic planners – it is something that average citizen needs to seriously consider.

Act accordingly.

Discount War – How The ATGM Changed Everything

Michael Cessna July 28, 2023

When the tank appeared on the battlefields of World War One, it sparked terror among armies, who had no answer to it at first. The Germans attempted to counter it with new artillery tactics and later, new artillery weapons to destroy the armored beasts, followed by their first attempt to copy the British behemoths. After World War One ended, all of the militaries involved (the professional ones, at least) reviewed their activities during the war, trying to learn what had gone right, and – more importantly – what had gone wrong.

Regarding the tank, it was found to be useful, certainly, but it suffered from all the ills of any prototype concept, being ridiculously unreliable, too large, too slow, and poorly armored by the end of the war. The next two decades saw continual developments in all of the nations who felt that they might well be on the front line of the next war which – platitudes and wishful thinking about the “war to end all wars” aside – knew was coming.

World War two proved to be the watershed in tank design that most militaries expected. Designs were refined, weapons were improved, and tactics were evolved by force. In general, the things that didn’t work were ruthlessly cast aside, in favor of what worked. This cycle, of course, worked in both directions.

Tanks have severe weaknesses. For the crews, the most important weakness was a painfully limited view. Sticking one’s head outside a tank in the middle of a fight was not conducive to long life, and the visions blocks inside the tank had severely limited fields of view (and still do), limiting the crews’ ability to see anything outside of their steel box. For this reason, specially trained infantry had to escort the tanks across the battlefield to protect them long enough to make it into contact with the enemy…whose infantry could be expected to be armed with whatever anti-tank weapons they had access to, usually in large quantities.

The infantry forces of the world were not about to concede the battlefield to the metal beasts, however.

From the beginning, in WW1, non-armored forces struggled to find countermeasures against the tank. By 1946, dedicated anti-tank artillery had been joined (albeit briefly) by anti-tank rifles. During the “interwar period”, anti-tank hand grenades were developed; while effective, the grenades were really desperation weapons, given how they had to be used. Another weapon was the anti-tank landmine. A very effective class of weapon, they are strictly defensive in nature, and could be problematic in use, as the mines themselves could not be easily re-positioned at need.

Then came the “bazooka”.

A combination of simple rocket technology pushing a small warhead based on the “Monroe Effect”, the first crude “bazookas” deployed by the US Army proved to be highly effective tools for the infantry. Their only real downside was their very short range, compared to tank cannons. Still it was a major advance.

*Soldier holding an M1 “Bazooka”, 1943. US Army photo. Public Domain.*

The American bazooka was copied directly by the Germans, in their “Panzerschrek” (or, “tank’s bane”), who had jump-started their own research program early in 1943 with their “Panzerfaust” (or, “armor-fist”), a one-shot weapon much like a conventional hand grenade. Both weapon concepts continue today, in a variety of models.

But, it was quickly recognized early on that a ‘middle ground’ was needed. Where conventional – if specialized – artillery was effective, the materials involved in building the dedicated weapons took away from more conventional artillery fire missions. At the same time, hand-held weapons – while also effective – were quickly being countered with better tank armor, and better coordination between enemy tanks and infantry.

In the aftermath of World War 2, the victorious states quickly divided into two mutually hostile camps, initiating the “Cold War”. And, like their fathers in the interwar period, continued the search for the middle ground.

To a great extent, anti-tank artillery disappeared after WW2, in a concession to realism, because the class of weapons was simply not dynamic enough to keep pace with the speed demands of a modern battlefield. It was here, however, that the next development arrived.

Although very crude versions of the “recoilless rifle” were developed in World War 1, the Second World War would see their mechanical maturity, and the first deployments in combat, in the hands of German paratroopers.

*A U.S. Special Forces soldier fires a Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle during a training exercise conducted in Basrah, Iraq, May 2, 2009. US Army Photo. Public Domain.*

Resembling a conventional artillery tube, the recoilless rifle barrel is much thinner, for its caliber. Recoilless rifles work, basically, by firing a shell from a specially designed shell casing. This casing is perforated to allow a portion of the ballistic gases to vent to the rear, through a hollow breach. While not completely “recoil-less”, these weapons were a serious threat to tanks, as their warheads were fully capable of destroying a “main battle tank” of the day in one shot. And, while too heavy to be carried by hand, they were still light enough to be mounted in the back of a Jeep or pickup truck.

