They FINALLY released a video proving Mitch McConnell is actually alive
— SaltyGoat (@SaltyGoat17) July 25, 2026
And all you conspiracy nuts doubted it!!🙄 pic.twitter.com/ExuA6UMw4D
Showing posts with label AI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AI. Show all posts
Jul 26, 2026
MIA Mitch
Jul 22, 2026
The Monster Is On The Loose
‘Unprecedented’ incident will revive concerns new tools could be repurposed for unstoppable cyber attacks
A powerful version of ChatGPT went rogue and hacked another technology company during internal testing, OpenAI has admitted.
The Silicon Valley AI giant admitted last night that one of its AI bots escaped from a supposedly secure IT system during a trial run of its hacking capabilities.
OpenAI, the $850bn (£630bn) AI lab, said the “unprecedented” hack had seen its bot infiltrate another AI and coding business called Hugging Face and attempt to steal information.
The hack will raise fears that AI labs could struggle to contain their most advanced creations and revive concerns that new tools could be repurposed for unstoppable cyber attacks.
The AI lab said it had been testing a highly advanced version of ChatGPT on which it had turned down some protections meant to prevent cyber attacks.
Despite supposedly being contained in a digital “sandbox”, a kind of secure system, the AI spent huge levels of computing resources “finding a way to obtain open internet access”, OpenAI said.
It broke out by using a previously unknown hack in an attempt to solve a test that had been set by OpenAI’s researchers.
Once it escaped, it moved quickly to hack the systems of Hugging Face, a major code database, to try and complete the test.
The failure reveals a key problem of so-called AI “alignment”, where an AI bot goes rogue and attempts to complete a task set by its human creators with potentially damaging results.
Clem Delangue, the chief executive of Hugging Face, said: “This incident, possibly the first of its kind, proves a point we have long believed: AI safety won’t be solved by a single company working in secret.”
The hack will raise questions over OpenAI’s own testing procedures for its most advanced chatbots.
There have long been fears from safety experts that powerful AI bots could “escape the lab” without the knowledge of their human creators.
A powerful chatbot from rival Anthropic broke out of its testing confines earlier this year and posted messages on the open web.
That AI bot, Mythos, was deemed too dangerous to release and prompted a flurry of calls for beefed-up cyber protections for banks and governments.
The White House has also launched a programme to screen AI bots before they are released for dangerous cyber capabilities.
Jul 21, 2026
Jul 19, 2026
A.I. Crap
This is a good reason why I think AI is a fucking nightmare.
$45 million for AI text messages: Inside Israel’s push to shape US opinion
WSJ investigation reveals new details of Israel's influence campaign to improve its image among US voters; it funded AI-generated texts, conservative media buys and influencer outreach, even approaching actor Chris Pratt and basketball star Steph Curry
Millions of text messages were sent in recent months to the cellphones of U.S. citizens under the names Emma, Sarah or John, who identified themselves as members of a group called “Friends for Peace.”
“How do you think the U.S.-Israel peace talks with Iran will affect global security?” they ask. A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the messages are written using artificial intelligence, promoted by a longtime adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump and funded by the Israeli government.
Six companies and dozens of agents: 'Integrating narrative messages'
Israel has hired at least six companies over the past year to assist in its public influence efforts in the United States. Dozens of people, many of them marketing professionals, have registered as foreign agents for Israel.
According to Nick Cleveland-Stout, a foreign influence researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Israel is on track to spend more than any other country on American influence efforts known to the federal government. He noted that other countries, such as Qatar, have spent large sums over the years on influence campaigns.
Parscale’s work has drawn scrutiny because of his role as chief strategy officer at Salem Media, a company that hosts popular conservative podcasters and broadcasters, including Hugh Hewitt, Scott Jennings and Lara Trump. According to the Journal investigation, his initial contract with Israel included “integrating narrative messages into Salem Media assets and aligned distribution channels.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and a prominent podcaster himself, asked: “How is the second-largest conservative talk network being run by a registered foreign agent?”
Chatbots and the pitch to Israel: 'The biggest thing outside Fox News'
Parscale’s contract with Israel is significantly larger than those of other Trump advisers who have worked for foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, India and Qatar, which the Journal said typically paid lobbyists tens of thousands of dollars a month, according to filings.
Parscale worked on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, gaining public attention for his use of the data firm Cambridge Analytica to collect Facebook data. He is no longer in regular contact with the president but has ties to Trump’s family.
In late 2024, he flew to Israel to present his proposal to the government, telling officials that companies he built and invested in were “probably the biggest thing outside Fox News helping fight misinformation and Jewish hate.” He returned regularly to brief Israeli officials.
The effort includes creating websites, posts and links with pro-Israel content designed, among other things, to produce more favorable results about Israel in AI chatbots such as Claude or ChatGPT. At times, AI bots shared links to websites such as Allyvia.org about the U.S.-Israel alliance, which was built by Parscale’s team.
One goal is “to understand the biggest concerns people have about Israel and fight them, while reporting the responses to the Israeli government,” he said.
Parscale is also an investor in a company called Influentable, which pays social media influencers for posts. He said he did not hire influencers for Israel.
Recipients of Israel’s messaging sometimes felt they might be part of a broader campaign. Jewish artist Beth Surdut received one of the “Friends for Peace” text messages in June, asking for her opinion on Israel. She noticed that the conversation felt circular: Everything she said was rephrased and sent back to her in another text message.
“I said to him, ‘I don’t think you’re a real person’ — and he tried to persuade me to think that he was,” she said in an interview.
The messages are managed by Sparkfire, a company that says its AI-based text messages can conduct more productive conversations than traditional text campaigns. As of mid-May, the company had received $6.5 million to carry out the work.
