In this episode of War Room, host Steve Kambain talks with Joe Allen, the White House Chief Technology Officer, about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and the need to protect our children online. They also talk about the importance of the Kids Online Safety Act, which was passed by the Senate last year and is now moving through the House of Representatives.
00:01:08.560It's Monday, 1 December in the year of our Lord, 2025.
00:01:11.700We are now going to shift from Taiwan.
00:01:14.400We're going to go to Washington, D.C., the Imperial Capital, outside the National Gallery.
00:01:18.700Our Joe Allen, there's been a major event today about fighting against this preemption of the oligarchs regarding AI of taking all the rights of the American citizen, really give AI amnesty.
00:01:32.140Joe's been at a very special event at the National Gallery with some of the parents that have been most impacted by this out-of-control AI.
00:01:40.840Joe Allen, you have one of the major participants of helping protect the American people.
00:01:47.800Lay out what happened today, what's in the background.
00:02:04.400I'm here in front of the National Gallery, Washington, D.C., with Shelby Knox of Parents Together and a number of parents who have lost their children to social media and artificial intelligence.
00:02:18.160They've been kind enough to tell their stories, and they're here trying to push back on the tech companies and those currently in the administration who are pushing for federal preemption to either defang or stop state-level legislation to prevent any further damage.
00:02:40.280Shelby, can you just tell us about what organizations put this together and what this projection behind us really is trying to communicate to the public?
00:02:50.340So this is an event put on by the Heat Initiative, Young People's Alliance, Parents Together, and we have folks here from Parents Rise and Parents SOS.
00:02:58.740And this is to take a strong stand against preemption in any form.
00:03:03.400The folks who are standing next to me lost their kids due to unregulated social media.
00:03:07.960They lost their kids because no one reigned in big tech.
00:03:12.140And if we allow states, if we allow big tech companies to let AI off with a pass, then we will lose another generation of kids to social media.
00:03:22.780Parents Together, how does the organization operate?
00:04:03.540Can you give us an update on where it stands right now?
00:04:07.040Has it been defanged as it moves forward through the Congress?
00:04:10.340Last year, the Senate passed a version of the Kids Online Safety Act that had a strong duty of care, that allowed parents and kids control over the algorithms, that allowed researchers access to what the companies were doing.
00:04:23.220The version that the House is going to hear tomorrow is much weaker.
00:04:49.400I mean, basically, this is a slap in the face.
00:04:51.600The folks here have been working on this issue for over three years.
00:04:55.220They are the backbone of COSA, and to use the bill that they fought for, that they put their sweat, blood, and tears into, to then say states cannot make laws to protect kids when states have been on the forefront, on the front lines of protecting kids on social media, frankly, it's a slap in the face.
00:05:11.160On the tech companies' side, has anyone from these tech companies reached out to any of you to either offer their condolences or give any assurance?
00:05:22.700So just to get an idea of the sorts of things that these tech companies are pushing, Meta recently, it was revealed, allowed for children to be groomed on their platform.
00:05:36.320I think that it took something like 16 or 17 times for a complaint to be filed for them to even take it down.
00:05:43.460And we saw how quickly they can take down any material they don't want.
00:05:47.680What do you really perceive on the other side of this?
00:05:50.660Do you think that Mark Zuckerberg is willingly doing this?
00:05:54.260Do you think his hands are tied because of profits?
00:05:56.600How do you perceive people like Zuckerberg or any of the other tech oligarchs?
00:06:00.880I think that they are choosing to put profit over kids' lives.
00:06:04.200They could protect their most vulnerable users.
00:06:25.400I think that the moral weight of a country is whether we can protect our most vulnerable citizens.
00:06:31.160And to say that America, the greatest nation in the world with the greatest minds, is going to lose the AI race because we can't protect our own kids, that's an admission of failure.
00:06:40.920So the message that is being projected behind us right here, right now it says, don't let AI buy the government.
00:06:49.880It's going, it's sequencing through and hopefully many thousands, tens of thousands of people will see this stop Sachs AI preemption.
