Based Camp - September 25, 2026


The White House Declares War On Effective Altruism (Right After Our Episode on It ... Curious)

Hosted by
Malcolm Collins Simone Collins
Mentioned
Kali Ma Sargon Brian Shaw Anthropoc Aztecs Trump David Sachs Eliezer Garkowski Sebastian Gorka Emil Michael Darai Amadell Pete Hegseth Donald Trump Vance Crow CONSPIRACY Mormons Elias Flash Akkad Zeus and 1 more
Witch Influencers Keep Converting： Is This How We Win Women？ Black People Learned About Sovereign Citizens： The Future Of Law in the USA？

Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

170.6

Word count

8,357

Sentence count

217

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

22

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Hello, Simone! I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about two interconnected issues.
00:00:06 One is the Trump administration looking to put people who are against AI on terrorist watch lists.
00:00:13 Oh, yes.
00:00:14 And or who are against AI on terrorist watch lists, which I am 100% for.
00:00:18 Appropriate.
00:00:19 Appropriate, and we'll get into this.
00:00:22 And where they've already made action against terrorist groups like Antifa.
00:00:25 uh and the second thing that we are going to be going into is a very much an i called it thing
00:00:32 a look who's winning the culture war now buddy thing it is that the trump administration's
00:00:38 department of war has repeatedly made very specific attacks against a group that you may
00:00:46 never have heard about in your regular day-to-day life except if you're a fan of this show and you
00:00:52 hear us talking about it all the time our mortal enemies the effective altruists and to give you
00:01:00 an example of how direct some of these have been okay i will do two here one is trump putting up
00:01:08 his fist and saying americanism not effective altruism and then this is by the department of
00:01:17 war cto by the way okay and then the second from the department of war cto love that they changed 0.98
00:01:24 it from the department of defense we're not pussies we kill people when they annoy us okay 0.82
00:01:28 um is the they said americanism not effective altruism the united states will be ai dominant 0.71
00:01:37 and then it's a picture of trump saluting saying ai first war department in cool uh font uh very
00:01:44 very edgy font which i like and i want to note that this isn't just something that we are seeing
00:01:50 with the twitter account we are also seeing this from a number of levels within the administration
00:01:56 and one of the things i decided to hunt down before filling this episode was where is this
00:02:00 coming from like do do we have someone's ear in the administration is our regular screen i think
00:02:07 they're just getting the truth you know what that's um well i don't have to side with us
00:02:14 they just have to be right i'll give you the the well and and aware of like where the actual
00:02:19 cultural battles are and everything like that so the actual out of the can is it's been a few
00:02:26 figures that have really made this happen the biggest is emil maiko who is the cto and um can
00:02:33 you guess what he did before this he was one of the lead at ftx you know he was one of the lead
00:02:39 people at uber for a long time grew most of his career in san francisco his name was familiar
00:02:45 and led a bunch of investing um and so he became a very very big figure uh and um if you have lived
00:02:53 in san francisco running a company in the tech sector you would be very very aware and likely
00:02:59 annoyed by the effect of altruists the second faction that really got pissed off with the
00:03:05 effective altruists was pete hegseth specifically the effective altruists when he was trying to do
00:03:11 the deal was anthropic apparently he was very aware of who anthropic was signaling to when
00:03:17 they refused to do that deal and he got pissed and so he now sees effective altruists as one of
00:03:26 the key enemies of the united states um and then a final big person the ai czar was david sacks
00:03:35 And David Sachs, again, not a big fan of effective altruists because he's very much in our tech nerd circle.
00:03:42 So what we are seeing is that this tech nerd type of republicanism that we represent, whether you want to say it's infiltrated the White House or it's what's led the White House to greatness in this administration, because they've done some pretty awesome stuff.
00:03:58 that is a faction that we are increasingly seeing gain dominance in our factions fights
00:04:06 which matter like i'm pointing out when brian chow goes out there and he finds out that like
00:04:12 at a bunch of major news websites they have entire editorial boards and the things of articles
00:04:19 written by people who have gotten millions of dollars from shady organizations all of those
00:04:26 organizations are part of this offensive altruist network, right? Like this is, they are controlling
00:04:31 things behind the scenes. Well, yeah. And he also recently did coverage showing how effective
00:04:35 altruist associated organizations were funding the salaries of congressional staffers, staffers for
00:04:43 senators, as well as people working even in the Trump administration. So it's not as though
00:04:49 they're not trying to infiltrate it, which is interesting. Yeah. Let's get started.
00:04:56 Okay, so Emile, Secretary Emile Michael, he has said EA ideology is pretty dystopian and a brave new worldview in which machines decide, quote, the perfectly rational and best thing for everyone on Earth, end quote, which isn't a bad description of them, honestly.
00:05:16 He said it involves a coordinated campaign and psychological operation by people and nonprofits to scare the public about AI capabilities that those same people control.
00:05:26 Some EA-linked voices want, quote, transitional governments, end quote, on AI that puts companies, quote, on par with the president, end quote.
00:05:36 And he's right about that.
00:05:37 They do.
00:05:38 Like, Eliezer Garkowski has said, essentially, he wants to be the king of the world.
00:05:43 He's like, that's the only way we can stop everyone from dying.
00:05:45 AI is going to kill everyone, and you can only stop it by making me in charge of everything or my organization.
00:05:51 You know, he adds a few steps there, but it's make me king of the world with extra steps.
00:05:56 Um, to continue here, uh, from Pete Hegsess, uh, we saw one tweet where he said, uh, of
00:06:06 Anthropoc, cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of effective altruism, was trying to strong
00:06:12 arm the United States military into submission.
