Palantir's Vision Of A Tech Republic - A Progressive Promised Land or Technofascist Dystopia

 

The US spy tech company (yes that's what they are, AI spies,) Palantir in a bid to promote a book, Tech Republic, witten by Alex Karp its founder, CEO and wannabe pan - galactic evil emperor, published via the company account on X, a manifesto extolling the benefits of American power, predicting a future global technocratic dictatorship and implying some cultures are inferior to others – in what UK Members of Parliament from across the political spectrumPs have called “a parody of a RoboCop film” and “the ramblings of a supervillain”.

“Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive,”  Palantir stated in the 22-point manifesto post on X last week. Well there's nothing works as well as stating the blindingly effing obvious when you're trying to imprss gullible people. The manifesto also called for an end to the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan whatever that is.

The post called on the US to reinstate a military draft, saying that “free and democratic societies” need “hard power” in order to prevail. Karp's vision of a free and democratic world involves mass surveillance, facial recognition and AI systems fingering potential criminals so they can be arrested before they can commit any crimes.

It also predicted a future dominated by autonomous weapons: “The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.”

The pronouncement is the most recent of a number of high-profile statements from Palantir and its chief bilionaire psychopath which appear to indicate that Karp views himself as not simply the head of a software company, but a pundit with important insights into the future of civilisation. Other people whose intelligence is grounded in reality might think he's simply an arse.

Palantir's business model is based on 'scraping' data from all internet connected ststems to build 'large language models' from which the fake intelligence of Artificial Intelligence povides themeans through which authoritarian regimes can control us. The rise of Palantir equals the death of privacy.

The Boggart Bloggers view is that he is trying to get himself into a quasi - political group we often refer to, The Billionaire Pychopaths World Doination Club, an exclusive society forthose incredibly rich individuals who presume their combined wealth can create the technocratic dictatorship they dream of and guarantee them a place on its managing committee. 

In the Palantir “manifesto” we see predictions of the culmination of a US political economy that’s been in global domination overdrive since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The imperialist wars abroad for global hegemony are the flip side of the war against democratic rights/working conditions at home. 

To us ordinary folk who live lives untroubled by megalomaniacal desires for world domination, this ‘manifesto’ reads  more like dystopian fiction than a route map to the promised land. In this age of ‘the tyranny of capital’, it is merely a handbook for how best to hsupport the insane oligarchic class usurp to themselves even more power over the minutae of our lives, contol of wealth ,and the corresponding immiseration of the masses which must accompany it.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: 

 

Artificial Intelligence: An Existential Threat - But To Humanity Or Savings And Investments

 

Stock mrket analysts and investment bankers have been saying for a few months the the AI bubble rapid  i.e.the surge in the value of these companies based on stock markey trading in their shares, about to burst? Big tech’s gargantuan capital outlays – surging tenfold in the three years since ChatGPT was publicly launched – look increasingly unsustainable. 

By some measures, artificial intelligence (AI) now sucks up more than half of America’s combined investment pool. Yet the promised uplift to business productivity hasn’t materialized. 

According to techopedia.com, investment in artificial intelligence has sailed past levels last seen during the peak of the dotcom bubble. Jens Nordvig, founder and CEO of macroeconomic consultancy Exante, says AI-related capital expenditures now represent about 2% of America’s GDP. But scepticism is in short supple with people like Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the world's biggest asset management firm fully on board with the hype.

Big tech AI data center spending has risen 10x in the last three years alone. The arrival of ChatGPT in 2022 has led to an AI bubble so big it’s consuming more than half of America’s cumulative investment pool. 

So unquenchable is the industry’s thirst for cash that the world’s biggest economy may not have enough to slake it. OpenAI chief Sam Altman has already been fundraising beyond America’s shores, hoping to raise some $7 trillion from sovereign wealth funds and other sources in the UAE and elsewhere.

The AI euphoria driving this is partly due to global debt having ballooned from $64 trillion in 2000 to $338 trillion today. Every major asset — stocks, bonds, property — has been inflated by decades of easy money. What looks like prosperity is really devaluation in disguise.
 
Meanwhile, most investors no longer pick stocks; algorithms do. Trillions flow automatically into ETFs that chase price momentum, not profit. When liquidity dries up, everything will fall together.

Even the gains AI firms are making come at a cost elsewhere. As the industry sucks up all the available capital, it’s also consuming massive amounts of electricity. Hyperscale data centers use roughly 4.5% of America’s electricity, a figure that could triple in the next two years. That’s raising electricity prices – up about 13% on average between October 2022 and June 2025.  

