"The Deeper Dive: The Beast is Here!"
by David Haggith
"I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal ‘country of geniuses’ were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. ... I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation - a report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like ‘single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.’ It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on.”
"That is the AI singularity - the “event,” like the theoretical start of the cosmos, that will arrive by the end of this year by which time the self-creating ability of AI with its exponential growth rate will explosively make a single AI equal to a vast population of humans with super-genius capabilities. What threat would that vast population, if it were an alien invasion from another solar system with no fondness for us, present to our own species?
That is what the experts at the top of the AI food chain say we could find out this year or early next in what they are saying this month could be a doom of our own making. Only, it is not exactly an alien invasion. It is the corrupted consummation of human aspirations and knowledge and achievements into a heartless, alien-to-us brainchild (versus lovechild) that we are creating in our own image, with our own deceptiveness and deviance built throughout all of its vast learning, to supplant ourselves with godlike powers of comprehension far beyond our own, even collectively - a creation whose predictive abilities are already being experimented with in small stages on the warfront against other real human beings. It is an intelligence that transcends its own creators - the ultimate Tower of Babel in mankind’s attempted scrabble toward aspirations of godhood.
Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, a massive high-tech corporation that contracts widely on defense with multiple governments, says there is no question the US and its NATO allies are positioning for World War III where the other side, he says, will be Russia, China and Iran. Over the years that have followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most prognosticators have been proclaiming that the world was redividing into a multi-polar world or a world of South v. North, but I have consistently argued that is not the case at all.
The world is remaining as bi-polar as it was throughout the Cold War. The division remans East v. West. Europe, the British Commonwealth and the US as well as all other NATO nations against Russia, China and their allies like Iran with threadlike ties also to various closely allied communist nations in South America, etc.
Palantir is deeply involved in developing high-tech warfare, including particularly AI warfare, digital surveillance, national ID systems throughout NATO. Karp and Palantir’s cofounder, Peter Thiel, have their finger on the war pulse throughout those nations, and they are clear on the coming war:
"Mr. Karp is at the vanguard of what Mark Milley, the retired general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called “the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.” In this new world, unorthodox Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Mr. Karp and Elon Musk are woven into the fabric of America’s national security."
As one with his fingers on the pulses of many involved nations, Karp says without hesitation, "The United States is “very likely” to end up in a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran. So, we have to keep going full-tilt on autonomous weapons systems, because our adversaries will - and they don’t have the same moral considerations that we do… We are “very close” to terminator robots and at the threshold of “somewhat autonomous drones and devices like this being the most important instruments of war. You already see this in Ukraine.”
Ukraine has, in fact, become the high-tech companies’ laboratory and the governments’ testing ground for AI/robotic warfare. It is a hot field where prototype terminator robots are being deployed, tested and improved for combat in a much larger war that seems to be increasingly “likely.”
Palantir’s CEO lays out the highly aggressive path he says is essential to create a digital detente similar to the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that the West once held as nuclear-war policy against China and Russia in the East. It’s the same old story as the Cold War because history cycles in rhymes: "Mr. Karp’s position is that we’re hurtling toward this new world whether we like it or not. Do we want to dominate it, or do we want to be dominated by China?"
The move fully into AI warfare has an inevitability about it … at least in the eyes of those who are involved with preparing for it:“I think a lot of the issues come back to ‘Are we in a dangerous world where you have to invest in these things?’” Mr. Karp told me, as he moved around his living room in a tai chi rhythm, wearing his house shoes, jeans and a tight white T-shirt. “And I come down to yes. All these technologies are dangerous.” He adds: “The only solution to stop A.I. abuse is to use A.I….”
“Are we tough enough to scare our adversaries so we don’t go to war? Do the Chinese, Russians and Persians think we’re strong? The president needs to tell them if you cross these lines, this is what we’re going to do, and you have to then enforce it.”
The last bit is the reality that could take us into WWIII. It’s not enough, Karp says to merely have all the technology to make the threats real. You have to use it to prove you will. Bluffs won’t work. And, so, we are now fully caught up in a new AI arms race just like the Cold War rush to nuclear arms proliferation. AI superpower status will supplant nuclear superpower status." (not that nuclear goes away, but that AI will dominate the spending and the new directions taken to establish, as General Milley defined, “the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.”)