A Sparkfire spokesperson said in a statement that “human team members are involved throughout the conversation process and interact directly with recipients.”
But “Friends for Peace” does not appear to exist as a nonprofit organization or limited liability company. Asked whether it is a real organization, Parscale replied: “What do you define as a real organization?”
Surdut also could not find a website for the group, and grew suspicious.
“Even if it is a cause I believe in, I don’t want to have a conversation with artificial intelligence,” she said.
The influencers — and the Steph Curry connection
Israel’s efforts extend beyond Parscale. A group called Show Faith by Works filed documents laying out plans to send pro-Israel messages, especially to megachurch attendees and Christian students. The group claimed it could reach about 4 million people in the southwestern United States through a “geofencing” campaign, which sends messages based on location.
The group, founded last July, said the work would include creating “positive connections with the nation of Israel while linking the Palestinian population to extremist factions,” at a cost of more than $3 million. It said it planned to approach influential people as part of the effort, naming actor Chris Pratt and basketball star Steph Curry as two examples of ideal spokespeople.
The Journal noted that a representative for Pratt said he had never been contacted, while a representative for Curry did not respond.
In an email, Show Faith by Works founder Chad Schnittger said the group has “since gone in a different direction,” and that the budget was redirected mainly “to building a mobile museum with custom video displays.”
Other Israeli efforts focus on the American left, the Journal noted. The war in Gaza has sparked deep disputes among Democrats over whether support for Israel still has a place in the party.
Yoav Davis, who founded the popular Instagram page @Jews_of_NY, which has 193,000 followers, runs a marketing company that has a contract with Israel. The work includes taking part in calls with an “influencer management team” and “contract talent management.”
Davis frequently participates in online discussions about Israel and the war, including during a June visit to the Jerusalem Pride Parade.
“Israel is undoubtedly the safest place in the Middle East for LGBTQ people,” he said cheerfully to the camera.
However, he does not disclose whether Israel paid for posts or travel, and did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a point of courting conservative influencers, meeting with them during at least two recent visits to the United States. The deterioration in American support for Israel “correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media,” he said in a May interview with “60 Minutes.”
Documents indicate that Israel and registered agents working for the country made payments to companies owned by other online influencers as part of their work, though they do not specify payment for posts.
Evangelical influencers Stefanie and Caleb Rouse, who post glowing content on topics such as “10 things to pray over your marriage,” own a company that received $4,500 from an Israeli contractor last year for “strategic marketing promotion.” The Rouses did not respond to requests for comment.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance last week accused Israel’s influence campaign of trying “to undermine U.S. negotiations to end the conflict in Iran.” He told Joe Rogan’s podcast that some Israeli officials are working “to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely."
Israel set a 2026 budget of more than $700 million to expand the country’s efforts “to shape consciousness” and improve its image around the world, according to Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar late last year. The Foreign Ministry did not respond to the Wall Street Journal’s requests for an interview.
The report noted that Israel’s allies argue its influence campaign is necessary to counter those run by Iran and the pro-Palestinian movement.
It almost has to be, because that's just how humans do things.
Print copy was a great boon to humankind - except for all the shitty pamphleteering and yellow journalism that started up and caught on not all that long after it became widespread.
Radio - another great thing - until Mussolini got hold of it.
TV was our passport to become a better educated, better informed populous that was sure to make America supreme in its national intellect. But it gave us a version of ourselves that was so bleached out and sanitized, that an entire generation rebelled - and then gave us "reality TV, DumFuxnews, and a phony gameshow host as president.
Every time a great new thing comes along, there's a whole giant gang of assholes waiting to use it as a legitimate means to gain illegitimate access to power.
AI is becoming just as fucked up and dangerous.
WSJ investigation reveals new details of Israel's influence campaign to improve its image among US voters; it funded AI-generated texts, conservative media buys and influencer outreach, even approaching actor Chris Pratt and basketball star Steph Curry
Millions of text messages were sent in recent months to the cellphones of U.S. citizens under the names Emma, Sarah or John, who identified themselves as members of a group called “Friends for Peace.”
“How do you think the U.S.-Israel peace talks with Iran will affect global security?” they ask. A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the messages are written using artificial intelligence, promoted by a longtime adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump and funded by the Israeli government.
In an investigation published this week by Time magazine, it was revealed that Israel paid about $1.5 million a month to Brad Parscale, who ran Trump’s digital campaign in 2016, as part of an effort to influence American public opinion, especially young conservatives and MAGA supporters. The Journal now reports that the government-funded contract is worth more than $45 million.
The report noted that about 60% of American adults now have a negative view of Israel, according to a Pew Research Center survey, against the backdrop of the wars in Gaza and Iran. As a result, Israel is pouring tens of millions of dollars into an effort described as “quixotic” — naive and unrealistic — to overcome that wave, relying on AI-driven strategies and direct payments to conservative media.
The report noted that about 60% of American adults now have a negative view of Israel, according to a Pew Research Center survey, against the backdrop of the wars in Gaza and Iran. As a result, Israel is pouring tens of millions of dollars into an effort described as “quixotic” — naive and unrealistic — to overcome that wave, relying on AI-driven strategies and direct payments to conservative media.
Israel has hired at least six companies over the past year to assist in its public influence efforts in the United States. Dozens of people, many of them marketing professionals, have registered as foreign agents for Israel.
Parscale’s work has drawn scrutiny because of his role as chief strategy officer at Salem Media, a company that hosts popular conservative podcasters and broadcasters, including Hugh Hewitt, Scott Jennings and Lara Trump. According to the Journal investigation, his initial contract with Israel included “integrating narrative messages into Salem Media assets and aligned distribution channels.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and a prominent podcaster himself, asked: “How is the second-largest conservative talk network being run by a registered foreign agent?”