AI centers require significant power to operate and a lot of water to keep them cool, straining local grids and raising utility water prices in areas where these data centers are concentrated. That puts upward pressure on inflation, making both households and businesses more costly to run.

And the supposed AI “revolution that is going to kick off the fourth industrial revolution and even pose an existential threat to humanity? A July MIT study found 95% of AI projects deliver zero profit. Yet trillions in capital keep flooding in. Data-center investment alone could exceed $5 trillion by 2030 — which would require AI services to generate revenues equal to 10% of total U.S. GDP just to break even. Pure fantasy economics and yet the oligarchic insanity over an AI takeover of everything goes on unabated. 

On top of all that it emerged last week that AI large language models can quite easily be 'poisoned' and caused to spew out gibberish by hackers. 

AI is a massive mis-allocation of capital running in trillions of dollars. Now the data-center theme seems to be going out, people rejecting data centers across the west, due to their energy issues, and effect on fresh water sources.

So many sub-sectors of  stock markets have already been falling 6 months or more (transportation, chemicals, materials etc.) but this has largely been concealed because a few big tech corporations heavily invested in AI have propped up the indexes so the headline figures have looked good.

As Wall Street, Lndon and other stock exchanges brace themselves for tech carnage, analysts are starting to wonder if a bigger financial collapse than the dot-com collapse is just around the corner.  

AI may be approaching its moment of truth. A technology built to unleash the economy is starting to weigh it down.

 The investment flows that have and are still inflating the AI bubble are dependent on monetary flows, and right now we seem to be seeing another liquidity crunch, which will take down everything.  The key issue is who is going to save the banks that are too big to fail this time. 

 

News Summary 5 July 2022

UK Roads See 'serious Disruption' As Fuel Price Protesters Block Motorways & Highways

UK Roads See 'serious Disruption' As Fuel Motorways and major highways had come to a halt after slow-moving convoys of demonstrators were seen to be protesting against the excessive fuel prices.
Amid the mounting fuel crisis in the United Kingdom, motorways and major highways came to a halt on Monday after the slow-moving convoys of demonstrators were seen to be protesting against the excessive fuel prices. According to The Guardian report, the demonstrators have vowed to continue direct action until the British government's addresses the situation. On Monday, July 4, hundreds of lorries, vans, vehicles, and tractors blocked roads in England, Wales, and Scotland, causing delays and 'serious disruption' for thousands of motorists.

Parity Is Just A Matter Of Time Now": Euro Crashes To 20 Year Low As Recession Reality Trounces ECB Rate Hike Delusions
We have long mocked the ECB for making the typical European mistake codified over a decade ago by Jean-Claude Trichet, when it launches rate hikes right into a recession (and after that, debt crisis).
Today, it finally appears that the market got the memo and sent the euro plunging crashing a 20-year low against the US dollar as traders bet that the European Central Bank will go slower on raising interest rates as the economy risks being tipped into a recession (Zero Hedge).

Big Tech isn’t Woke. It’s Totalitarian” – Michael Senger says that Big Tech platforms openly collude with governments to suppress the speech of their own people, crafting the false illusion of consensus on political issues of their own choosing.

The Covid Pass – Europe’s new Iron Curtain” – Dr. Niall McCrae writes for TCW Defending Freedom that anyone who thought that ‘living with Covid’ meant going back to normal should have learned by now that the authorities want it to stay for ever.

This unfolding worldwide vaccine disaster” – Neville Hodgkinson in TCW Defending Freedom says it is surely time for us all to awaken to this unfolding public health disaster.

Shock Survey: A Quarter of Young Europeans Don’t Worry About Anthropogenic Climate Change” – Generational teenage rebellion may finally be kicking in for climate change, writes Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That?

Fury as £1.36 million-a-year BBC pundit Gary Lineker sides with Just Stop Oil ecoloons after they stormed Silverstone in protest at British Grand Prix – and claims there is ‘way more risk of death from climate change’ than their dangerous stunt” – Martin Brundle, a former F1 driver and now a commentator with Sky Sports F1, quickly took issue with Gary Lineker lending his support to the protestors to his 8.5 million followers, reports the Mail.

Approve a mini nuclear reactor or delay green revolution, Johnson told” – Rolls-Royce warns it will miss the target to deploy the technology unless the Government acts fast, according to the Telegraph.

The unravelling of Germany’s green agenda” – Its botched transition to green energy is a warning to the world, says Sabine Beppler-Spahl in Spiked.

Sex education is becoming far too extreme” – MP Miriam Cates writes in the Telegraph that parents across the country have written to her to share their anguish over what their children are being exposed to in the classroom.