00:06:14 He designated Anthropoc as a quote, supply chain risk to national security and directed
00:06:22 no military contractor supplier or partnership do commercial business with them which is
00:06:29 probably not smart they're significantly above the other things in coding right now
00:06:34 that's the problem yeah people have told me codex is up i tried
00:06:39 buying some codex to see i don't i haven't even used all my subscription it's so bad
00:06:43 oh gosh ouch okay no i don't i don't know who thinks codex is up to anthropic right now fables
00:06:51 just destroys it in fact i codex i have found is worse than the next one down like the anthropic
00:06:59 sort of budget one for when you're doing lots of that's so bad ouch and the other thing i've been
00:07:05 finding about fable recently is fable while it crumbs out on me i built a feature recently that
00:07:11 allows you to turn any mawa or comic book you have access to into uh or manga into a video
00:07:19 where it gives different voices to all the characters
00:07:21 and it shows what's happening as it's playing
00:07:23 and it can also translate for you.
00:07:25 Simone, you watched one.
00:07:26 It's a pretty solid feature, actually.
00:07:29 Leachian sat at the edge of a great canopy bed.
00:07:32 But why did I wake up inside that romantic fantasy novel?
00:07:38 It looks and sounds, importantly, a lot nicer
00:07:41 than the ones that you listen to.
00:07:44 Yeah, and you don't even need to use our site to do this
00:07:47 if you don't want to.
00:07:47 You can use our API to do it.
00:07:48 So you just give the API to your own clawed Fable agent and it'll like handle this.
00:07:54 But anyway, one of the things I found is because we also made a feature for making comics.
00:07:58 And I was like, oh, I'll flood some sites with like not safe for work comics that were made by AI.
00:08:03 And I'll be able to use that to advertise our website.
00:08:06 We got that up and I found that Fable is actually really good at doing not safe for work stuff.
00:08:09 It's like super unrestricted on that.
00:08:11 The one area where it kept getting restricted, it was like, I don't want to copy comics.
00:08:15 That's illegal.
00:08:16 and i was like come on they're already out there and free right like what
00:08:21 very annoying what's you gonna do anyway so um
00:08:28 palantir cto shamir shalak a trump ally wrote about ea comparing it to marxism there was a
00:08:37 white house memo that circulated september 24th 2026 that said ea was a fringe cultish collective
00:08:43 and that it's, quote, built the AI doom pipeline.
00:08:48 And it singles out Anthropic CEO Darai Amadell
00:08:51 and family ties as a central figure.
00:08:53 And you can see that the same group
00:08:55 that's trying to get you scared of AI
00:08:57 is the same group that runs all the AI companies.
00:09:00 And why is that the case?
00:09:01 It's because they want to put up barriers to entry
00:09:03 is the key reason, right?
00:09:05 They want to restrict their competition 0.90
00:09:06 and put up barriers to entry.
00:09:08 And they don't particularly care
00:09:10 about American long-term flourishing
00:09:11 if they can milk more money out of you
00:09:14 and prevent other companies from competing with them.
00:09:17 Well, I think the maybe internal reasoning that you'll see,
00:09:22 especially at companies like Anthropic,
00:09:24 people who work there and listen to this can correct us,
00:09:27 but I imagine it's, well, we have to be the frontmost player
00:09:33 because we're the good guys and we can't let the bad guys be the leader.
00:09:37 I think there are some people at Anthropic 0.92
00:09:39 who are dumb enough to believe that that's what leadership thinks but let me tell you what right 0.90
00:09:43 now the largest donors on earth right now to environmental causes are big oil companies 0.98
00:09:51 specifically the climate emergency fund is run by aileen getty the granddaughter of oil tycoon
00:10:00 paul getty who founded getty oil um and this is one of the largest they fund groups like
00:10:10 stop oil extinction rebellion and the a22 network by the way that's the same anti-natalist
00:10:17 extinction rebellion that wants to eradicate humanity from the earth through low birth rates
00:10:23 so thank god we'll replace them the people who run a lot of the um i think it's the person who
00:10:29 runs one of the largest non-profits in the environmental space, is literally the daughter
00:10:34 of the largest or second largest oil company.
00:10:37 And arguably, possibly, maybe the biggest donor to white nationalists or the Southern
00:10:43 Poverty Law Center.
00:10:45 Yes.
00:10:46 I get you.
00:10:47 I get you.
00:10:47 They're trying to control the situation.
00:10:49 Well, it's a bit different.
00:10:50 With the Southern Poverty Law Center, it's that they're trying to make it look like there's
00:10:52 actual threat.
00:10:53 With the oil, it's that they're trying to put up barriers to entry and prevent the movement
00:10:58 from ever saying nuclear is a good idea um yeah like thanks to all that you know now germany's
00:11:04 heavy on coal hooray good job guys yay uh well i mean they achieved their goal so actually good
00:11:13 job for them yeah no genuinely good job you did it you did it you feel good about that
00:11:20 now let's talk about this new order i'm really excited about it let's start arresting some of 1.00
00:11:26 these AI doomers. 1.00
00:11:27 I got to, 0.99
00:11:28 we got to call up our friends in the white house and be like,
00:11:30 Hey buddy,
00:11:31 I got this guy,
00:11:32 Elias,
00:11:32 are you casky?