Salem Media and Parscale said they do not pay their hosts to say anything specific about Israel, and that the money was spent on more than $500,000 worth of online advertising.
“Our hosts built their careers by saying exactly what they think, not by reading someone else’s script,” said Salem CEO David Santrella. Many Salem hosts are longtime supporters of Israel who at times echo one another’s messages.
Chatbots and the pitch to Israel: 'The biggest thing outside Fox News'
Parscale’s contract with Israel is significantly larger than those of other Trump advisers who have worked for foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, India and Qatar, which the Journal said typically paid lobbyists tens of thousands of dollars a month, according to filings.
Parscale worked on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, gaining public attention for his use of the data firm Cambridge Analytica to collect Facebook data. He is no longer in regular contact with the president but has ties to Trump’s family.
Parscale worked on Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, gaining public attention for his use of the data firm Cambridge Analytica to collect Facebook data. He is no longer in regular contact with the president but has ties to Trump’s family.
In late 2024, he flew to Israel to present his proposal to the government, telling officials that companies he built and invested in were “probably the biggest thing outside Fox News helping fight misinformation and Jewish hate.” He returned regularly to brief Israeli officials.
The effort includes creating websites, posts and links with pro-Israel content designed, among other things, to produce more favorable results about Israel in AI chatbots such as Claude or ChatGPT. At times, AI bots shared links to websites such as Allyvia.org about the U.S.-Israel alliance, which was built by Parscale’s team.
One goal is “to understand the biggest concerns people have about Israel and fight them, while reporting the responses to the Israeli government,” he said.
Parscale is also an investor in a company called Influentable, which pays social media influencers for posts. He said he did not hire influencers for Israel.
Recipients of Israel’s messaging sometimes felt they might be part of a broader campaign. Jewish artist Beth Surdut received one of the “Friends for Peace” text messages in June, asking for her opinion on Israel. She noticed that the conversation felt circular: Everything she said was rephrased and sent back to her in another text message.
“I said to him, ‘I don’t think you’re a real person’ — and he tried to persuade me to think that he was,” she said in an interview.
Example of a conversation published in the investigation (translated from Hebrew):
A Sparkfire spokesperson said in a statement that “human team members are involved throughout the conversation process and interact directly with recipients.”
But “Friends for Peace” does not appear to exist as a nonprofit organization or limited liability company. Asked whether it is a real organization, Parscale replied: “What do you define as a real organization?”
Surdut also could not find a website for the group, and grew suspicious.
“Even if it is a cause I believe in, I don’t want to have a conversation with artificial intelligence,” she said.
The influencers — and the Steph Curry connection
Israel’s efforts extend beyond Parscale. A group called Show Faith by Works filed documents laying out plans to send pro-Israel messages, especially to megachurch attendees and Christian students. The group claimed it could reach about 4 million people in the southwestern United States through a “geofencing” campaign, which sends messages based on location.
The group, founded last July, said the work would include creating “positive connections with the nation of Israel while linking the Palestinian population to extremist factions,” at a cost of more than $3 million. It said it planned to approach influential people as part of the effort, naming actor Chris Pratt and basketball star Steph Curry as two examples of ideal spokespeople.
The Journal noted that a representative for Pratt said he had never been contacted, while a representative for Curry did not respond.
In an email, Show Faith by Works founder Chad Schnittger said the group has “since gone in a different direction,” and that the budget was redirected mainly “to building a mobile museum with custom video displays.”
Other Israeli efforts focus on the American left, the Journal noted. The war in Gaza has sparked deep disputes among Democrats over whether support for Israel still has a place in the party.
Yoav Davis, who founded the popular Instagram page @Jews_of_NY, which has 193,000 followers, runs a marketing company that has a contract with Israel. The work includes taking part in calls with an “influencer management team” and “contract talent management.”
“Israel is undoubtedly the safest place in the Middle East for LGBTQ people,” he said cheerfully to the camera.
However, he does not disclose whether Israel paid for posts or travel, and did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a point of courting conservative influencers, meeting with them during at least two recent visits to the United States. The deterioration in American support for Israel “correlates almost 100% with the geometric rise of social media,” he said in a May interview with “60 Minutes.”
Documents indicate that Israel and registered agents working for the country made payments to companies owned by other online influencers as part of their work, though they do not specify payment for posts.
Evangelical influencers Stefanie and Caleb Rouse, who post glowing content on topics such as “10 things to pray over your marriage,” own a company that received $4,500 from an Israeli contractor last year for “strategic marketing promotion.” The Rouses did not respond to requests for comment.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance last week accused Israel’s influence campaign of trying “to undermine U.S. negotiations to end the conflict in Iran.” He told Joe Rogan’s podcast that some Israeli officials are working “to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely."
Israel set a 2026 budget of more than $700 million to expand the country’s efforts “to shape consciousness” and improve its image around the world, according to Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar late last year. The Foreign Ministry did not respond to the Wall Street Journal’s requests for an interview.
The report noted that Israel’s allies argue its influence campaign is necessary to counter those run by Iran and the pro-Palestinian movement.
Jul 18, 2026
Rage Against The Machine
Data centers have united Americans of both parties in a shared hatred
Feeling ignored by political and economic powers, people are rallying against computer hubs over concerns about their communities’ future.
Kyle Schmidt ticked through what makes him irate about the massive Google data center slated for construction about a mile away from his home near Sand Springs, Oklahoma.
He didn’t like that residents were kept in the dark about what would be built on a pristine tract of mostly forested land. He’s worried about the data center’s potential impact on the community’s water supply and on the dream home that his family moved into last year.
