Is AI Fear Porn Prepping us for a Major Psy-Op?

Is AI Fear Porn Prepping us for a Major Psy-Op?

INDEPENDENT MEDIA ALLIANCEKIT KNIGHTLYOFFGUARDIAN

Nuclear bombs, 9/11 and the greatest financial crisis of modern times…the media is comparing AI to all three!

And so we’re back in the world of scary AI.

I know, I said I wasn’t going to write about this anymore – and, I know, I have a series on water bankruptcy to continue – but they just won’t let it go, so neither can I.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

In my last piece on this topic I described the rogue AI thus…

“Rogue AIs” have become the lab leak theory of the tech sector, a sci-fi horror premise that flies in the face of reason, pretending to vague ideas of “revelations” and “accountability”, while encouraging panic as a response and social control as a solution.

Little did I know that at the exact moment I was writing those words, the Wall Street Journal was prepping to publish an opinion piece headlined:

The Next ‘Lab Leak’ Could Be AI – Recent sandbox breaches demonstrate the need for federal guardrails.

That’s funny to me.

In other ‘scary AI’ stories this week, the Washington Post was flabbergasted to discover that ChatGPT interactions are being used in court proceedings.

Yes, apparently AI companies are doing what ALL the big tech companies have been doing for DECADES and is snooping on our data and interactions. But suddenly it’s news.

A new study from Yale has found that – OMG –  AI chatbots maybe manipulating users as a form of advertising!

…again, just like all the big tech firms do all the time and have done for years.

A senior staff member from OpenAI has told the Guardian we should all prepare for “persistent” AI-powered cyber attacks unless we “implement new safety standards”.

And the Times is warning that AI could be used by “unsophisticated” terrorists to build bombs or bio-weapons.

But the BIG news is that Big Billy Billions has shared his BIG thoughts.

Yes, Mr Gates himself has – allegedly – penned a long essay on the future of AI, and how potentially scary it could be. He begins…

The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical.

There’s a lot to unpack in this thing (you really need to read it), from his call for “Human Reserved” jobs, to his idea to tax AI usage and robots, but mostly his thoughts on the need for regulation.

Preferably global regulation:

even a country that gets its own house in order will still be exposed to risks that cross borders. This is why an international organization will need to be built in parallel.

That’s “the message”. You can ignore most of the other 10,000 words.

It echoes the sentiments of over 1300 AI “insiders” who have all signed an open letter calling on governments to cooperate in regulating AI and force the industry to slow down its progress, citing the risk that “capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.”

This clearly feeds back into the “rogue AI agents” story.

Interestingly, and possibly worryingly, Bill Gates essay compares AI to nuclear weapons:

There’s an inspections regime for nuclear weapons, regulations for international aviation, and agreements that protect the ozone layer. A new global organization for AI will need elements of all three and more.

Maybe even more worryingly Billy is far from the only person to make this comparison in just the last couple of days.

It’s becoming a common refrain. Surprisingly common. This next piece even conflates the risk, suggesting AI makes an accidental nuclear launch possible

But never fear, the Atlantic has a solution:

What is the “only way” to control this technology? The subhead makes it clear:

What humanity needs is an international AI nonproliferation treaty.

A “non-proliferation treaty”…like with nuclear weapons.

Writing in the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash – one of the least sane Guardian columnists I’ve ever responded to, and that’s really saying something – makes the same exact comparison. He asks:

Are we headed for an AI Hiroshima?

…and seems pretty sure the answer is “yes”.

What exactly IS an “AI Hiroshima”? I’m not sure, and he doesn’t say.

But, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, he does know the best way to avoid it:

acting together to control the superhuman power we are creating.

A similarly panic-ridden opinion piece in the New York Times headlines:

We know the risk of AI. We need to act.

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“Beneficial Bloodsucking”, alpha-gal syndrome and bioengineering

We Could, We Should, We Must

Josh Stylman

A few summers ago I gave consideration to moving to Florida or Texas. This was 2021 when it felt like there was a collective madness in my hometown of New York City. If you remember that moment, you remember the destinations where people like me were fleeing. I was looking into places like Florida and Texas. The so-called free states, the escape hatches (not my framing but more of a public consciousness in a particular demographic that I had seemed to become a part of). I compiled spreadsheets about neighborhoods, school lists, and initiated other projects you do when you’re about to uproot your family.

And somewhere in that diligence I came across a company called Oxitec. They breed genetically modified mosquitoes. In May 2020, the EPA approved an experimental release permit. The two states cleared for field testing were Florida and Texas.