Online platforms could have ‘legal obligation’ to fight state disinformation as part of amendment to Online Safety Bill” – City A.M. reports that online platforms will have the legal obligation to take “proactive, preventative action” against any state-sponsored disinformation. Which I’m sure will be used entirely impartially against governments whether Right or Left…

‘Doctors shouldn’t call out Mr or Mrs in the waiting room’” – A London-based conference to make GP practices more ‘inclusive’ also recommended getting GPs and staff to wear pronoun labels so patients ‘feel at ease’, the Mail reports.

Young people gather in London for conference promoting freedom of speech and tolerance” – More than 60 young people and students from across the U.K. met in London for the annual Living Freedom conference, reports GB News.

The myth of ‘artificial intelligence’” – Andrew Orlowski says that alongside wokeness, there are two other modern manias that have a distinctly religious quality: environmentalism and artificial intelligence (AI). He forgot pandemia!

Beware the dangers of a cashless society

 by Silkie Carlo

As the country celebrates tradition and prepares for change, one major shift is closer than ever – our move towards becoming a cashless society. It is hard to imagine money without the Queen’s profile proudly embossed, defining our Elizabethan generation in a centuries-old British tradition, but the monarch’s face is fast disappearing from our pockets.

Many of us rarely use cash now at all and increasingly, shops, cafes and transport providers refuse to accept it. Card and contactless payments already outweigh cash payments in the UK. Our shift towards digital payments was further catalysed by Covid – even PIN-pads were deemed risky and life became, in all senses, contactless. But this also signalled an opportunity for the tech industry. Now, Mastercard is urging people to link their bank accounts to their facial biometrics in order to “smile to pay”.

Creepy? Yes, but it all seems so convenient. Card companies give promises of “frictionless” transactions and “speeding” through checkouts. You don’t need to carry cash or worry about theft – and increasingly, you don’t need to carry a card or even remember a PIN. Digital banking apps also allow you to monitor every penny you spend. But is it only monitoring what you spend? 

The move towards a cashless society creates the inevitability of more granular surveillance and less privacy than ever before. When everywhere you travel, everywhere you eat, everything you buy and every service you pay for is digitally recorded, your behaviour can be more easily scrutinised whether by your bank, your spouse or the state. Every penny of irregular income, whether a few quid from eBay or a family loan, will leave a digital trace. ... Continue reading >>>

In a system of total financial surveillance, fraud, financial crime, black markets and tax evasion could theoretically be eliminated. As such, HMRC has already drastically ramped up its digital surveillance operation. HMRC’s big data “Connect” system collects over a billion items of data from 30 sources – including tax returns, interest on bank accounts, online marketplaces and social media – to conduct a matching analysis of 800 million monthly credit and debit card payments. Yet as part of this, HMRC unlawfully collected over 5 million biometric voiceprints via its helpline – it was only after Big Brother Watch raised a complaint with the data watchdog that the Department was ordered to delete them.

EXPLORE:

 

Negative Interest Rates & The War On Cash, Part 3: "Beware The Promoters"
Bitcoin and other electronic platforms have paved the way psychologically for a shift away from cash, although they have done so by emphasising decentralisation and anonymity rather than the much greater central control which would be inherent in a mainstream electronic currency. Despite the loss of privacy, electronic currency is much favoured by techno-optimists, but not so much by those concerned about the risks of absolute structural dependency on technological complexity.

War On Cash Gathers Momentum - Germany Unveils Cash Controls
On Monday (1 February, 2016) just two days ago, Bloomberg called on the central banks of the world to “bring on a cashless future” in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins "dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive." We can imagine it would be quite easy to harm someone by firing large coins at them from a gun and terrorists could probably stuff an improvised explosive device with small coins rather than nails or nuts and bolts. And if ...

Norway's Biggest Bank Joins Push To Abolish Cash
The move by governments to eliminate cash as a means of trading goods and services is moving faster than we imagined. With another global financial crisis looming according to financial journalists and investment experts this is as understandable as it is undesirable for us ordinary punters.

The Financial Times Calls for Ending Cash, Calls it a “Barbarous Relic”
Earlier this week, as the financial world was in turmoil following a rapid crash and recovery in financial markets. While we the punters shook our heads and wondered how the banksters get away with this kind of shit, The Financial Times published a dastardly little piece of fascist New World Order propaganda.

New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns

The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.

Cashless Society - The Resistance Begins Here
A seaside market town in Norfolk may be less than 100 miles from the world's financial capital, London, , it may be the commercial centre of West Norfolk’ as the town website boasts, it may be home to 45,000 people — but there, unlike in London, cash is king.