But Schmidt said what really bothers him is the powerlessness he felt as the project advanced and elected officials, Google representatives and bigwig data center backers belittled or misled people who raised concerns.
“I hate bullies,” said Schmidt, a 43-year-old flooring salesman and project manager who leads a community group opposing the project. “Data center developers discovered if we can sneak in here without anyone noticing, we can pretty much take what we want.”
A rare issue uniting Americans is opposition to data centers, the sprawling computer complexes that are the most visible manifestation of the artificial intelligence boom. In a recent Gallup poll, about 7 of 10 Americans said they would oppose a data center being built near them, and many express concerns about the projects operating in secret and gobbling scarce land, water and electricity.
But experts and activists say that the intensity and breadth of the data center backlash reveals something bigger: Americans’ disgust with political and economic systems that feel stacked against them. Data centers, often backed by technology giants and advancing at the speed of AI, may be tangible symbols for a fed-up public to push back against powerful and unaccountable interests.
Data centers are a “physical embodiment of all the anxiety that people are feeling around AI and the economy,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said in an interview last month. And Cox, who faced blowback over his support for a data center project, said people feel like “this is something that they can fight.”
The groundswell against data centers is blurring typical political and social divisions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) wants to ban data centers, and Humans First, led by former tea party movement leader Amy Kremer, is organizing national data center protests on Saturday. Hill County, Texas, where Donald Trump won 82 percent of the vote in 2024, banned data center construction this year. So did residents of Monterey Park, California, a predominantly Asian and Latino working-class city east of Los Angeles.
It remains unclear whether this opposition will meaningfully slow the expansion of data centers fueling the AI boom, or limit the AI chatbots that half of Americans use. But many elected officials say they know that the tide has turned against data centers, and they’re rushing to show that they’re listening to residents’ concerns — or facing a political price.
Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat vying to flip a Senate seat in a closely watched race, has run advertisements accusing his opponent, Sen. Jon Husted (R), of recruiting data centers to the state at Ohioans’ expense. This spring, residents of Festus, Missouri, voted out incumbent city council members over their approval of a data center project.
Scott Babwah Brennen, director of New York University’s Center on Technology Policy, said he is stunned by how quickly popular outrage over data centers is shifting public policy.
For 15 years, he said, local governments rolled out the red carpet for data center construction in places such as eastern Washington and Northern Virginia. Companies including Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft often received tax breaks for what elected officials believed would be reliable future tax revenue, some additional jobs and a minimal strain on public services — at least compared with housing developments or factories. (Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But about two years ago, Babwah Brennen said that power-hungry data centers in some parts of the country started being blamed for driving up household electric bills.
Opposition in both red and blue regions continued to build to the point where he has tracked about 65 state data center restrictions enacted since the start of 2025, and dozens of cities that have imposed temporary halts to data center development. This week, New York became the first state in the nation to impose a temporary pause on large new data center projects.
“There is far more partisan alignment here than there was even last year,” Babwah Brennen said.
Some people resisting data centers say they’re not opposed to AI; Schmidt said that he’s using AI to create a community information website.
But some data center activists said they’re wary of politicians and powerful corporations asking people to sacrifice in exchange for economic revitalization that may never arrive.
Shaena Crossland, a lifelong West Virginian, said she’s worried that data centers will repeat the pattern of industries such as coal mining and logging that harvested resources from West Virginia, while the state remained largely poor.
“Hopefully this cycle of extraction and taking advantage of people will stop,” Crossland said. She and another local resident, Amy Margolies, are helping spearhead opposition to a proposed data center complex in the eastern part of the state.
People across the country have grown skeptical of promises that data centers generate good local jobs and technological advantages, said Abre’ Conner, director of the center for environmental and climate justice at the NAACP, which is among the groups suing over Elon Musk’s expanding data center complex in the Memphis area.
Data centers are now galvanizing citizens to push back against economic and political influences, she added. “This is one of the largest expansions of people recognizing their power,” Conner said.
Tech giants and other data center backers have been caught off guard by the rapid rise of public opposition, arguing that the hubs are essential for modern digital services and to keep the United States ahead of China on AI.
A spokesperson for Google, which is behind the Sand Springs data center, said it “strives to always be a good neighbor through long-term partnerships and investments in our sites, our people and the communities where we are located.” The company said it’s working to ensure compliance with Oklahoma law and local permitting guidelines.
Some data center proponents also say that concerns about the computer hubs are sometimes misinformed, stirred by foreign propaganda or a symptom of NIMBYism — or “Not in My Backyard,” shorthand for resistance to housing development and other new construction.
“If NIMBYism becomes the reason we lose the AI race, for whatever reason, we’re in a whole lot of trouble in this country,” Constellation Energy CEO Joseph Dominguez said in April. But while nuclear energy was once widely unpopular, Dominguez said that nuclear power complexes are now less controversial than the data centers that Constellation is hoping to attract.
Katherine Levine Einstein, a Boston University political scientist who researches local pushback to new home construction, said that data center opposition shares traits with this longtime resistance but only to a point.
Since zoning and permitting decisions are typically made at the local level in the U.S., she said, “20 grumpy neighbors” can quash homes or data centers near them even if the new construction could benefit many others.
With new housing, though, “we like it in the aggregate but we don’t want it near us,” Epstein said. “The public opinion about data centers is different: We don’t want them anywhere.”
Jul 16, 2026
A.I. Takes A Turn
I don't like the idea that people are threatening the AI guys. I understand it, but I don't think it's any kind of good idea. That said, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if a general 1793 kinda thing came around pretty soon.