I’ll share what happened next in the spirit of transparency, even if it makes me look a little ridiculous in retrospect. I sat there and thought: the two states I’m considering as my escape are the two states approved for experimental GMO insect release. And then I wondered: are the escape hatches just honeypots to round up the dissidents?

And then I thought: who and what have I become? I mean that’s insane, right? Does a reasonable person wonder if Bill Gates personally zoned his retirement? I remember actually feeling embarrassed, alone in my own head. I’d spent two decades in tech. I didn’t know it at the time but I played my own tiny role in helping build some of the surveillance plumbing I now write about. I am not a man who is easily spooked by an internet meme. And here I was, pattern-matching my way out of a real estate decision as if the ticks had lobbyists.

For a variety of reasons we left NYC but stayed in the state. Partly logistics, but also because by 2021 I’d talked myself into the conclusion that whatever was happening was global, and if that was true, fleeing somewhere wasn’t really an escape. Some places might have had longer runways than others, but I wasn’t going to live as a man on the run. My wife and I decided it was better for us to optimize for quality of life, and we ultimately decided to stay in New York in a more rural setting. I’m not going to suggest that decision was vindicated, because it wasn’t, not cleanly anyway (though we’re mostly a happy family).

In the years since, however, I kept running into pieces of that mosquito story that I couldn’t quite make myself stop assembling.

This past week Marty Bent posted something that made me revisit a lot of my research from that era.

Two professors at a medical school in Michigan published a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Bioethics. Their argument is that it is “morally obligatory” to genetically engineer ticks to spread a disease that makes humans violently allergic to red meat.

My first reaction was the natural one, in my opinion. It had to be an Onion or Babylon Bee headline someone laundered through a fake citation. People don’t really write ideas like this down, do they? They certainly don’t get them reviewed by their peers.

So I checked and it turned out to be real. Bioethics, volume 39, issue 8, pages 772 through 781. Published online July 2025. It’s indexed in PubMed. You can pull it up on Wiley right now. The authors are Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, both at Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine. The paper is called “Beneficial Bloodsucking.”

The author’s actual argument – and remember this is not satire – is that alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), the tick-borne red meat allergy, is a “moral bioenhancer.” Their logic: if eating meat is morally wrong, and the allergy makes you stop eating meat (because it will now kill you), then the allergy makes you a better person. From there they build what they call the Convergence Argument, which in plain English means “multiple different ethical frameworks all happen to point at the same conclusion, so the conclusion must be solid.” And the conclusion they land on is that promoting the syndrome is “strongly pro tanto obligatory” – which is bioethics-speak for “We have a strong duty to do this, all else being equal.”

What that means, in their own words, is that researchers have an obligation to “genetically edit the disease-carrying capacity of ticks.” Translation: engineer the ticks to spread the allergy more effectively. That people are obligated to promote its spread. And – this is the part I had to read twice – that efforts to develop an inoculation against AGS are morally problematic. The paper argues that blocking the spread of AGS is “impermissible.” Because in their framing it isn’t a disease. A disease is something you’d want to fix. This is being presented as an enhancement, something which ought not to be cured.

Releasing engineered disease-carrying ticks on people who didn’t ask for it, they frame it as a “vaccination.” It “infringes” on your bodily autonomy, they say, rather than “violating” it.

Infringe versus violate is a distinction without a difference. But the authors argue that the “difference” is the delivery mechanism – a tick happened to bite you, rather than a person holding you down. But that argument only works if you’ve already granted the premise underneath it: that some authority gets to decide which of your behaviors requires an engineered biological correction, and that the only open question is whether the needle has legs. They don’t actually argue for that premise. My guess is that they just need you not to notice it’s there so you don’t realize it’s both grotesque and yet another violation of Nuremberg. (But who’s counting…)

And the paper goes further than tick engineering. It notes that “It may be feasible for a person to take synthetic AGS to grocery stores and secretly inject it into beef, pork, lamb, etc.” They’re not just theorizing about vectors. They’re walking through operational logistics.

Of course, you could file the whole thing under fringe academics doing the thing fringe academics do. Floating something that’s incredibly out there just to get cited. I might have done that had I not learned that this is not the first time this particular idea has been floated.

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Trump calls off planned US strikes on Houthis at last minute after Saudi plea

Trump calls off planned US strikes on Houthis at last minute after Saudi plea - report

JP

US President Donald Trump came close to ordering a new American military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen this weekend, after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally urged him to intervene, but called off the planned strikes as they were nearing execution, The New York Times reported.