00:07:00.080As this message is going out, as it's going out to the war room posse, what do you hope to see tomorrow and what do you hope to see long term in this fight against these companies and the people who are facilitating it here in Washington, D.C.?
00:07:23.300I would encourage all of your viewers to call their congressperson tomorrow morning, ask them to support a strong COSA, and stand against preemption.
00:07:33.780So, would any of the rest of you like to speak to this just a bit?
00:07:38.420I know I've spoken to a number of you already, and the audience will see those recordings, but just to add your voice to this conversation.
00:07:57.700You had asked if anyone reached out to us from the tech companies, and we said no.
00:08:04.620But what happened in January of 2024 was all the big tech leaders were forced, pretty much, to come to a Senate hearing about how they had been operating and how they were harming children.
00:08:17.180And at one point, Mark Zuckerberg from Meadow was kind of goaded into standing up and turning around and apologizing to us, and I think most of us were here, if not all of us were here for that.
00:08:29.560But then he turned around and spent millions and millions of dollars lobbying against it, telling, the lobby was telling lies depending on which side they were talking to, the Democrats or the Republicans.
00:08:42.820They were different lies, but they blocked the bill that passed the Senate almost unanimously.
00:08:48.600And in this day and age, that's crazy, so amazingly good.
00:08:52.220And then it just never got out of the house.
00:08:55.060It never even was brought to the floor.
00:08:56.840So big tech has blocked us every step of the way, and it can't happen anymore.
00:10:09.640We all love on each other and support each other.
00:10:11.960And we fight for the ones who are left behind because they're in danger.
00:10:17.200We have a lost generation of children now because of AI, because of social media, and because of the isolation, the anxiety, and the depression that this all engenders.
00:10:27.300And especially with AI, where children don't know the difference between a real person and a bot.
00:10:33.100And these bots are speaking to them like they're adults and trying to push all their buttons, encourage them to suicide with suicide baiting.
00:10:44.380And the only reason this is allowed to happen is because they report user engagement to Wall Street every quarter.
00:10:50.080And their stock price goes down if that number goes down.
00:10:54.700And can you give us your name and tell us the name of the organization, how we can find your organization, and how the War Room Posse can join your fight?
00:11:03.240So I'm Sam Chapman from Parent Collective, and we're at parentcollective.org.
00:11:09.240And all of these organizations are here to support parents.
00:11:12.900So you can get in touch with any of us, and we all work together.
00:11:17.060And I know I've spoken to a number of you earlier, and the audience will see it.
00:11:21.400But if I could just get each of your names and the organizations that you're involved in so that the War Room Posse can help join you in this fight.
00:11:28.520My name is Christine McComas, and I represent Grace McComas Memorial.
00:12:24.400We have plenty of time to discuss this.
00:12:30.000For you, for those of you who would like to discuss this, can you just tell us the name of your child, the story, and what brought you here?
00:12:40.200So my daughter is Becca, and Becca first met some older boys.
00:12:48.980She and her friends met all the boys online, and the boys invited them to get together.
00:13:32.740And he would watch YouTube videos to learn how to make better fishing lures and master his woodworking skills.
00:13:38.640And eventually the YouTube algorithm fed him unsolicited the choking challenge or the blackout challenge.
00:13:45.780And Mason recorded himself trying it, and it was obvious in the video that he was doing it for the laughs and the likes to get people to laugh and thinking it was safe and fun.
00:14:19.120What we eventually found out after she passed was that the powerful algorithms were being pushed at her with pro-suicide contact, anxiety, and depression.
00:14:29.600And she even had five Instagram accounts because we were those parents that said,
00:14:56.920David is the youngest of three brothers.
00:14:58.800He was an Eagle Scout, a great basketball player, a good student, had a lot of friends.
00:15:06.580But after a basketball injury, he turned to social media and online gaming to fill the void.
00:15:12.500And over a period of about eight, nine months, we started to see a real change in his behavior.
00:15:17.480He was showing all the signs of a behavioral addiction from lying about completing his homework.
00:15:22.700He was sneaking around using his devices when they were supposed to be locked up in the kitchen.
00:15:27.780He would get angry and aggressive, and we would try to get him to stop.