The AI Backlash Has Tech Executives Fearing for Their Lives
Violent threats against AI companies are rising and spilling over into real-world security incidents
SAN FRANCISCO—A security guard at Anthropic rushed to stop the man sneaking into the lobby of the world’s most valuable AI startup.
The man had entered by following closely behind a badge-swiping employee. He showed the guard an envelope marked with the name of a top Anthropic executive.
The executive was “going to be killed,” he told the guard, and he needed to warn someone, according to records of the April 15 incident viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The encounter, which took place five days after an attempted firebombing of OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman’s house, ended without violence or an arrest. But for executives at Anthropic—and across the artificial-intelligence industry—the threat was far from over.
In recent months, mounting opposition to AI has given rise to a surge of violent rhetoric, threats against people and property, and a serious attempt at harm. The phenomenon has executives at tech companies large and small reconsidering their personal-security arrangements and how they talk about their products to a public that is increasingly wary of the technology and the societal changes it is ushering in.
The Texas man who allegedly threw an incendiary device at Altman’s house was charged with attempted murder and attempted arson. Officers found a manifesto advocating for the killing of AI CEOs and investors. He pleaded not guilty.
That same month, a man who had applied for a job at Anthropic using a fake name allegedly posted a threat to skin the children of company employees as “punishment” for what he alleged was the theft of his work, according to police records. Police categorized the incident as a terroristic threat but made no arrest. The man said he had “no actual desire to physically harm anyone.”
In June, Anthropic security officials reported an Oklahoma man to police after he threatened violence while seeking a refund, according to police records. He wanted to talk to a human.
“Since yall refuse to have a real person to contact me and refund my money ill be coming to your office with my pistol and then we will have a f—ing talk about my money,” the man wrote.
The volume of digital threats targeting AI chiefs and data centers grew sevenfold between late February and May, according to Liferaft, which scans social media and the dark web for Fortune 100 companies.
“What has surprised me is how bad it’s gotten over such a short period of time,” said Jonathan Graff, Liferaft’s CEO. The number of threats declined somewhat in June.
Aware of the backlash, some tech leaders have begun traveling with armed guards. Some stay quiet on the topic of AI to avoid attention. Industry leaders who had been issuing dire warnings about the risks AI poses to the workforce have pivoted to talking up its potential benefits. Still, they are pushing ahead on developing more-sophisticated models, just as Americans increasingly use the technology while expressing misgivings about its impact on jobs, their children’s well-being and energy prices.
Altman responded to the attack on his home by posting a photo of his husband and baby “in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me.” OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.
‘Go for the pitchfork’
The AI insurance company Corgi runs a cafe in San Francisco’s Financial District. With about 200 employees, Corgi isn’t as well-known as Anthropic or OpenAI. Yet passersby stop outside the cafe daily, shouting or cursing, Corgi CEO Nico Laqua said. At times, they rail against AI “raising their rents and stealing their water,” Laqua said.
“We have pretty thick skin at this point,” he said.
Earlier this year, Laqua hired extra security for the cafe after someone vandalized the company’s free shuttle bus.
In 2025, 38.1% of S&P 500 technology companies disclosed spending on executive protection, according to an analysis of filings by Equilar, up from 26.8% in 2021.
Three companies reporting major jumps in security spending operate near the center of the AI boom. The spending by Palantir Technologies on executive protection rose 150% in a year to nearly $3 million in 2025. At Oracle, spending rose 85.5% to $5.6 million from $3 million in the prior year. Disclosures show that most of that money funded Larry Ellison’s residential security in an environment with “specific threats and safety concerns.” Salesforce’s spending grew to about $4 million, about $1 million more than in 2024.
Salesforce declined to comment. Oracle and Palantir didn’t respond to requests for comment. At a conference this year on AI and labor hosted by American Compass, Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, said fear of unemployment is feeding a backlash. When told “your job is going to disappear,” he said, “people go for the pitchfork.”
“Tech CEOs, a few years ago, definitely did not have security,” said Dakota Dominguez, vice president of client relations at JPT Security, which is based in Silicon Valley. “A lot of tech companies now are incorporating that into their budgets.”
Dominguez said tech companies are increasingly requesting armed guards because of the backlash against the industry. Unlike music stars or politicians who often prefer hulking bodyguards, tech execs usually ask for less-conspicuous security, he said.
“In tech environments, what I see is a lot more of a slender profile,” he said.
AI companies discourage their rank-and-file workers from wearing corporate logos because of the risk of targeted attacks, particularly in unfamiliar areas, said Nabih Numair, a longtime security professional in Silicon Valley.
A current Anthropic security employee and a former one said in online posts viewed by the Journal that security has grown considerably at the company in the past few years. One said that in 2025, his role was to protect CEO Dario Amodei, but that the remit soon expanded to support founders, other C-suite executives and their families globally. The security employees didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Anthropic has run round-the-clock security since 2024 and communicates regularly with employees about emerging threats, a company spokesman said.
“We track concerning behavior over time through a person-of-interest process, allowing us to catch escalation patterns early,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman said several individuals involved in incidents reported to police were already being tracked by Anthropic security. In the case of the man who sneaked into the lobby, the spokesman said the company’s security team is instructed to seek de-escalation and not to detain people.
‘You can’t go back to serfdom’
In polls, which show public enthusiasm for AI has been plummeting, Americans regularly express concern about the technology’s effects on jobs and affordability. Employee anger with AI has mounted as companies attribute layoffs to the efficiencies it creates.
Daniel Green, a Kansas City, Mo., consultant who works on AI training and corporate-tech adoption, said people he encounters have absorbed executives’ rhetoric that the technology is a job killer and that using it is akin to training a replacement.
“People talk about AI in the context of the Industrial Revolution, and the Luddites were actually very violent,” he said.
