I want to begin by thanking those who reached out to me to say that they felt that the perceived lack of engagement on this series of posts is not about people not reading the pieces, but rather a mix of not understanding AI as a concept and the assumption that there’s nothing any of us can do about its relentless march. This is actually backed up by the stats for the posts, which show that as many people are reading them as read my other ramblings, simply with less engagement.
In this penultimate episode, let's aim to bring some of the threads together to examine their intersection with daily life and the broader political and economic impact. I’ll begin by reiterating that AI is not the enemy; it has the ability to change the world for the better. The danger comes not from the technology, but from those who would use it for malign intent. In an ideal world, we would use it to provide people with a work-life balance most can only dream of. Unfortunately, corporate interests see it as nothing but an opportunity to increase the bottom line by removing their single highest cost: WORKERS.
It’s not the technology we need to fear; it’s those intent on using it to remove people from the manufacturing and service-delivery processes to increase profits exponentially. By supporting any administration that refuses to regulate it responsibly, we become the turkeys voting for Thanksgiving, and that’s the challenge in a nutshell. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why every road leads to the conclusion that the current administration is an enabler of the greed driving investment based on nothing but a prayer. It’s looking to create a permissive environment to accelerate the technology transition, throwing the US workforce under the bus to maximise profit. But it goes much further than that with its new Strategic Security Plan; it’s seeking to shift political power away from the more regulated European, Nordic, and Scandinavian countries toward right-wing parties like the AfD in Germany. The aim is to offer explicit support to parties in government who will fall into line and support the same US deregulation strategy, with a focus on profit over people.
What needs to be understood is that the MAGA project leadership is as intent on facilitating a white nationalist Europe as Adolf Hitler was in 1930s Germany, and that is clearly spelt out in the Strategic National Security plan. As this is outside the scope of this piece but still integral, I’ll be writing a more detailed piece on the strategy's geopolitical impact in a couple of days. The point I want you to take away here, is that the AI piece of this jigsaw is an integral part of this administration’s geopolitical ambition to rewrite the geopolitical makeup of Europe and other allied countries. Trump believes he has the muscle to force change on Europe, as did Hitler.
Unfortunately for Trump, he’s running out of economic runway, public support is tanking, and he feels that the only way forward is to exert power not only at home but across the world. He is, in my view, delusional, but that doesn’t stop him from being very dangerous as he begins to see his control over House Republicans begin to slip. As I mentioned yesterday, AI is far from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The danger here is that, as the money runs out, investors become increasingly impatient for a return, and that’s when bailouts come into play, and YOU end up on the hook, as in 2008. I believe this has already been factored into the plan. The truly concerning thing is that every bit of evidence indicates that the likes of Sam Altman have no problem sacrificing safety in pursuit of the end goal. They're already doing it, and it’s going to get worse.
The issue for the US in this moment is that AI is now excellent at core data analysis and creating visual messaging content. These are the only tools Trump needs to put together a strategy to build a voter base that will withstand any electoral threat from Democrats. He fully intends to utilise it to attempt to manufacture a victory in 2026. I don’t think anyone understands what a ‘full-on’ AI-driven election campaign looks like. First of all, Republicans are already using AI to develop voter suppression strategies, whether it’s identifying where to remove drop boxes from or which voter rolls to purge based on how difficult it would be to re-register, etc, etc. The depth of analysis they have access to now, after aggregating data across government to profile voters without them ever knowing they are being profiled, should terrify everyone.
In addition, they’re also experimenting with using AI to identify which votes to challenge during the voting process itself. Your social media feeds can now be cross-referenced with publicly available voter and election data. The administration will claim that your private data is safe and secure, and yet we know that Elon Musk, as part of the DOGE project, which, by the way, was just a cover for data theft. He likely downloaded tax and Social Security data. While the significant impact of AI on jobs is more downstream, AI political and racial profiling is here RIGHT NOW. ICE are already using AI tools in the mass deportation program.
It’s almost certain that during the election campaign, you will not be able to identify AI content from real content. We have already seen examples of this, but I fear we are about to move to the next level, where you will not know what to believe. AI content will not come directly from the Republican Party or the campaign; it will come from foreign actors sympathetic to the MAGA mission or from ‘MAGA supporters’ with no direct links to the campaign. It will all be about plausible deniability, and social media will be the distribution point for free MAGA messaging narcotics.
To be clear, this could be prevented in an instant by watermarking or clearly identifying AI content. Regulations could define how users can identify such content. I would even automatically block AI-manipulated content from feeds during an election year. The bottom line is that there is likely to be a tsunami of this content contaminating feeds across the entire social media landscape for the duration of the midterm campaign.
The problem with identifying AI content at scale is that it requires AI. It’s like asking the arsonist who set the fire. Also, AI is really not that good at identifying AI.
Experiments in 2023 identified sections of the US Constitution as 99.97% likely to be generated by AI. Of course, these detectors have improved, but in academia, it has become a major issue, as many students have had their original work identified as AI.
This is all about creating awareness through education, but alas, gone are the days when people read the warnings, preferring instead to believe the deluge of misinformation fed to them. When it comes to governments and war, make no mistake, AI will be used to prosecute political war in 2026, and you will be caught in the crossfire. There is no plan to protect the public from lies; indeed, Trump will actively weaponise it to bury the truth at the bottom of an ocean of lies.
Even if there was a willingness to legislate AI regulation, most Americans have no idea how open US legislation is to manipulation by special interests. Take a moment to watch the video below to get an idea of how the sausage machine works. Then you might understand why the interests of ‘We the people’ are sacrificed at the altar of special interests—big thanks to ‘Soprano Big Sister’ for the clip.
The key takeaway is that we inhabit a system designed to ignore voters until election time, when, reluctantly, politicians are forced to come back to voters to restamp their golden ticket. This is all about education. I know it might not be ‘Breaking News’, but always remember that the vital stuff is NEVER breaking news, because the last thing these people want to do is draw your attention to it.
If I were heading up policy for a political party, I could simply use AI to define the key objectives of a piece of legislation, then have AI analyse it at every stage of the legislative process to enable me to keep adjusting the bill at the various committee stages, etc, to ensure it remains aligned with the core objective. When it comes to AI, there is no emotion, just an aim to be met. It would never see making savings as anything but a primary objective, taking healthcare and food from food-insecure families can be clouded by human emotion. AI has no such emotion.
In this penultimate episode of this series, I’ve focused on the here and now and how it can already be used in its current state of development to influence politics. I’ve been careful not to share examples of experiments I have done myself with it to create hypothetical political smear campaigns for social media, in which the AI's responses were so convincing that I had to spend time confirming the lies it created. Make no mistake, as a weapon of political war, it’s a formidable tool that requires urgent regulation, but it’s just not going to happen.
It is beginning to be regulated in Europe, which is why we see Trump's new Strategic National Security plan seeks to put a stop to it by helping right-wing, pro-deregulation parties seize power.
In the final part of this series, we will look at the impact on jobs and shine a light on just how dumb AI is when compared to the human brain. In the short to medium term, there is a considerable risk to analytical and data-driven jobs. Phase two is the intersection with robotics to reduce warehouse jobs, etc. As for running a small business, forget it, there’s a LOOOOOONG way to go despite what Sam Altman would have you believe.
Again, thanks for the education and the warning about AI in politics in general
Truly an educational series!! Reposted and forwarded!
Thank you and God bless you Martin!!