Making the truth more impactful

In our world of chaos dominated by fantasy narratives driven by conspiracy theories, it’s time to take a fresh approach to delivering dynamic fact driven information.

I know I said I would take a break from writing this week, but after having such a productive day yesterday, bringing together the pieces of my Truth Portal ( now rebranded as The Political Truth Portal), I got up at 5 am to write this before I started work. I wanted to share thoughts that have been suppressed for so long, as I struggled to find a more dynamic way to deliver my thoughts and opinions, without impacting those readers who simply want to read. Yesterday it was as if someone had switched on the light in a dark room, unlocked the door, and removed the chains of static literary constraints, opening the door to a new approach to delivering the truth.

I realise my enthusiasm can be irritating at times, but I have a strong track record of delivering good things when my enthusiasm levels peak. There’s much talk about Substack's evolution and those who bemoan a perceived shift away from long-form writing as it takes on a social media feel. While I have sympathy with the view that there’s something to be said for settling down to read a lengthy, engaging piece that challenges your thinking, while paying homage to the written word, the fact that you are reading it on a digital device certainly raises some questions. I firmly believe long-form writing should remain at the heart of Substack. That’s what I love about it, but I also embrace its willingness to deliver short-form content too.

We can argue about the feel of a ‘real’ book, especially a hardback, but spare a moment for the trees. It’s much the same argument about Apple Music and the feel and sound of a vinyl record. Or a Swiss timepiece and an Apple Watch. We will always admire the triumph of human endeavour and ingenuity, but time marches on with fresh endeavour, and so does Substack. We can debate if the social media elements are for the good, but if we’re honest, were the ‘good ole days’ the soft-focus Utopia we now dream them to be? I think not. History tells us we already built the foundations for a better tomorrow; we just decided to throw this hard-earned societal progress in the trash, in service of greed, power, and prejudice.

The same is true of AI; the term ‘AI slop’ has become the collective fashionable catchphrase to assert one’s credentials as a social activist warrior. For me, that’s a really lazy argument. AI is a transformational technology capable of delivering real, life-changing progress. It’s not the technology that's the problem; it’s the people in charge of it. I have practical experience living through the technological transformation of an industry sector. I spent a little over two decades in the music industry as a sound engineer, musician and arranger. I lived through the digital transformation of an industry so resistant to change that it had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the age of the digital studio.

It was said it would put musicians out of work and destroy creativity. It did the opposite. Do I like the sound of analogue tape? I love it. I loved being a highly skilled editor who was a wizard with a razor blade in the mastering room. However, I quickly realised that looking at a non-destructive soundwave and correcting errors on a computer is much faster than scrabbling around on the cutting room floor for a guitar solo that can never be recreated. Digital technology adoption in music democratised it and let kids and bands record albums in bedrooms and garages, not the million-dollar studios once reserved for corporate-owned record labels. I remember the days when a label would sign a band purely to stop another label from doing so. They would then park the band, effectively removing them from the market to spite competitors.

AI is going nowhere; it’s an unstoppable transformative force. The technology isn't the problem; it's the non-existent regulation that’s the issue. For all the hype, it’s probably the most inefficient technology created in its current iteration. Yes, it's very powerful, but it’s dumb in human terms. Yes, you heard that right. Every time you ask it a question, it has to mine the same data over and over again because it can’t hold context from related previous questions. It’s like you having to learn maths again every time you want to add two numbers together. Imagine the billions of requests it has to process from scratch, and that’s why it requires so much energy.

While the model developers are addressing this, certainly in China, it highlights the fact that there remains a lot of work to do, and until the problem is solved, it will guzzle energy and water and present a severe threat to the environment. The challenge is that nobody can slow things down for fear of losing an imaginary race.

In a rare moment, the US is really unable to dominate the space. Yes, it might have all the key frontier models, but it has an Achilles' heel: the shareholder class. China has no such impediment. They don’t mind they’re a step behind; they’re just watching and waiting for their moment, much the same as Apple has done for years. You don’t have to be the first to win. The US works on the theory that my cock is bigger than yours, but ask any woman, and she’ll tell you it’s not how big it is; it’s how you use it that delivers. As for this ludicrous assertion that China has distilled training data from US models, would that be the data that the US models have stolen from authors and writers across the centuries? Give me a break.

Trump has bet the house on winning a race I believe he’s already lost; he just doesn’t know it yet, that’s why he won’t sanction a pause. The stock market is already being propped up by tech bros' lies. If that illusion evaporates, then what? The resistance to AI in the US does not exist in China, not because it’s a repressive society, but because the government has had the foresight to integrate it carefully into society and, in particular, into the automated manufacturing behemoth that drives the wealth of the nation. As a result, it has helped deliver a $1 trillion trade surplus, which, by default, benefits the Chinese population. The US may think AI integration into its military puts it ahead of the game. Dream on; the Chinese lead in AI and robotics integration is just quietly preparing the ground to deal with any US threat.

That’s the problem with the US believing its own propaganda. Trump might advocate for the age-old Republican mantra of ‘keep ‘em dumb and poor ’; that’s why the US has an illiteracy rate of 21% and 54% of the population has the literacy of a sixth grader. Meanwhile, China has the most dynamic, highly educated pipeline of graduates in the world, educated specifically to meet the needs of China’s ten-year and 25-year plans.