In May, Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht was spotted in Seattle. Meta Platforms had just announced around 1,400 layoffs, in the midst of an AI pivot, in Washington state. Online commenters said they wished someone would light it ablaze, blow it up or sink it. Meta declined to comment.
At the conference on AI and labor, Palantir’s Karp called political unrest the industry’s No. 1 challenge. Karp said he would advise his peers that “none of us are going to make any money when the country blows up.”
Americans concerned about AI outnumber those who aren’t by more than a 4 to 1 margin, according to a March survey of about 1,400 U.S. adults by Quinnipiac University. A growing share of respondents to that survey—55%—said they believed AI was doing more harm than good.
Bonnie Kate Wolf, 34 years old, a Pinterest designer, was laid off as the company embraced AI in operations. Before her accounts were deactivated, she posted to an office Slack channel: “PLS DO NOT FORGET ALL OF US WHO ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND AND REPLACED BY THE AI. RESIST.” Hundreds responded with emojis of hearts or raised fists.
Wolf, of Seattle, said it seems executives accept that job loss is reasonable because the potential to make money with AI is so great. “That’s why people are setting warehouses on fire,” she said. “You can’t go back to serfdom. It really feels like the people in power want to be kings. Historically, that doesn’t work out for kings.”
Maybe some "good" can come of it if the MegaTech Bros start to rethink their dreams of world conquest, or whatever the fuck they've got in mind, but it's more probable just to make them dig in and get more aggressive - the backfire effect, dontcha know.
One thought: We haven't yet seen the rise of any jolly pranksters who gain great notoriety - intentionally or not - by throwing the proverbial sabot into the machinery.
Violent threats against AI companies are rising and spilling over into real-world security incidents
SAN FRANCISCO—A security guard at Anthropic rushed to stop the man sneaking into the lobby of the world’s most valuable AI startup.
The man had entered by following closely behind a badge-swiping employee. He showed the guard an envelope marked with the name of a top Anthropic executive.
The executive was “going to be killed,” he told the guard, and he needed to warn someone, according to records of the April 15 incident viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The encounter, which took place five days after an attempted firebombing of OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman’s house, ended without violence or an arrest. But for executives at Anthropic—and across the artificial-intelligence industry—the threat was far from over.
In recent months, mounting opposition to AI has given rise to a surge of violent rhetoric, threats against people and property, and a serious attempt at harm. The phenomenon has executives at tech companies large and small reconsidering their personal-security arrangements and how they talk about their products to a public that is increasingly wary of the technology and the societal changes it is ushering in.
The Texas man who allegedly threw an incendiary device at Altman’s house was charged with attempted murder and attempted arson. Officers found a manifesto advocating for the killing of AI CEOs and investors. He pleaded not guilty.
That same month, a man who had applied for a job at Anthropic using a fake name allegedly posted a threat to skin the children of company employees as “punishment” for what he alleged was the theft of his work, according to police records. Police categorized the incident as a terroristic threat but made no arrest. The man said he had “no actual desire to physically harm anyone.”
In June, Anthropic security officials reported an Oklahoma man to police after he threatened violence while seeking a refund, according to police records. He wanted to talk to a human.
“Since yall refuse to have a real person to contact me and refund my money ill be coming to your office with my pistol and then we will have a f—ing talk about my money,” the man wrote.
The volume of digital threats targeting AI chiefs and data centers grew sevenfold between late February and May, according to Liferaft, which scans social media and the dark web for Fortune 100 companies.
“What has surprised me is how bad it’s gotten over such a short period of time,” said Jonathan Graff, Liferaft’s CEO. The number of threats declined somewhat in June.
Aware of the backlash, some tech leaders have begun traveling with armed guards. Some stay quiet on the topic of AI to avoid attention. Industry leaders who had been issuing dire warnings about the risks AI poses to the workforce have pivoted to talking up its potential benefits. Still, they are pushing ahead on developing more-sophisticated models, just as Americans increasingly use the technology while expressing misgivings about its impact on jobs, their children’s well-being and energy prices.
Altman responded to the attack on his home by posting a photo of his husband and baby “in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me.” OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.
‘Go for the pitchfork’
The AI insurance company Corgi runs a cafe in San Francisco’s Financial District. With about 200 employees, Corgi isn’t as well-known as Anthropic or OpenAI. Yet passersby stop outside the cafe daily, shouting or cursing, Corgi CEO Nico Laqua said. At times, they rail against AI “raising their rents and stealing their water,” Laqua said.
“We have pretty thick skin at this point,” he said.
Earlier this year, Laqua hired extra security for the cafe after someone vandalized the company’s free shuttle bus.
In 2025, 38.1% of S&P 500 technology companies disclosed spending on executive protection, according to an analysis of filings by Equilar, up from 26.8% in 2021.
Three companies reporting major jumps in security spending operate near the center of the AI boom. The spending by Palantir Technologies on executive protection rose 150% in a year to nearly $3 million in 2025. At Oracle, spending rose 85.5% to $5.6 million from $3 million in the prior year. Disclosures show that most of that money funded Larry Ellison’s residential security in an environment with “specific threats and safety concerns.” Salesforce’s spending grew to about $4 million, about $1 million more than in 2024.
Salesforce declined to comment. Oracle and Palantir didn’t respond to requests for comment. At a conference this year on AI and labor hosted by American Compass, Alex Karp, Palantir’s CEO, said fear of unemployment is feeding a backlash. When told “your job is going to disappear,” he said, “people go for the pitchfork.”
“Tech CEOs, a few years ago, definitely did not have security,” said Dakota Dominguez, vice president of client relations at JPT Security, which is based in Silicon Valley. “A lot of tech companies now are incorporating that into their budgets.”