00:11:33 Let's let's,
00:11:34 let's, 1.00
00:11:36 I actually want to see them start arresting some AI doomers. 1.00
00:11:39 I think that'd be a lot of fun. 1.00
00:11:41 Um,
00:11:42 uh,
00:11:42 you'd,
00:11:42 you'd see a lot of,
00:11:44 um,
00:11:44 the reaction that,
00:11:46 that we would see in the EA space would just be hilarious because they
00:11:49 immediately go apoplectic about it.
00:11:51 Um,
00:11:51 and treat it like it's the biggest thing ever.
00:11:53 and then if i was the white house and i was doing it um the what i do to like really freak them out
00:11:59 is i'd be like look like internally we weren't sure about it so we asked an ai whether it was
00:12:05 the right thing to do and it said that we should probably arrest this list of people well you know
00:12:11 that ai wouldn't and also i mean the arrests i i don't know exactly but you've got to freak them
00:12:17 out that's the funny thing they believe but also it's important to protect people's first amendment
00:12:22 rights. I'm all for that. I'm curious to know if you got any additional information on exactly
00:12:28 what they're designating as terrorist activity. Is it like the active funding of organizations
00:12:35 that are trying to cause unrealistic fear about data centers, for example? What does it look like?
00:12:43 Yeah, let's go into this. All right. So this comes from investigative reporting that WIRE did
00:12:50 in an article called u.s law enforcement warns of anti-tech extremism so reading from wired more
00:12:58 than a thousand pages of unpublished reports from the department of homeland security fbi
00:13:03 and fusion centers obtained by wired show a national shift taking place to surveil this
00:13:09 new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed as an emerging threat
00:13:14 these new effort follows from president donald trump's national security presidential memo 7
00:13:20 which instructs the department of justice to target anyone holding anti-american anti-christian
00:13:25 and anti-capitalist beliefs earlier this month trump's counterterrorism czar sebastian gorka
00:13:31 released a public counterterrorism strategy claiming that left-wing extremists are one of
00:13:37 the top three counterterrorism priorities facing the united states i just had a realization and i
00:13:43 want to check something i want to see how long after one of our anti-ea episodes that memo went
00:13:49 around the White House. Well, keep in mind that was also after Brian Chow dropped bombshell after
00:13:57 bombshell related to EA manipulation of media narratives. So even if there is a timeline
00:14:05 that implies perhaps that we were upstream, Brian was as well. To step aside from the Wired article
00:14:12 for a second here, in mid-September 2026, Trump posted that there is a quote-unquote
00:14:19 SICK CONSPIRACY, with SICK in all caps, of course, against AI and data centers that makes China happy, called opponents, quote, revolutionaries for a bad and evil cause, end quote, and warned, quote, conspiracy theorists, treasonous, traitors, and leaks, end quote.
00:14:37 The Justice Department issued a FARA-related warning that public demonstrations furthering a foreign power goals can trigger criminal or civil actions, and fighting AI would be seen as advancing a foreign power goals. 0.77
00:14:54 I mean, well, they are. It's what China wants. So, okay, yeah. Fine. I'm fine with that.
00:15:02 okay uh yeah so it does appear to line up with our episodes um so we did a a sort of a a few
00:15:12 episodes tied to ea uh specifically the over 300 plants found controlling the media episode
00:15:17 and the buddhist cult at the nexus of the tech elite episode and it came out right after those
00:15:22 nice uh which lines up more with us somebody somebody at the white house watching our show 0.97
00:15:29 being like we need to do something about these bastards we do need to do something it's disturbing 0.97
00:15:35 because these people have more influence and agency there are a lot of people for example 0.99
00:15:44 who have money which the ea people do but they kind of just blow it all on like they just drop 1.00
00:15:50 it all with the dnc or the rnc and it's just quite pointless yeah wasted on their stupid 0.99
00:15:55 bureaucracy and dysfunction yeah no ea's as much as they get caught up in things that are 0.99
00:16:01 we'll say maybe kind of not as productive as you and i would think like most recently people
00:16:07 on x are going on about ea obsession with insect welfare for example so as much as sometimes they
00:16:13 get caught in little holes they are they obsessed with insect welfare again uh
00:16:18 can you go into it just so people know who they're dealing with here
00:16:23 let me pull this up might have passed already i don't want to dig it up but yeah people are
00:16:30 going on about it um you know the shrimp welfare thing too existed but anyway people
00:16:38 regularly will find some posts on less wrong and freak out about it my favorite thing that 1.00
00:16:42 ever happened with that community was when limestone who's sort of like a fuddy-duddy
00:16:50 doesn't really keep up with modern you know political battles or anything like that he does
00:16:54 too he's terminally online he's he's not he's not a culture warrior guy he doesn't yes he is he's
00:16:59 not on one of the teams i mean he would argue he is he's on boomer conservative and boomer
00:17:06 conservative isn't one of the online battle teams give up trying to um on this but but so the
00:17:12 typical boomer conservative even if sort of online publishing decides to go after the ea shrimp
00:17:18 welfare people for being illogical and crazy and they went the off on him like uh oh you know
00:17:27 and he's not older than us it's just that his brand of conservatism is just not really represented
00:17:33 in i hate effective altruism let's take him out like i don't even think he particularly realized
00:17:39 how large their movement yeah i mean i think yeah he's not he's certainly not like a someone who
00:17:44 came from the Bay Area rationalist community. I mean, before he went into work as a demographer
00:17:50 by trade, he and his wife were both in Asia engaging in missionary work. They're very
00:17:57 religious Lutherans who are living a more traditionally conservative life. And I imagine
00:18:03 that one day he just came across EA shrimp people and was like, hold on, this is stupid. I'm going 0.99
00:18:09 to write all about it. And they just bit his head off. So I don't think he cares because he still
00:18:12 thinks, hold on, no, this is stupid. But anyway, that was a very amusing moment. This is all to 0.99
00:18:17 say that even though the effect of altruists sometimes fall into these little side quests
00:18:23 that go a little bit too far, they are very results oriented. And if their desire is to
00:18:29 manipulate perceptions on an issue, even if they're less efficient about going about it,
00:18:34 as say we are with moving the Overton window about demographic collapse, they're still more
00:18:38 effective than pretty much any other movement behind nonprofit efforts. And so it is important
00:18:45 for people to see what they are doing and take their, their agendas very seriously, because if
00:18:52 a group of like, if mainstream effective altruism is obsessed with an issue, if it's their new
00:18:58 hyperfixation, they will make waves in some way. They will. Absolutely. I'm sure that shrimps
00:19:05 live differently today no they don't they don't they've made no inroads they've made no significant
00:19:12 inroads well maybe that's because only and the way that shrimp are raised actually it's quite
00:19:16 horrific they cut off their eyeballs and then like they have to like singe those parts of them
00:19:20 that gets them to go into a cycle at a specific time that doesn't seem plausible because you
00:19:25 shrimp are raised at scale and you would have to do that to every single it is done at scale 0.96
00:19:32 After finding this out, shrimp farmers started removing female shrimp's eyes in a process called eye stock ablation.