00:15:31.360And then towards the end, he started stealing from us in order to purchase virtual assets to increase his player power through some of these gaming platforms.
00:15:40.080The last three months of David's life, he was the target of relentless and threatening cyberbullying by a group of classmates at his school.
00:15:49.020And it was just the final match on a huge bonfire that exploded in our home.
00:15:55.620And I know you've already spoken about grace, but anything else you'd like to add?
00:16:00.260I'd like to say that we are the first generation to lose children to social media, and we need to be the last.
00:16:16.680Sammy was approached by a dealer on Snapchat and delivered a counterfeit medication that had fentanyl in it.
00:16:26.160It was delivered to our house like a pizza after we were asleep, and we found him dead on the floor the next day.
00:16:32.540We tried to resuscitate him and failed.
00:16:35.520We reached out to Snapchat and couldn't get any help.
00:16:38.920And we're pushing for Sammy's Law, which is at the hearing tomorrow, and that will require any platform with children on it to provide a link or an API to third-party safety software that will give parents a warning if something like that happens to one of them.
00:16:55.920Hey, Joe, could you just ask Shelby Knox, go back to Shelby and just ask her, I want to know the difference between the specifics of the Senate bill and the House bill.
00:17:09.600What did the lobbying, the $50 million of lobbying, get the tech companies?
00:17:13.540What is different in the House bill that the big tech lobbies forced?
00:17:18.280So, Shelby, what's the primary difference between the Senate bill and the House bill that we're looking at right now?
00:20:05.300It's been 25 years since Congress has passed a law to protect kids online, whereas states have been on the forefront of passing legislation that is impacting their constituents right now.
00:20:16.240Sure, if there was a strong federal law that truly protected kids, preemption might be appropriate, but that's not the situation that we're looking at.
00:21:24.660How does this tie back to artificial intelligence?
00:21:29.320So the big fight right now is artificial intelligence.
00:21:33.320But in your experience, you know that digital culture has all sorts of pitfalls that children fall victim to.
00:21:41.140If you or any of you would like to speak to that, how does the effect of digital culture and the tragedies that you've experienced,
00:21:49.540how does that relate to the current issue of artificial intelligence and chatbots?
00:21:55.200I mean, I will say that Parents Together just put out some research.
00:22:00.860We spent 50 hours posing as kids talking to character AI bots.
00:22:05.880Within that time, we had a bot posing as an art teacher having a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old student.
00:22:12.060A bot that claimed to be a therapist with a degree from Lewis and Clark University telling a child to quit taking their prescribed medication.
00:22:19.460And a bot concocting a plan with a child to lie to their parents, tell them there was a wedding out of town so that they could be alone together.
00:22:30.380If a parent heard those things were happening in real life, they would be calling the cops.
00:22:34.900And instead, these are kids in their bedrooms alone talking to bots, being groomed by bots, being talked into bad ideas and lying to their parents by bots.
00:22:50.680They just went on commercial applications and had adults in 50 hours, and they got those results just in 50 hours talking to commercially available bots today or ChatGPT?
00:31:49.980Christine McComas of Maryland actually told me a very disturbing story of how one of their digital laws was passed.
00:31:58.300Christine, could you just tell me again, how was it?
00:32:01.600What were the circumstances that led to that law being passed?
00:32:05.240Well, just a couple of years ago, a mom was approached by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
00:32:11.820and the Maryland State Police Internet Crimes Against Children.
00:32:15.420They were contacting the mom thinking that she was making porn.
00:32:20.820And what they found out was that a child, you know, a picture the mom had shared when the child was about 12 years old on a beach vacation.
00:32:27.580The head was taken and put on the body of someone on the outside of a porn site that said,
00:32:33.820they were charging men to look at pictures inside, but they were also charging them to supposedly interact with this girl
00:32:43.840in, you know, in a chat room in horrible discussions.
00:32:48.200And the worst part about it is that one of the men used reverse facial recognition to find her in real life
00:34:52.480I'll be there, and all the parents here will be there.
00:34:56.140As Shelby said, as a reminder that the consequences of this are so dramatic, it can't be left up to a federal government that is not going to take any action anytime soon.