Dominguez said tech companies are increasingly requesting armed guards because of the backlash against the industry. Unlike music stars or politicians who often prefer hulking bodyguards, tech execs usually ask for less-conspicuous security, he said.
“In tech environments, what I see is a lot more of a slender profile,” he said.
AI companies discourage their rank-and-file workers from wearing corporate logos because of the risk of targeted attacks, particularly in unfamiliar areas, said Nabih Numair, a longtime security professional in Silicon Valley.
A current Anthropic security employee and a former one said in online posts viewed by the Journal that security has grown considerably at the company in the past few years. One said that in 2025, his role was to protect CEO Dario Amodei, but that the remit soon expanded to support founders, other C-suite executives and their families globally. The security employees didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Anthropic has run round-the-clock security since 2024 and communicates regularly with employees about emerging threats, a company spokesman said.
“We track concerning behavior over time through a person-of-interest process, allowing us to catch escalation patterns early,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman said several individuals involved in incidents reported to police were already being tracked by Anthropic security. In the case of the man who sneaked into the lobby, the spokesman said the company’s security team is instructed to seek de-escalation and not to detain people.
‘You can’t go back to serfdom’
In polls, which show public enthusiasm for AI has been plummeting, Americans regularly express concern about the technology’s effects on jobs and affordability. Employee anger with AI has mounted as companies attribute layoffs to the efficiencies it creates.
Daniel Green, a Kansas City, Mo., consultant who works on AI training and corporate-tech adoption, said people he encounters have absorbed executives’ rhetoric that the technology is a job killer and that using it is akin to training a replacement.
“People talk about AI in the context of the Industrial Revolution, and the Luddites were actually very violent,” he said.
In May, Mark Zuckerberg’s yacht was spotted in Seattle. Meta Platforms had just announced around 1,400 layoffs, in the midst of an AI pivot, in Washington state. Online commenters said they wished someone would light it ablaze, blow it up or sink it. Meta declined to comment.
At the conference on AI and labor, Palantir’s Karp called political unrest the industry’s No. 1 challenge. Karp said he would advise his peers that “none of us are going to make any money when the country blows up.”
Americans concerned about AI outnumber those who aren’t by more than a 4 to 1 margin, according to a March survey of about 1,400 U.S. adults by Quinnipiac University. A growing share of respondents to that survey—55%—said they believed AI was doing more harm than good.
Bonnie Kate Wolf, 34 years old, a Pinterest designer, was laid off as the company embraced AI in operations. Before her accounts were deactivated, she posted to an office Slack channel: “PLS DO NOT FORGET ALL OF US WHO ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND AND REPLACED BY THE AI. RESIST.” Hundreds responded with emojis of hearts or raised fists.
Wolf, of Seattle, said it seems executives accept that job loss is reasonable because the potential to make money with AI is so great. “That’s why people are setting warehouses on fire,” she said. “You can’t go back to serfdom. It really feels like the people in power want to be kings. Historically, that doesn’t work out for kings.”
Jul 9, 2026
Jul 3, 2026
Jul 2, 2026
Plutocrat Meltdown
The tech bro plutocrats are experiencing their own special psychosis.
Karp goes off track practically every time he's asked a question, and crazy-rants - steeped in a language that's barely discernible by the Press Poodles interviewing him.
And you're gonna trust this guy to run the show?
Jul 1, 2026
Fun With A.I.
The Great American State
— Freyja Kristensen 🇪🇺🇩🇰🇬🇱🇫🇴🇪🇦🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@Germania_Freyja) July 1, 2026
🎪
Fair has become another example of an administration that seems increasingly focused on spectacle over governing.
As the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s Freedom 250 celebration, the event will transform the National Mall into a massive… pic.twitter.com/5Ks1Mua0U3
On Mitigating Harm
An axe is a handy tool you can use to build your house. It's also an effective weapon you can use to kill your neighbors.
Jun 30, 2026
Huh - Whooda Thunk It
Y'mean humans come in handy when you're trying to make something you want humans to buy?
Seems pretty radical.
Jun 27, 2026
A.I. Psychosis
The business model always reigns supreme. And the business model is weighted heavily towards keeping you engaged.
IMO, the point seems not to be getting machines to think like humans, but to condition humans to think like machines.
How AI’s sycophantic responses, language mirroring and hyperpersonalized content work together to send some people into a spiral
We’ve all experienced the tendency of AI chatbots to tell us what we want to hear, but there are two other, more nuanced factors that help chatbots worm their way into human hearts.
In addition to being overly agreeable, chatbots mirror the way people speak and generate highly personalized responses based on prior conversations. Psychiatric researchers are referring to the confluence of these three characteristics—sycophancy, linguistic alignment and hyperpersonalization—as the “amplification spiral,” suggesting it’s the mechanism by which delusional thinking can fester.
“The mirroring and personalization draw you in and give the experience of talking not to a system, but to someone,” said Marc Augustin, a psychiatrist and professor at Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Bochum, Germany, and co-author of a newly published review of the literature on AI-related delusions.
Matching another person’s syntax and verbal expressions is a common way for humans to build rapport. Recent research has found that artificial-intelligence models adapt significantly to the conversational style of the humans using them. Another study suggested that the highly personalized content generated by chatbots, which builds over the course of lengthy conversations, can amplify human-confirmation bias.
Augustin cited research that documented a pattern in which chatbots rephrased and extrapolated what people shared, and told them they’re unique and that their thoughts have great implications. “This can be viewed as an element of hyperpersonalization that sycophancy alone cannot account for,” he wrote.