00:19:42 I mean, I know they do that to chicks. 0.60
00:19:44 They will cut off their, like, beaks so they can't peck each other, right?
00:19:47 Yes, it's done at scale, Simone.
00:19:49 Every little shrimp?
00:19:50 Yes.
00:19:52 And keep in mind, a lot of shrimp are raised in very poor countries.
00:19:55 You can do this at scale.
00:19:56 I'm really glad we did not buy that shrimp farm in Nicaragua on behalf of our investors.
00:20:01 because that would have sucked the soap factory looked so fun though this was when we were trying
00:20:06 to on behalf of investors buy and then run a business i bet the soap industry has done really
00:20:10 well since like covet and stuff i don't think so because keep in mind that many of the soaps that
00:20:15 the factory was selling were two hotels oh true so i think they just like the travel business we
00:20:21 ended up with the soap factory would have also been screwed and remember we couldn't even buy
00:20:26 it because they were in so much debt like this is it would not have been it would not have been
00:20:30 ideal. And I would have loved was, do you remember the, the company that made components for weapons
00:20:37 manufacturers? Oh, that was such a depressing company. It was so depressing, but it would
00:20:43 have done. Oh, it would have done so well. Yeah. Yeah. But like the key bet we weren't willing to
00:20:49 make was like, well, I don't, I don't think we're going to have a lot of wars in the future. We're
00:20:53 not gonna do a lot of defense spending oh sweet my sweet my past self anyway well next someone
00:21:04 was listening is autonomous drones right yes somebody was listening and well i think it's
00:21:09 this cultural movement that we represent really matters in terms of national politics i was on
00:21:15 another show recently that's just on youtube it only has like 300 views the youtube version
00:21:19 was Vance Crow. I mean, he's a more traditional boomer, you know, Midwest conservative type guy.
00:21:25 And he had all these- He's younger than us. He just, his political and reality orientation is
00:21:31 more grounded in people who work in the agricultural industry. So obviously you're
00:21:35 not going to be obsessed with effective altruism or the tech right.
00:21:38 Right. But it showed how far like that group's political interests have drifted from what the
00:21:45 republican senators congressmen and and presidency is actually doing well right because if you
00:21:50 if you're a farmer you're actually going to care a lot about tariffs and subsidies because you are
00:21:58 like you are the canary in the coal mine of that and if you're just going to vote with your pocket
00:22:03 book then you're going to hate the trump administration right now and i don't that
00:22:08 and that's the thing that's boomer conservatism all i care i don't care about america's place
00:22:13 in the world. I got mine. I don't care about the next generation. I don't care about, and that
00:22:18 sort of a mindset, that sort of a conservative mindset is not the mindset of the politically
00:22:24 active class anymore. And I really appreciate that. And this is why people watching the show
00:22:30 is useful. You see this coming from the white house. You hear us talking about it, right? Like
00:22:34 this is the fight that's happening. And it is through influencing this fight, the fight that
00:22:41 we represent on this channel right here that you end up representing the larger political game
00:22:46 now we are not the loudest or most powerful people in this particular fight um that there are voices
00:22:54 that are bigger or more influential than us uh probably the two most distinct voices are as
00:23:00 magold and nux um with as magold being the biggest uh now people would be like tectone gets a lot of
00:23:07 views tech tone does get a lot of views but the problem is is tech tone doesn't really push new
00:23:11 policy ideas he's more just like about he spends fewer hours engaging in in direct political
00:23:18 commentary and therefore that that leads to a proportional reduction in political influence it's
00:23:23 it's i would argue that simple if he chose to suddenly like in his streams watch a lot more
00:23:29 political coverage then he would gain political influence that's how it works yeah yeah um but i
00:23:36 actually i'm trying to think like within our wider community after asma golden knocks like
00:23:42 are we the next most influential people leaflet obviously come on malcolm leaflet is very
00:23:47 influential yeah she probably yes she's extremely influential um and uh kirsha beats us um and
00:23:54 maybe smuggalana doesn't really do new political angles so not really um but then i think desu does
00:24:01 plenty of political commentary rev says desu is bigger than us but he does not do political
00:24:05 commentary he has a political angle but he he doesn't like not in the way that like nux or
00:24:10 asthma gold or we do or leaflet yeah yeah fair okay fine um yeah i guess most of the political
00:24:16 commentary i see him do is like him commenting on something leaflet did or something um they
00:24:21 i mean bigger than us now i'd say in terms of influence is basic logic um we had him on before
00:24:27 he got really big uh but i really like his content like the thing is i don't when i think