According to the report, Trump had spent roughly two weeks weighing repeated Saudi appeals for US military assistance against the Iran-backed Houthis, whose renewed offensive has expanded the conflict in Yemen and increased pressure on Saudi Arabia.

Trump had told advisers on Wednesday that he did not favor launching strikes. But after speaking with bin Salman on Thursday, he reversed course and instructed the Pentagon to prepare airstrikes against Houthi targets, according to administration officials cited by the NYT.

By midday Sunday, however, Trump had changed his mind again.

The planned US strikes were halted at a late stage, when military commanders had already approved target lists, troops were loading bombs onto aircraft selected for the operation, and the first wave of attacks was close to beginning, according to people briefed on the planning.

Reuters separately reported Monday that Washington had considered strikes after renewed Saudi appeals but that Trump ultimately called them off. Reuters said it could not independently verify all details of the NYTreport. CENTCOM referred questions to the White House.

The White House declined to discuss Trump's deliberations on the record. A senior administration official told the NYT only that the United States has a defense agreement with Saudi Arabia and "will always defend our allies."

The deliberations exposed a broader dilemma for the administration as the war with Iran continues.

Most members of Trump's inner circle were either deeply skeptical of or directly opposed to joining Saudi Arabia's fight against the Houthis, according to a senior administration official cited by the NYT. One concern was the additional strain that another sustained military campaign could place on US forces already involved in the conflict with Iran.

At the same time, Washington continues to rely on Saudi cooperation in its broader regional strategy

According to the NYT, some US military officials have argued that Saudi support is important for the war with Iran. Saudi Arabia has also demonstrated its ability to deny Washington access it considers politically or strategically sensitive: In May, Riyadh effectively prevented a US plan to escort commercial tankers through the Strait of Hormuz by denying use of Saudi airspace and American bases in the kingdom, the newspaper reported.

The issue has become more urgent as Houthi forces make territorial gains in Yemen.

Reuters reported Monday that the group has seized Yemen's Red Sea coastline and is now pushing toward strategic highlands in Taiz and Lahij provinces. The advance threatens Saudi-backed forces and could further destabilize shipping near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints.

The Houthis also claimed missile and drone attacks on Riyadh over the weekend. Saudi forces said they intercepted a missile aimed at the capital and thwarted additional attacks elsewhere in the kingdom.

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Iran claims world will be 'astonished' by new weapons, Trump in 'deciding mode'

Iran claims world will be 'astonished' by new weapons, Trump in 'deciding mode'

• - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said Monday that President Donald Trump is “always open to a deal” when asked whether the president would consider meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

• - IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said Tehran would change both its weaponry and targets in response to renewed U.S. military action, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

• - Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst on Sunday reported that Trump said he is in “deciding mode” and warned Iran that “big things” could happen if Tehran does not “behave.”

  
  

  
  

  Iran warned Monday that it could deploy new weapons and expand the geography of the conflict if the United States launches another offensive, as President Donald Trump weighs his next move in the war.

  IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said Tehran would change both its weaponry and targets in response to renewed U.S. military action, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

  “We will introduce new weapons with new capabilities into the battle, and the world will be astonished,” Mohebbi said, according to Iran International. He also claimed Iran has targets that have not previously come under attack and is prepared for a prolonged conflict.

  Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst on Sunday that he is in “deciding mode” and warned Iran that “big things” could happen if Tehran does not “behave.”

  "It's basically three things,” Trump said. “Wipe it out, let it rot with the economy, or make a deal."

Magnitude 6.4 earthquake rattles Papua New Guinea in latest Pacific Ring of Fire activity

Magnitude 6.4 earthquake rattles Papua New Guinea in latest Pacific Ring of Fire activity

Angela Fortuna 

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake has once again rattled the Pacific Ring of Fire — this time in Papua New Guinea.

The earthquake struck at 9:17 a.m. UTC, and was felt across the island country. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck at a depth of about 64 miles, approximately 30 miles from Kainantu.

The USGS said the population in this area resides in structures that are a mix of vulnerable and earthquake-resistant construction. Recent earthquakes in this area have caused secondary hazards such as landslides and liquefaction.

The agency reports that the quake happened on the Australia-Pacific plate boundary, which is about 2,500 miles long, spanning from the Sunda (Java) trench in the west to the Solomon Islands.