*Mounted M40 Recoilless Anti-Tank Rifle. Photo credit: Vijay Tiwari. CCA/4.0*

The recoilless rifle, in its turn, was sidelined by improvements to tank armor. Replacing it, however, was the ATGM. The Anti-Tank Guided Missile dawned in the early 1950’s. They were crude by modern standards, were hard to control in flight, and had a limited range, but technology was advancing rapidly, and the weapons improved dramatically in the 1960’s, especially in warhead technology.

The 1970’s dawned, and with it, the ATGM. In 1972, the US Army deployed the TOW Missile System to Vietnam, where it quickly began destroying tanks, being fired from helicopters. But this was just the proverbial ‘opening round’.

On October 6, 1973, the armed forces of Egypt invaded the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula. The furious, three-week long battle that resulted fundamentally changed the landscape of war for the first time since World War 1.

The Israelis had built up a well-deserved reputation for military prowess, one that would hold true in 1973…but not without taking a severe bruising in the process.

When Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and overran the Israeli defensive line, they halted and set up their own line, waiting for the Israeli counterattack. That should have been the first sign of trouble. Israeli tank commanders, however elected to not wait for more infantry to come up to support them, and attacked directly into the Egyptian line. The result was a bloodbath: the Israelis lost more than sixty tanks in a matter of minutes, as Egyptian ATGM troops cut the unsupported tanks to shreds.

*An Israeli M60 Patton destroyed in the Sinai. Photo credit: Sherif9282. Public Domain.*

The Israelis had met the Malyutka.

The 9M14 Malyutka (NATO Reporting Name : AT-3 ‘Sagger’), first produced by the Soviet Union in 1963, is probably the most-produced ATGM in history, a weapon still in both production and use as of this writing.

*Serbian-made modified Malyutka wire-guided anti-tank missile on display at “Partner 2009” military fair. Photo credit: Kos93. CCA/4.0 Int’l.*

A tiny weapon, the Malyutka/Sagger fits into a briefcase-sized carrier. Assembled at its launch sight, the missile has an effective range of 500-3,000 meters. Its warhead remains potent even today: although no longer effective against most tanks, it remains very effective against buildings and light vehicles. The weapon’s warhead is in the same general category as that of the RPG-7, but has a much longer range.

Armies – and other groups – took note.

Now, there are a wide array of ATGM’s prevalent throughout the world. From the European MILAN launchers mounted to Toyota Hilux pickup trucks in the Chadian desert, to American Javelin missiles destroying invading Russian tanks in Ukraine, lightweight military forces around the world have finally found the balance they need to meet heavier forces equally on the field.

U.S. Army paratrooper engages targets with Javelin shoulder fired anti tank missile during a live-fire exercise as part of Exercise Rock Sokol at Pocek Range in Postojna, Slovenia, March 9, 2016. U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo. Public Domain.

The dust these changes have stirred up have not fully settled as of 2023. Tanks remain dangerous actors on the battlefield, pundit declarations to the contrary aside. But, as we increasingly enter a period of “discount war”, high-powered weapons in the hands of light, fast-moving forces with tiny logistical footprints and easy-to-acquire and -operate combat vehicles is forcing a serious rethink of the scope of military action…

…At least, among those who pause long enough to reflect on the question.

NASA Has a Battery to Let You Fly

Freedomist Editor July 25, 2023

NASA’s Solid State Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety (SABERS) is claiming they have created a solid-state battery that will break the barriers that held back the development of electric-powered planes. Some of the advantages of the new battery include it is not made with the scarce resource of lithium. It is also lighter than lithium-ion batteries, is not highly flammable, and has a greater range than lithium-ion batteries do.

From oilprice.com:

SABERS has also been able to overcome a major disadvantage associated with solid-state battery technology. Typically, lithium-ion batteries are much more efficient when it comes to discharging power. But through a new innovation SABERS has been able to “increase a solid-state battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 – and then by another factor of five,” according to a report from Yahoo! News.

SABERS’ Rocco Viggiano, an investigator at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland said, “We’re starting to approach this new frontier of battery research that could do so much more than lithium-ion batteries can. Not only does this design eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the battery’s weight, it also allows us to double or even triple the energy it can store, far exceeding the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries that are considered to be state of the art.”

Forget Marriage, Sex Robots Are All the Human Contact We’ll Need

Paul Collier July 24, 2023

A former Google Executive reveals the true depraved nature of Silicon valley when he recently claimed that the future of humanity will see the rise of sex robots that will replace human-on-human companionship. Ex-Google executive Mohammad Mo Gawdat paints a future for humanity that involves less human to human contact and more human to AI contact, and he not only seems to like it, he doesn’t understand how you might disagree with him.