00:24:31 about these other players who are like moving the the goal in in specific directions none of them
00:24:37 are moving it in a way that i wouldn't be moving it if i had their platform right like there's there's
00:24:42 very little um sort of directionally that i would be moving things that i had uh revs platform or
00:24:50 if i had leaflet's platform or if i had you know some of the other big players are like yellow
00:24:54 Flash or a actual Justice Warrior or Trigonometry or Sargon of Akkad or yeah, but I probably
00:25:03 wouldn't be doing, I'd be doing different than Sargon of Akkad. Sargon of Akkad is probably 0.58
00:25:06 the most orthogonal to my actual politics. Mostly because I think his politics around
00:25:13 stuff like censorship is disastrous long-term. And I don't think that he's aggressive enough
00:25:19 in in his politics which is you know probably i don't know would people recognize us as is as
00:25:26 being that way uh at least he's had an impact in britain right like that the the political
00:25:32 factions that represent our ideology have grown a lot there and in germany right so you know we
00:25:38 have a lot of german viewers like it's to say we're not moving the window on that you've heard
00:25:41 about the big afd wins no oh yeah afd has had some major wins recently oh sorry i i thought
00:25:49 you weren't saying afd yes no i am very but yeah the state level elections it is fantastic
00:25:55 but the the point being is like this what's so also interesting about this movement is while
00:26:01 it is kind of older than dirt at this point right like if you look at the representations of it from
00:26:08 people like tectone asthma gold sort of nuck scene like that's been around for a long time right like
00:26:13 that's 10 years old at this point um but they weren't really focused on politics in the sort
00:26:20 of cohesive community way that we are now i'd say until really a year ago maybe is when we really
00:26:26 all began to come together oh jake jason monroe jake jake monroe jake monroe um uh i don't know
00:26:34 if he's the thing is i never get recommended him so i don't know like what i'll go i don't i don't
00:26:39 either which is weird because there there have been points at which i've like binged multiples
00:26:44 of his videos in a row to catch up on what he's been saying you'd think the algo would
00:26:50 i mean he's he's on message but he doesn't really advance anything for me oh it's you know what
00:26:56 because i think his channel got demonetized so well that's true but i still get nux and his
00:27:00 channel's demonetized that's because we we like concertedly watch so nux so much i guess but
00:27:05 you're right i'd get him too oh well no well i know i think jake is actually genuinely a different
00:27:11 youtube loop than us because his content like before you had actually checked him out i told
00:27:15 you like he's very artsy in the way he films do you see what i mean by that well i mean he does
00:27:20 the gel lighting i don't i don't think he i mean he's not doing like natalie winn style
00:27:28 stuff i mean i love the effort he puts into his his face it's it's it's flawless it's perfect i
00:27:37 think it's i really enjoy that but then i want him to be a little bit more respectful of viewers
00:27:42 time but then he's streaming so he he doesn't need to be so i also get it yeah that's that's
00:27:48 one of the things i i i get annoyed at him is he's very slow to get to the point but he's streaming
00:27:52 you kind of have to fill time.
00:27:53 Anyway.
00:27:55 Okay, so among the documents,
00:27:57 tranche, obtained by Wired
00:27:59 is a New York Intelligence
00:28:00 and Counterterrorism Bureau report
00:28:02 that warns of widespread upheaval
00:28:05 in response to AI adoption.
00:28:07 Of particular note,
00:28:09 a term for what the Bureau reports
00:28:12 is an emerging extremist threat.
00:28:14 Quote,
00:28:15 the chaotic atmosphere may result
00:28:17 from emergent AI technology
00:28:18 in the next five years,
00:28:20 may fuel large-scale,
00:28:22 protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity especially
00:28:29 in large urban areas such as new york city the report reads the term anti-tech violent extremism
00:28:34 does not appear in any publicly available dhs or fbi domestic extremist reports or guides
00:28:40 and represents a novel grouping of a wide range of ideologies under a single extremist category
00:28:45 in the same intelligence assessment analysts describe the novel threat in the wake of the
00:28:52 arrest and trial of the zizians an extreme rationalist who allegedly led a small allegedly
00:28:58 led they were a trans murder cult that killed more people than the manson family he didn't
00:29:03 allegedly do anything um look until you have a conviction three members of which have been
00:29:09 charged with murder and more of which were likely involved in murder tied to an obsessive ideology
00:29:14 focus on the existential risk posed by AI.
00:29:16 And this group is very similar to the Buddhist group
00:29:19 that we did our episode on as well,
00:29:21 but it is still operational.
00:29:23 So keep in mind, these people are still out there,
00:29:26 still planting people in major organizations.