Trump has proved the US military to be totally ineffective against the asymmetric response from Iran. It’s exposed its dangerously low stocks of critical missiles, of which, by the way, China has not needed to fire a single one, other than for testing. His incompetence and the greed of shareholders and CEOs of corporations that make up the US Military-Industrial Complex, have been skimming off the top for decades. Their greed has exposed dangerous vulnerabilities in US military readiness to fight on more than one front against a military of the scale of China. Trump has exposed America all by himself; he’s burst the invincibility perception that has served the US so well for the past half century.

One thing that not devoting the day to researching the nonsense being spewed by Trump and his acolytes does is help me take stock and reassure myself I’m not going insane. It’s easy to see how the tsunami of disinformation and brute-force attacks on the truth creates this persistent anxiety that has beset so many Americans. I can see how easy it would be to retreat into political hibernation until the elections are over, because this perpetual state of anxiety and fear (which is by design) can be so mentally debilitating.

When I wrote last week about my vision for what I provisionally called The Truth Portal, I was coming from a place where I’d been trying for the best part of three years in some form or another to bring it to life, but I simply couldn’t get the support I needed to make it happen. If I’m honest, I was almost ready to give up. Try as I might, I couldn't get it over the line because it proved too costly. As a result, I’ve been going around in circles for most of the last six months, trying to reshape the proposition. Trying to find the right technical tools to attempt to deliver a more cost-effective version, if only to prove to myself that there’s a better, more engaging way to deliver fact-driven commentary in the crazy world this regime is forcing us to inhabit.

I’ve always believed Substack was a unique blessing sent my way. It’s allowed me to build a community while indulging my passion for writing, in the hope my voice might be heard on the important issues of our time. While I appreciate that I am one among many, those who know me will tell you I’ve spent my life as a solution provider, not only in business, but in life. Over the years, I've learned that you can make a difference if you’re prepared to think outside the box. After 18 months of writing here at least 5 times a week, I can safely say: not one piece I’ve written has been filler or clickbait. My work comes from a passion to share the political truth. It’s an extension of who I am as a person; what you see is what you get: unvarnished facts delivered without fear or favour.

I never get comfortable with any journey I embark on, and this is no exception. I’m blessed to have retired, so I have time in abundance, along with the knowledge of decades spent attending the University of Life. I don’t come to this challenge with a fistful of university degrees or bags of money, just a wealth of lived experience that tells me WE CAN DO BETTER. I’ve always been an innovator, not an imitator. I don’t have a computer science degree; coding has no boundaries for me because I simply haven’t been taught what they are. A lifetime of experience has taught me that once you have enough money to never worry about paying the bills, can take a nice holiday or two, and look after your family, everything else becomes an opportunity to help deliver a better world for future generations. After all, there are no pockets in a shroud.

To some, this might seem somewhat old-fashioned and twee, but it’s the very foundation on which I have built my life, and I make no apologies for it. What I have learned on my journey inside the toxic world of US politics is that it’s the poster child for greed, corruption and everything that’s wrong with bought-and-paid-for representation. The line between Democrats and Republicans has slowly converged. I’m not talking about MAGA, nor am I talking about the far left. I’m talking about the corporate merger between the centre-left and the centre-right. They have come to represent EXACTLY the same thing.

It’s a testament to the power of corporate America that elected representatives in the legislature have merely become servants of the shareholder class, not those who elected them. Trump is just a symptom of a corporate control that has escaped the lab and infected a cult. Power has long been addictive, and politics has slowly become the delivery vehicle for the narcotics of greed and corruption. Trump’s foreign policy is just an international extension of domestic corporate price gouging and wealth transfer. Redistribution that has become what I like to call ‘the reverse Robin Hood’ factor: wealth is stolen from the poor to hand to the rich.

The reason that this monstrous behaviour has been normalised is through toxic messaging that has infected half the population to believe that the problem for their declining prosperity is down to black and brown faces. Down to the poor and the disabled, people who are a drag on what could be their increased wealth if the country could just be rid of the baggage they create. Hitler almost delivered on that objective with his Aryan race theory. A theory Trump appears to have fully embraced with unconscionable ease and vigour.

Photo illustration by Miru Osuga/CREW

He’s been able to dismantle political norms and guardrails because he’s dared to ignore them while using social media to create a permissive environment to radicalise the gullible. There’s no question he has achieved what many believed impossible: creating a reality-distortion field that continues to reshape cultural norms. His weaponisation of fear, division, and hate is frighteningly nothing short of remarkable; it certainly caught me off guard for sure. He’s defined equality, fairness and moral decency as weakness in his new world of social Darwinism. We now live in a world where the simple common denominator is MONEY. He has identified and exploited the human vulnerability to a ‘jam tomorrow’ narrative in which he promises wealth is just around the corner. A world where, in reality, the wealth never arrives and, around the corner, appear the gates to the economic slavery camp. A camp that, it seems, millions of Americans march towards with a skip in their step and a head full of ignorance.

In PART TWO, I’ll walk you through what I believe are the first steps to breaking the message fever that has brought America to its knees. I’ll break down how I believe messaging can be transformed so it stops becoming the wallpaper nobody notices anymore. I believe I’m in the foothills of a solution that challenges traditional thinking. The great thing about human-based ideas is that they stand out in an increasingly AI-dominated world. It’s time to embrace AI to do what it’s good at- heavy information analysis- to help deliver a very human-driven solution. A solution that will not replace my writing, but help me bring it to life in a way you've not likely experienced before.

I’m no longer worried about whether I can deliver. After a detailed analysis of the tools available to meet the objectives, I’m convinced we can bring it to life together. More importantly, by carefully adjusting the data pipeline and media components, I believe I can meet the objectives without compromising function and deliver a cost-effective proof of concept you can try for yourself. Then it can be refined based on your feedback.

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