Establishment Pushing ‘Cashless Society’ to Control Humanity
The global establishment is increasingly pushing the notion of what it calls a “cashless society” — a world in which all payments and transactions would be conducted electronically, creating a permanent record for governments to inspect and track at will.Multiple governments from Africa and Asia to Europe and ...

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Washington Post Disciplines Writer Who Criticized Owner Bezos - Goodbye Free Speech

Jeff Bezos - net worth $80 billion - health problems: notoriously thin skin

A new trend in mainstream media and the liberal side of the political establishment is that, aware of public feeling for once, they are turning on their recent darlings, the Silicon Valley elites. As public criticism of the ethical decrepitude common to tech and internet giants such as Google (don't be evil, that's our job,) Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon to name a few, the politicians and media luvvies are as usual piling on the bandwagon.  

Last week, even say-anything-in-return-for-a-donation Hillary Clinton attacked Facebook for allowing someone who may have been Russian to buy $50,000 worth of political ads on their site. Blithely sidestepping around the irony the irony of that statement when it is a matter of public record that Facebook execs gave millions to Hillary's 2016 campaign, we would ask our readers to cut FB some slack. Recent revelations about how much of their estimated revenue is down to click fraud makes one realise how desperate for cashflow Zuckerberg and Co. must be.

Jumping on this hate-silicon-valley-control-freaks bandwagon may have unexpected consequences however, another trend that has gone largely unremarked is the acquisition by tech billionaires of traditional media organizations (i.e. the ones that make money in the real world, not in Ponzi schemes like crypto-currencies. So if you are a writer and have intentions of joining in with the tech-billionaire bashing jamboree, it might be wise to make sure you know who owns the news organ you write for. Telling the world via your Facebook timeline that your boss is a bastard is bad, doing the same thing in a big circulation news sheet he or she owns  is not just career suicide, it's oblivion. Unfortunately, Fredrick Kunkle of the Washington Post didn't heed that advice when he published a scathing op-ed about Jeff Bezos in the Huffington Post. It is of course possible than Kunkle did not know the Amazon founder now owns WaPo, but journalistic training covers the importance of fact checking surely. Here's a taste of what he had to say:

One of the wealthiest men in the world is thinking of ways to give back. But he’s still taking from the very people who helped him build his fortune.

But as Bezos, whose worth now exceeds $80 billion, loosens his pockets, it’s important to put his charitable giving — and the philanthropy of the super-rich — into perspective: Many people worked hard for Bezos to help make him so rich, and he has a record of treating them poorly.

Amazon’s history of dodging taxes, its mistreatment of workers, and its ruthlessness toward even the smallest competitors have been well documented. It put ambulances outside distribution centers rather than install adequate air conditioning. It broke up a union organizing effort by closing the call center and dismissing everyone who worked there. The New York Times documented its punishing work environment in a front-page exposé. The company’s actions, as Forbes put it, hark back to an earlier time when workers were treated as “replaceable cogs in the machine.”

Everyone at the Post wants it to succeed and prosper. But we want our employees to succeed and prosper, too.

Two years ago, however, Bezos slashed retirement benefits. For reasons that remain unclear, he froze a pension plan that was awash in so much money that neither he nor the company would possibly have faced additional liabilities. He also spurned the sort of compromise plan The New York Times Co. had pioneered -  an adjustable pension plan that would have ensured the Post would never encounter a problem funding it. In essence, this innovative approach, developed by the financial services firm Cheiron, would have mitigated the company’s risks by sharing them with employees and continued to grow their annual retirement benefit.

Bezos’ decision on retirement benefits had nothing to do with the balance sheet and, arguably, everything to do with ideology. And it almost overshadowed Bezos’ demand for the right to cancel everyone’s health insurance and his push to take it away from part-time employees.

Bezo's ideology appeares to be based on, "Fuck the workers, I want all the money." Oh well, he has no influence over this small publication.

Unfortunately the same is not true of The Washington Post (sic) and not surprisingly, Kunkle's efforts earned him this sternly-worded warning from WaPo's Director of Labor Relations for his "willful and intentional violation of The Washington Post’s standards and ethics policy." In the circumstances use of the word 'ethics' in that sentence seems completely inappropriate. Of course, we wouldn't be surprised if this letter turns out to be just a prelude to Kunkle's eventual dismissal ... or his being sent a big dead fish wrapped in his favourite shirt.

 Unless Kunkle deliberately provoked Bezon having first conspired to set him up. Punishing staff for "publicizing a dispute with management" apparently violates union rules and has earned WaPo an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. It might be time to teach the shiny - headed shite you can't run an organization like Washinton Post with zero - hour contract labour.

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