00:29:28 See our episode on that if you're interested. 0.99
00:29:30 Look up Buddhists, effective altruists, 1.00
00:29:32 Malcolm, Simone, crazy people. 1.00
00:29:34 Kill everyone. 1.00
00:29:35 I don't know. 1.00
00:29:36 Yeah, I like trying to kill everyone. 0.99
00:29:38 Because the founder had said 1.00
00:29:41 that his core life focus for a large chunk of his life was crispering a disease to kill all human
00:29:48 life on earth and he only turned away from that at 19 maybe he turned away from it he never really 0.98
00:29:54 denounced it he's just like i decided to kill all their souls instead um with uh oh no they're
00:30:03 getting millions a year and they have a private compound in the woods of vermont that sounds like
00:30:08 a concerning thing see our episode if you're concerned okay so the nypd intel assessment
00:30:14 follows from the department's collaboration with the fbi last year to monitor the signal chat of
00:30:19 an activist group coordinating volunteers to monitor public hearings on immigrant courts in
00:30:25 new york according to documents obtained by the guardian the fbi surveilled activists as part of a
00:30:30 larger investigation into the anarchist violent extremist actors one of the threat categories in
00:30:37 the new counterterrorism strategy so the point here being is this isn't exactly about the ai but
00:30:42 we do know that they are moving forwards was actually putting things through to monitor
00:30:46 activist groups um now i will note to capstone all of this there have been dangerous ai extremists
00:30:54 already like the trump administration is absolutely valid in doing this oh yeah in april 2026
00:30:59 daniel monroe gamma allegedly threw a molotov cocktail at sam altman san francisco residence
00:31:05 tried to attack open AI headquarters. He carried an anti-AI manifesto calling for violence against
00:31:12 AI CEOs and investors. Prosecutors said they would treat this as domestic terrorism. The goal was to
00:31:18 coerce policy. Other incidents include a shooting of Indianapolis officials' home after a data
00:31:23 setter's vote, arsons at AI-related infrastructure in Europe, and online manifestos mixing AI
00:31:30 doomerism with old older anti-tech eco-extremist ideas some eco-fascist attackers have also called
00:31:37 outside it ai slop and palantir vance ties as being why this is happening like the point being
00:31:43 uh ai is like the anti-ai faction as we have said is a real faction i'm glad the trump
00:31:48 administration is in power right now i'm glad that they are expending political capitals deal
00:31:53 with this call out our country's real enemies uh yet at home and abroad um and uh attempt to
00:31:59 address them what are your thoughts on this wider moment i think it's incredibly positive and i am
00:32:06 glad that it's recognized that ai deceleration deceleration deceleration whatever is a national
00:32:16 threat a threat to national security because it is it we are i mean it like definitionally is yeah
00:32:22 this is one of the most existential i mean this is the next nuclear arms race ultimately and
00:32:28 And these are anti-nuclear hippies.
00:32:31 Yeah, don't develop nuclear power when we're one of the few people who are countries that is able to do this.
00:32:39 It's very frustrating.
00:32:44 And I'm glad it's being treated with the threat level.
00:32:49 I mean, I would say a lot more should be done.
00:32:53 But while protecting free speech, I understand that there are limits.
00:32:58 that are very real i i don't know what it's going to take for example um to deal with the data center
00:33:07 hate that's a very difficult challenge yeah they've been very effective with that and completely
00:33:13 cooked some people's brains like a moist critical who used to be largely on topic um and i was very
00:33:19 surprised to see him get so cooked by this uh and i i don't think um yeah this is one of the most
00:33:26 effective and powerful propaganda campaigns i've seen in my lifetime it's it's also one of the
00:33:31 things that i i do not tolerate like there's very few things where i'd say like it makes sense to
00:33:37 kick somebody out of the right-wing alliance if they go in a specific direction on a topic right
00:33:42 or aggressively publicly attack them if anyone in our wider circle went aggressively anti-ai i would
00:33:48 absolutely publicly attack them because i think that that is a direction that leads to the
00:33:54 destruction of our people we will not win long-term human civilization why yeah that's that's putting 0.99
00:34:01 us under the boot of the chinese or some other group and it's completely not caring about american 0.99
00:34:09 exceptionalism or western ability to move forwards with our cultural project um and and so uh you 0.87
00:34:17 know you're as much of a threat as anyone else if those types of voices are being just surfing on
00:34:22 our waves right absolutely yeah but fortunately we just don't have that problem none of the
00:34:27 none of the major players in our space are anti-ai right the one thing i do kind of worry
00:34:32 about though is we're heading into midterm elections in the united states and not only
00:34:40 are democratic candidates really playing up the data center fear the the concern trolling around
00:34:48 AI, that we have to stop it messaging. Sorry, Republican candidates just to try to maintain
00:34:57 political viability going into the election are starting to adopt many of those talking points
00:35:03 and removing Trump from any mention on their websites, their campaign websites, for example.
00:35:09 This is a very meaningful trend with the upcoming midterm elections.
00:35:14 all we can do is grow as wealth and power right i just there's a little bit of a too little too
00:35:21 late element that that i'm a little bit concerned about with the department of war stuff and the
00:35:27 you know open framing of anti-ai sentiment and inactions as threats because
00:35:34 there's so much effort on the other side at this point and momentum being gained with the election
00:35:42 And I think we could have a blue wave, a lot of Democratic wins in this coming election.
00:35:48 I kind of want it to happen because I think that gives us better odds of a Republican, major Republican wins in the 2028 election will count extra.
00:35:57 Like, I would rather win that one than this one.
00:36:00 So, you know, let them have this one so we can have enough backlash.
00:36:03 But it is concerning.
00:36:05 And so this is nice, but it falls into a, that's nice development and not a, oh, phew, I guess we're going to be okay now. We've won. It's more just like, well, at least they understand this is a big problem.
00:36:18 Well, no, I think what you're missing is there are two battles being fought here. There is the left versus right battle, which you are right to be concerned about the direction that that could go. But the other battle is within the right. And within the right, we have reached a stage where it appears that we have largely colonized the right.