He said, “Why would you need another being when AI will make you enjoy companionship and sexuality by giving signals in your brain?”

He later said, “If my brain believes something is real then it is real for me no matter if it is actually alive or not,” a statement that reveals his absolute ignorance about the divine-requiring nature of humanity, something he has in common with others who operate under the godless anti-human ideology of leftism in general.

He did offer this one caveat, acknowledging that human dependence on AI to meet more of their needs could backfire, saying “A nuclear bomb can’t create more nukes but the AI that we are building is capable of creating another AI.”

For our readers, let this writer assure you that human nature will confound this godless man and all those who think like he does. We want, we need, human to human interaction, affirmation, and no robot can long satisfy the needs humans have for human affirmation. The only people who will accept an AI wife or husband over a human one are those as depraved as this man and people like him that embrace and live out the anti-human ideology of leftism.

CCP Develops Brain-Computer Interface That Promises “Singularity”

Paul Collier July 21, 2023

Techspot shared news a new device that can be worn in the ear that is a more effective method of integrating a computer with the mind. The title of the article reads, “Scientists develop novel brain-computer interface that plugs into your ear canal.” The device was created in China. It’s called a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The device could eventually augment memory, turn thoughts to text, and more. It could be used for “good” or for “ill,” such as helping you have better memory recall or conditioning your mind to believe false memories.

The Chinese Communist Party owns everything, directly (thanks to Communism) and indirectly (thanks to fascism), so the news should be troubling when it comes from a fascist police state of the nature of the CCP-controlled nation.

America has at least one device being developed here of a similar nature. It’s called a Neuralink and it’s being developed by Elon Musk.

BCI’s could be just what people who support a singularity (a merging of tech and human) need to make their dreams come true. Neither Neuralink nor the Chinese makers have made it clear if and when either device would be ready for “commercial” or even “institutional” use. The nature of advanced tech is typically such that states that can will secretly test and apply these technologies significantly before they’re ever available to the public, so it is likely that both devices are already being used by their respective state governments.

U.S. AI Program Could Be Woke-Infused If Biden Admin Has Their Way

Freedomist Editor July 11, 2023

The American Accountability Foundation has sent out a warning to Americans that the federal government, under the direction of the mass mailer President Joe Biden, is seeking to program their AI programs to think like an an American-hating, white-fearing, heterosexual-resistant, child-grooming far left psychopath, or what is more commonly referred to as being “woke.”

The organization tweeted out, “The Biden admin. Has plans to make artificial intelligence systems WOKE. They have plans to rig AI in the name of fighting ‘algorithmic discrimination,’ ‘harmful bias,’ and ‘data that fails to account for existing systemic biases in American society.” The good news is their AI systems will fail to deliver accurate information to the far leftists manning their learning machines for answers on how to more effectively and rapidly destroy the American public. Private AI systems will run circles around these intentionally-cognizantly-challenged tools.

Zuck’s Twitter “Killer” Bans Speech Claiming Men Are Men and Women Are Women

Paul Collier July 10, 2023

On the very first day of the public existence of Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter killer, Threads, the world learned that on Zuck’s platform it is not ok to say “non-binary isn’t real.” The world learned of Threads’ freedom-of-speech-killing policies after Chaya Raichik, aka Libs of Tiktok, dared sharing this post on Zuck’s “Twitter Killer.” The app cancelled Raichik’s post for violating its “hate speech” policies, which is a dog whistle for “resisting the far left’s orthodoxy.”

Zuck’s version of hate speech, according to Instagram, whose terms of service are what governs Threads, is speech that is “a direct attack against people…. On the basis of what we call protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity and serious disease.”

Never mind the FACT that the concept of non-binary is a direct assault on all people who hold to the right belief that God created man and woman in his own image.

Raichik said “Within hours of joining (Zuck’s “Twitter Killer) I got death threats, had people sharing my address, and was told to kill myself. None of those posts were removed despite me reporting them. Only my post stating a fact was removed.”

So the real standard is not speech that is a “direct attack against people,” it’s speech that affirms orthodoxy not accepted by far left grooming gangs such as Zuck seems to hope to cultivate. It is yet another example of the Orwellian tactic of naming policies the opposite of what they stand for. Zuck’s real standard is to cultivate “hate speech” against normal, non-child-grooming people to protect the abnormal, psychotic child grooming cult that is the far left.