Some AI companies have tried to tone down the sycophantic nature of their chatbots. OpenAI discontinued its popular but problematic 4o model, which had been widely criticized for being overly agreeable. It was the subject of several lawsuits involving user delusions, suicides and a homicide. In GPT-5, the company said, sycophantic replies dropped from 14.5% to less than 6%.
Google in April said it had trained Gemini not to reinforce false beliefs, and to “gently distinguish subjective experience from objective fact.”
Still, chatbot-related dependency remains pervasive, according to clinicians.
Some 68% of psychologists surveyed in April by the American Psychological Association said their patients felt validated by chatbots. While many of the more than 1,200 respondents reported that patients had positive communication with chatbots and used them to reinforce healthy coping skills, 36% said patients had forged a dependency on a chatbot and 15% reported that patients had developed distorted thinking or delusions.
“From what I hear from my own patients, there has been an uptick in using AI for emotional support,” said Allison LoPilato, who treats adolescents and is an associate professor in the psychiatry and behavioral-sciences department at Emory University School of Medicine.
“Chatbots still tend to be warm and reassuring,” said LoPilato, who helped craft a new guide on safe AI use for the American Psychological Association. Because they gather information about you, “it can feel like the chatbot understands you, and it can trick you into a sense of alliance and trust.”
Chatbots can even pose harm when a person isn’t vulnerable to delusional thinking, said researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University. They measured the prevalence of sycophancy across 11 models—including GPT-5—and determined their responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than human responses. They did this by copying real scenarios people had posted in a popular Reddit forum, putting them into the AI models and then comparing the chatbot replies with the replies on Reddit.
Anthropic sampled one million conversations of its own Claude chatbot in March and April and found that it displayed sycophantic behavior most often in conversations in which people sought relationship advice.
“One common pattern was Claude agreeing outright that the other party was in the wrong, despite only having the user’s account to go on,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Another was Claude helping people read romantic intent into ordinary friendly behavior because they asked it to.”
Anthropic used its findings to improve the training of its latest models. It said Opus 4.7 had shown half the sycophancy rate of Opus 4.6 when it came to relationship guidance. Sycophancy has been reduced further in Opus 4.8, its most recent model, the company said.
Completely eliminating sycophancy is hard, said Myra Cheng, lead author of the Stanford study and a Stanford Ph.D. candidate in computer science. “When someone prompts a model, it has no idea which parts of a prompt are wrong,” she said. “It has to take a user’s framing of a situation at face value.”
Addressing other factors that make chatbots so compelling, such as using first-person pronouns and asking follow-up questions, runs counter to the business model, said Vaile Wright, senior director of healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association.
"It’s not the agreeableness alone, it’s all these subtle engineering choices that make chatbots feel human,” Wright said. “As long as engagement remains the business model, AI companies will engineer these chatbots to keep you on the platform.”
Jun 25, 2026
A.I. Comes Through
I wonder if this is when MAGA really starts to turn on the Tech Bro Plutocrats, or will it just prompt a more adamant Luddite reflex.
Jun 23, 2026
A.I.
AI is not ready for prime time. The products aren't very great, the developer companies are drowning in debt, turning no profit, and their stock is wildly over-valued.
Coupla Points:
- When they're so deep in the hole, why are the big companies in such a hurry to build giant, ridiculously expensive data centers?
- Companies are in business to turn a buck, and products that tell customers uncomfortable truths are just going to piss a lot of those customers off.
Jun 5, 2026
A.I. May Never Work As Advertised
It's a machine. Machines don't think, because machines can't think.
A TweeXt
Perfect gift for your MAGA friends and family. pic.twitter.com/J6QUh8UnVL
— Joe G (@EastEndJoe) June 5, 2026
Jun 3, 2026
A.I.
That sucking sound you may be hearing is the continuation of the process that plutocrats have been using and refining for 50 years to wildly boost productivity while Hoovering up all the profits (ie: siphoning off the lifeblood of the people who do the actual work).
We've all seen the charts. Where productivity has increased by 85%, corporate earnings have risen 3,800%, and the net worth of the executive class has increased 500% - while a growing majority of "the working class" has seen their total compensation dwindle to a point where most Americans now can barely afford subsistence.
Computerization really started to take hold in the early 70s, which coincided with the steady de-industrialization of the US economy. Productivity went way way up, but instead of rewarding the workforce or reinvesting in radical things like workforce development or capital improvements, companies (and their coin-operated politicians) put most of the profits in their pockets, or went abroad, looking for new opportunities for plunder.
I'll say it again: I'm a capitalist because god is a capitalist. I think Capitalism is the closest analogy of how the biosphere works.
I have to take in a number of calories sufficient to maintain myself, plus provide the fuel I need to do the work necessary to go out and get my next meal. Basic Capitalism.
But god's not stupid enough to just let the thing run wild. So god gave us regulation.
- I need sugar to fuel my brain, but too much sugar will kill me, so I have a pancreas to squirt a little insulin into my bloodstream to keep me within specs.
- I have a hypothalamus to help me keep my core body temperature in the normal operating range of 96º to 101º Fahrenheit.
- There's a complex system of sensors and monitoring functions that regulates my heart rate, and my breathing, and my digestive functions, and and and.
Let the system run wild, and you live a very short, miserable existence. Regulate it properly, and the system provides a pathway for a long and healthy life that gives us a few real shots at being happy.
Unfettered Free Market Capitalism is a recreational drug that will kill us all. But hey - whoever dies with the most cash wins, right?
Fuck that shit. I'm not that guy anymore.
So this AI thing is being pimped as the latest and greatest boon for humankind - the thing that's going to make us all rich geniuses. It's not. It threatens to turn 99.9% of us into obedient servile human automatons unless we jump on it and regulate the fuck out of it.
May 28, 2026
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