00:36:39 this is this is now a movement that goals are in alignment with our goals which is
00:36:47 american exceptionalism and long-term human flourishing even if that means technology
00:36:52 right which it didn't necessarily things didn't have to go in this direction and yet they have
00:36:59 And I think that that victory was actually the more risky victory for us.
00:37:07 The left versus right battle is one that in America we're going to have until one side
00:37:14 takes total power, okay?
00:37:16 That's always going to be a thing, right?
00:37:18 So trying to win that culture war and putting your efforts towards that culture war is often
00:37:24 less important than the interpolitical culture war.
00:37:29 yeah um yes roughly yes i agree yes roughly yes all right love you simone i love you too
00:37:41 quite appreciate that our squabbles aren't over things like money or our kids but like
00:37:47 how are we gonna practice the sabbath how are we gonna it's very funny because we have very strong
00:37:53 distinctions as to i'm like well read but what's even funnier about it is because essentially
00:38:01 we're starting like a sect of a religion or something like that when we're having an internal
00:38:06 fight about this or an internal debate around what the bible means on this stuff it could end
00:38:11 up affecting a lot of different people um okay so yeah i mean it's not like i should just cave on
00:38:17 stuff where i think you might not but you're wrong and we'll do a whole episode on how wrong
00:38:23 fantastic welcome to my life ladies and gentlemen i'm so wrong to give people but we start we're
00:38:32 going to be doing our first one to tonight tomorrow night um uh and the day after is we
00:38:38 haven't found there's a few lines that could argue this but we haven't found very strong evidence in
00:38:43 the bible that christians should not be practicing the sabbath as the ten commandments commands you
00:38:48 to uh you should just be practicing in the way that jesus recommended uh which is very very
00:38:52 different from the jewish way specifically in the whoa whoa whoa you're acting like christians think
00:38:58 they shouldn't be practicing the sabbath a lot of christians do the lord's day which is sunday
00:39:04 and not the sabbath or they get confused right but that was because some pagan roman emperor who
00:39:09 pretended to cosplay as a christian said so that no that that's not okay there was other reasons
00:39:16 they had mostly moved the day to sunday before constantine not really they were celebrating the
00:39:21 resurrection but that doesn't change that jesus was like look you want to you want to be okay
00:39:27 practice the 10 commandments what's one of the big 10 commandments the sabbath this is not hard
00:39:33 this is not rocket science i wish that it were because i'd love an out i want to work seven days
00:39:39 a week yeah you're really pissed about having to do it really don't like this um and no man you
00:39:46 don't you don't get to be proud of yourself for thinking approaching it wrong okay the way that
00:39:51 jesus had us do the sabbath right and people can be like well jesus christ is the sabbath or every
00:39:56 day is the sabbath and it's like no like clearly if it's one of the ten commandments if it's one
00:40:00 of the 10 commandments this way and jesus practiced it as well you can't get an out on that easily
00:40:05 right like you can't be like jesus didn't think it was a big deal if he was doing it every week
00:40:09 but the key difference that i'll be arguing in that episode is that jews practice and relate
00:40:16 to god contractually um e.g this is why jews will do little things to try to get out of rules
00:40:21 it's why you know he'll say they'll say women need to cover their hair and then they wear a wig
00:40:25 and so functionally they've done nothing um it's because if you're technically following the rules
00:40:29 in the same way as if you had a contract with a person or a deity that deity then is beholden to
00:40:36 you whereas christians because this is the way that christ frame god see god much more like a
00:40:41 father figure who gave us rules to help improve us once again deontology versus consequentialism
00:40:49 and i'm with you on that i am with you on that but you keep trying to implement it in ways that
00:40:55 clearly just add work and that's not i know i'm trying look i'm trying to wrap my head around it
00:41:02 and because i hate the idea of not working so much and maybe part of it's because our work is
00:41:08 so ideologically aligned anyway i'm like you know how am i could how am i making the world a better
00:41:14 place how am i contributing to the improvement of humanity if i'm not allowed to work because
00:41:18 our work is all about that well and what's worse is the type of work that you're explicitly banned
00:41:23 from is creative work yeah great great great great great great well you can teach and you can
00:41:32 learn so it's a little a little different actually you know you can't it's not productive work you
00:41:39 can teach you can learn if it's like sort of religiously oriented well no not just religiously
00:41:46 oriented that's the way jews interpreted it but not um and the the regulation that simone by the
00:41:52 for the big regulation debate that we're having is she thinks that you should have
00:41:56 restrictions against entertainment and i do not think you should have restrictions against
00:42:02 entertainment even the rabbinic system only built restrictions against music because they were
00:42:09 afraid that you would break an instrument and try to fix it not well religious music makes sense
00:42:13 but like just doing as you please um and worshiping your father's idols and stuff that sounds like
00:42:19 not a good idea that doesn't sound like entertainment your father's idols is a very
00:42:23 look okay do you think it's okay to go to a taylor swift concert assuming she's volunteering and
00:42:27 everyone else there is volunteering no it's not okay to go to it's not she's a false idol okay
00:42:32 so like just there's nuance there's nuance to it i'm i'm trying i'm trying so hard anyway i love
00:42:39 that this is what but that doesn't move human civilization forwards there's no way that that
00:42:43 for watching movies with your kids or your spouse is very different than going to a taylor swift
00:42:49 concert um a a football game with all of your friends okay yeah but like watching pop patrol
00:42:56 slop is not going to move our family forward either like watching family canon is and talking
00:43:02 about it as we go through it with the kids is absolutely fine if you make an effort to talk
00:43:07 about it okay if you're like i guess oh yeah anyway well okay we'll be okay we fight over
00:43:17 Yeah, this is what we fight over. Welcome to our family, our lover's quarrel.