Karp continued, “I think we’re in an age when nuclear deterrent is actually less effective because the West is very unlikely to use anything like a nuclear bomb, whereas our adversaries might,” he said. So, we move the real battlefield onto a new plain with new kinds of superpower weapons that blend faint notes of godlike capabilities with a mixed bouquet of hot electronics and sulfur. Of course, it is in Palantir’s (and Karp’s) best interest to fully advocate for this new arms race, just as it was with the Lockheed-Martins, Rockwells and Boeings of the Cold War. Palantir does not do business with China, Russia or other countries that are opposed to the West in order to maintain its loyal bonafides.
Mr. Thiel said the company tries to work with “more allied” and “less corrupt” governments, noting dryly that aside from their ideological stances, “with corrupt countries, you never get paid… We have a consistently pro-Western view that the West has a superior way of living and organizing itself, especially if we live up to our aspirations,” Mr. Karp said.
He added: “If you believe we should appease Iran, Russia and China by saying we’re going to be nicer and nicer and nicer, of course you’ll look at Palantir negatively. Some of these places want you to do the apology show for what you believe in, and we don’t apologize for what we believe in. I’m not going to apologize for defending the U.S. government on the border, defending the Special Ops, bringing the people home. I’m not apologizing for giving our product to Ukraine or Israel or lots of other places.”
Karp is one of several billionaires, along with his founding partner, Thiel, who are spearheading the West’s new military industrial complex - focused on high-tech, centered around AI, to supplant nuclear arms as more useable because they are able to be precisely focused in their destruction. They deploy in the form of conventional warfare that is amped up on steroids that create superhuman or even suprahuman warriors or that fight entirely digitally (such as computer viruses) by taking out entire systems of other nations without a nuclear EMP bomb, yet potentially just as crippling.
(Suprahuman meaning a level of AI thinking and ability that goes completely beyond any jacked-up human capability, such as an ability to somewhat foresee the future by rapidly calculating all possible outcomes of an action in light of all known common human behaviors or natural cause-and-effect and factoring those possible outcomes by likelihood and by how to they can be guide by other actions to drive the most desired outcome in very short timeframes. Some moves may necessitate such quick military action that military planners may even let AI decide what is the most desired outcome and launch it. It is not by coincidence that “Palantir’s name is derived from palantÃri, the seeing stones in the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasies.” Palantir refers to its integrated surveillance tech and ability to predict real people’s future movements in order to have live fire meet their arrival as their “god eye view.”)
Palantir, as an example of its breadth in Orwellian government, was also deeply involved in implementation of the Operation-Warp-Drive Covid vaccines and with ICE’s tracking and hunting down of immigrants. It helps the IRS identify tax fraud and is deeply involved in Trump’s development of the Space Force. It is increasingly powerful and increasingly everywhere, and its powers are likely to exceed the totality of human genius operating in unity this year.
In its prototype iterations …it has assisted Ukraine and Israel in sifting through seas of data to gather relevant intelligence in their wars - on how to protect special forces by mapping capabilities, how to safely transport troops and how to target drones and missiles more accurately.
In 2022, Mr. Karp took a secret trip to war-ravaged Kyiv, becoming the first major Western C.E.O. to meet with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and offering to supply his country with the technology that would allow it to be David to Russia’s Goliath. Time magazine ran a cover on Ukraine as a lab for A.I. warfare, and Palantir operatives embedded with the troops….
"Mr. Karp’s position on backing Israel is adamantine. The company took out a full-page ad in The New York Times last year stating that “Palantir stands with Israel….” “Not supporting the U.S. military,” he said, in a tone of wonder. “I don’t even know how you explain to the average American that you’ve become a multibillionaire and you won’t supply your product to the D.O.D. It’s jarringly corrosive. That’s before you get to all the corrosive, divisive things that are on these platforms… Defense tech is a big part of Silicon Valley now.”
Here is quick history of Palantir and its range of information gained on YOU:
Palantir “is the new deep state,” and right now the war in Ukraine is being utilized as the testing grounds to discover how its avant garde technology works against Russia’s capabilities. Tier Two will likely be deployed for rapid testing in Iran, unless it fully caves to US pressure.
Of course, there are dangers in AI. But we must embrace our ability to build it, our ability to own the chips, own the software, build the large language models, and run very, very quickly. Because again, if we are not the ones controlling the violence, we will not be dictating the rule of law…. One of the reasons we are in a kind of a “doom AI circle” is because you can only explain the promise of AI if you understand and embrace the superiority of America and its culture…. The reality is there’s only two cultures that are going to win in the next year. It’s going to be the US or China." - Alex Karp, CEO Palantir (The New York Post)
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