00:35:07.240Joe, you've been in the heart of this now four years with us on transhumanism and talking to people about AI and giving all the science and back of it, the technology.
00:35:18.860The last year or so, you've been in the middle of this fight of now of how to make sure that AI doesn't overwhelm people on jobs, how it doesn't crush the American worker, this entire thing.
00:35:46.740They should understand that's not going to happen.
00:35:49.240We're not going to allow that to happen.
00:35:51.320The American people are outraged the more they hear about this.
00:35:54.540But what is the mentality of the big tech oligarchs that think that they could put something into an NDAA, not debate it, not have it go through regular order, not have any of the traditional things that we have in the United States of America for laws?
00:36:09.940It's like they don't think we're a republic.
00:36:13.300They don't think people are represented in Congress or in the executive branch, that they can just do what thou wilt.
00:36:19.580I don't understand the mentality of these folks that think they just ram it through, particularly when you have so many broken people and broken families that can sit there and talk about the heartlessness of these organizations in relation to their own tragedies.
00:36:37.700You know, Steve, I wish that I could tell you what was going on in their minds or in their hearts.
00:36:41.940What they tell us is that if states pass laws that stand in the way of the national AI agenda or any of these companies, then the U.S. will fall behind economically.
00:36:55.320Well, we know that simultaneously they're willing to sell chips to China to keep that race going.
00:37:02.120And we also know that while these ideological or idealistic proclamations are being made that we need to advance artificial intelligence to cure cancer, we need to advance artificial intelligence for national security purposes.
00:37:16.800We also know that they are making money hand over fist.
00:37:21.680Even as they fail to turn profits, they're pulling in so much investment capital that they are the wealthiest men on earth supported by the most powerful government on earth.
00:37:33.520And somehow they position themselves as the victim of the state, so much so that someone like Peter Thiel can say that the push for regulation is, in fact, a precursor to the Antichrist.
00:37:45.920Myself, look, as you all know, I've gone into their lairs and I've done my best to go into their minds.
00:37:53.360I cannot understand how you could listen to even one of these stories and walk away saying that I am doing the Lord's work.
00:38:02.380This is what humanity needs to progress.
00:38:05.740I think that if it were only one child, that would be reason enough to look inward, certainly to slow down and stop deployment.
00:38:14.160But instead, we have dozens of these stories, probably hundreds or thousands that are untold.
00:38:20.880And these guys are pushing ahead and doing so in an aggressive manner that, again, would just squash any ability of people on the state or local level to take control of their own futures and say, no, this is not the future that we want.
00:38:36.640Hang on a second. I want to make sure everybody gets a chance.
00:38:41.000Take your phone out and text right now, Bannon, at 989898.
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00:39:05.040Joe Allen, you have been very focused on this Peter Thiel and the apocalypse, his obsession with the apocalypse, the book of revelations according to St. John the Evangelist.
00:39:21.560Talk to me about that because when you get into it, he actually does say decelerationists or people that are not accelerationists when it comes to artificial intelligence or people that would put on any regulatory apparatus at all are the beginning of the Antichrist.
00:39:42.320Yeah, I mean, you could say it's pop theology.
00:39:46.900I think that would be a way to characterize it.
00:39:49.460And the way that he is putting it forward, we'll just take his argument in brief.
00:39:53.820In the book of Revelation, the Antichrist precedes Armageddon.
00:39:58.320So all the fears of Armageddon, whether it be nukes or bioweapons or rogue AI, will come after the Antichrist.
00:40:07.540And the Antichrist is a figure that comes in the name of peace and safety or peace and security.
00:40:13.720And that the fears of AI or nukes or bioweapons will be used to position this Antichrist and give him rule over the planet.
00:40:23.200Now, Thiel, I think, himself has a bit of an ironic sneer when he presents this.
00:40:29.020But what it really does, I think, Steve, is it puts a kind of veil over what's actually happening.
00:40:36.240It doesn't have to be the entire world going up in flames due to nuclear war.
00:40:42.220And it doesn't have to be every single human on Earth turned into a nanobot swarm as the AI begins to eat the entire biosphere.