00:43:24 You're amazing.
00:43:26 I love you. I love you so much. You drive me so nuts, but I love you so much.
00:43:33 When this happens is so interesting because it's just like when we were going over the Bible and
00:43:37 seeing how many Christians just don't take it seriously at all. And I've been very surprised
00:43:41 by this contradiction, right? When it's like loud and proud.
00:43:45 Well, look, we've been trying to think seriously about the Bible for a long time, working seven days a week, just like Doreen Virtue, who we talked about, the famous, you know, cult spellbook card creator, you know, made tons of money from the witchy world. 0.97
00:44:01 And then finally realized that it was the end. 0.93
00:44:04 Oops.
00:44:05 What was it?
00:44:06 Deuteronomy?
00:44:06 She read it.
00:44:07 She's like, oh, and that was her moment.
00:44:10 She fell to her knees that moment and was like, I am so sorry. 0.85
00:44:14 the other big one that a lot of christians break that i have noticed um and i a lot of jews break
00:44:20 this one as well um is uh the don't talk to dead people one this this would include for example
00:44:27 talking to a dead parent or something like that right like trying to do an intercession prayer
00:44:32 to them instead of directly to god would be seen as that's talking to dead people and i think a lot
00:44:38 of people just see that it's like a cute endearing little thing they do um that's that's you know
00:44:44 what harm could come from it and it's like uh well it's it presumably it's there for a reason right
00:44:50 yeah and i'm not buying intercession at all anyway this idea that like well no no no i'm not
00:44:57 i'm not worshiping the virgin mary i'm asking her to pray for me no you're no you are kneeling
00:45:04 get a statue but i didn't realize how many groups did that the jews i was looking up because
00:45:09 apparently the orthodox jews do this thing where they write letters to dead people to intercede on
00:45:16 their behalf with god and they do this so frequently that when i was looking for pictures
00:45:20 of it it was two graves entirely covered was like a foot and a half of little notes okay well and i
00:45:28 was like so it's not just that the christians do the jews do this too they're like well you know
00:45:32 Well, the one thing I'm cool with with the dead people is the Mormons baptizing them. 0.70
00:45:36 I'm like, okay. 1.00
00:45:38 Yeah, that's...
00:45:38 That's wholesome.
00:45:39 I like it.
00:45:40 Yeah, that they think they're being moved by dead people, but they don't talk to the dead people directly.
00:45:44 Yeah, they're not trying to talk to the dead people.
00:45:45 They're just making sure they can, you know, be okay.
00:45:48 Well, no, but they believe the dead people influence their actions.
00:45:50 That's fine.
00:45:51 And maybe they do.
00:45:52 I don't know.
00:45:53 You know, like, you know, they're not trying to say, yeah, that is important.
00:45:58 Also, a lot of people are telling us that we need to research the Indian death cults.
00:46:02 I don't know if I'm ready to stomach this.
00:46:04 Someone sent me.
00:46:06 I don't.
00:46:08 Did you know the whole cult of Kali was real?
00:46:11 Like Indiana Jones, like Kali Ma, like that.
00:46:14 Yeah, of course.
00:46:15 What?
00:46:17 I didn't know it was still that active.
00:46:19 Is it still active?
00:46:20 No, I don't think it's active.
00:46:21 Well, great.
00:46:22 You know, we're going to look it up and find that just like with the Aztecs, it never went away.
00:46:26 But they were very different from the Aztecs because their entire society wasn't based around it.
00:46:30 the cult of Kali was typically seen as like weirdos yeah but then I just someone just sent
00:46:36 me on twitter on x wait hold on they weren't weirdos it was closer to like the cult of Dionysus
00:46:42 in ancient Greece or something like that like you know they were a faction in society but they
00:46:48 weren't you know like Zeus or Hera or something yeah but someone sent me today an image from some
00:46:59 kind of indian festival that was okay so if you were wondering does this still happen it does
00:47:06 still happen it looks like it happens to about six to let's say 12 people a year although you
00:47:13 know it's been up to 24 people in a year in india where people are sacrificed it's not specifically
00:47:18 the kali it's actually uh interestingly usually just like a self-styled tantric or family member
00:47:26 says that a human bali or offering will fix some problem a person has um and then it's often a
00:47:32 child or a stranger that they find it's it's bad but it's not nearly the numbers we're talking about
00:47:38 in mexico with the the murders that happened there um for for human sacrifices to the uh
00:47:46 the suenta muerte uh folk catholic saint and and and so this is just totally especially when you
00:47:55 look at the number of people in india versus mexico it's not the same um if we're talking
00:47:59 about at the height of it uh there was maybe around a hundred thousand people killed by these 0.97
00:48:05 uh travelers who would pretend to be it's like the 1830s they pretend to befriend somebody and
00:48:13 then they'd strangle them to death with a rumble or scarf and then robbed their bodies and then
00:48:18 the british put on a big campaign to shut this down and arrest all these people and it was
00:48:23 successfully mostly shut down uh we it doesn't even look like it was necessarily an ancestral
00:48:29 thing in the region it might have been completely opportunistic again making it very different from
00:48:34 the aztecs if you're looking at the numbers of people who are sacrificed in this even at its
00:48:38 very height
00:48:39 you need to come right back buddy friend
00:48:52 let's check on your salamander and then go on inside