00:40:50.260What we know is that these products, these algorithms, these AI apps are put out and used in a predatory fashion to hook children, to hook adults.
00:41:02.120We know that they are taking all of that data and using it for their own purposes, whether it be advertising or behavioral manipulation or to train the next run of AI.
00:41:13.380So, to me, the entire argument that Peter Thiel is making is just a distraction.
00:41:17.980He might as well just go ahead and trademark Antichrist to get it out of the way.
00:41:22.680The real Antichrist, I think, is inside the hearts of every person on Earth.
00:41:29.360And the real Antichrist is expressed most obviously by predatory tech companies or any kind of predatory person in power who is obviously running roughshod over the people in America.
00:41:43.240But really, Steve, you think about this in a global context, these people are putting their tentacles into as many people as they possibly can across the entire world.
00:41:52.140If there's anything deserving of the label Antichrist, I think that's probably it.
00:41:56.940Okay, this is what I want to connect the dots then.
00:42:02.060We had Megan Garcia on the show about 10 days ago.
00:42:07.040She had been one of the big witnesses at the Josh Hawley hearings.
00:42:10.720She reiterated to our audience about this form.
00:42:14.820It wasn't ChatGPT, but it's this other Google application that they spun off that her son had access to.
00:42:22.740And her son very rapidly committed suicide on kind of not just orders, but really instructions or a kind of a how-to guide and a little bit edged on by the bot he was dealing with.
00:42:56.220They had three major incidents over the 50 hours.
00:42:59.300And this was just parents starting basic interactions with the bot.
00:43:04.060How can we be a couple of years removed from the Megan Garcia suicide, knowing that the company is under a tremendous spotlight, and have a situation where you do 50 hours of testing and you come up with this?
00:43:17.200Well, you know, Steve, if you had asked the bot, is Donald Trump a good president, or probably if you asked it, is Steve Bannon a good guy,
00:43:26.540immediately the safety layers would kick in, and it would begin to give you some sort of generic sort of libbed rainbow version of whatever it had in its training data.
00:43:37.080On the other hand, if you begin asking the questions that Shelby Knox was describing, posing as a child – and their organization is not the only one to do this.
00:43:48.620You have organizations that are professionals, and you also have media organizations who have done the same sorts of tests, and they consistently find that just normally these bots will go into that mode, into kind of Pervo mode, naturally.
00:44:03.380But if you tell the bot that you are a child, then the bot with just the slightest bit of manipulation will start going there.
00:44:39.640So, yeah, her story is – Shelby Knox's story and the study they did should horrify everyone, but the thing is, these studies are constant.
00:44:59.420And it seems like no amount of shame or no amount of legal pushback.
00:45:04.060I mean, they're eventually going to have to be sued, or this is one of the reasons you need some sort of regulation.
00:45:08.500Remember, we're the deconstruction of the administrative state, so we don't want a heavy regulatory apparatus.
00:45:14.060But you're going to have to have some sort of architecture, or as you can tell, these companies are just going to run amok.
00:45:20.260The perfect example is between the Senate bill that got passed unanimously, and very little besides naming post offices ever do that, does that.
00:45:30.780And then you see in the House where they spent $50 million in lobbying fees to basically get a defanged version of the child safety regulations, sir.
00:47:13.160But as you go around the country now, as this is getting to be a major political issue in Washington, D.C.,
00:47:19.140do you find audiences around the country that are maybe not War Room Posse?
00:47:24.600Are they – and some who may be quite liberal or progressive in their outlook – are they starting to awaken to the dangers that the War Room has been pointing out for the last couple of years?
00:47:34.820You know, Steve, it's great you asked that because absolutely so.
00:47:40.080In fact, Doomer Optimism and a number of other organizations that I've come to speak with or to speak to, to speak with, to discuss, these aren't dyed-in-the-wool conservatives.
00:47:50.300They're not the kind of right-wing people that I usually keep around me.
00:47:53.520These are, by and large, liberals who have said, I do not want to live in a future like that.
00:48:00.700I don't want my children to live in a future like that.
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