technocrit

... Make no mistake: AI is not just another technology. It is power, scaled. And in the hands of the far right, it becomes the most effective tool for dismantling democracy ever invented.

We’re not just fighting bad actors anymore: We’re fighting machines trained to think like them.

Authoritarians—whether MAGA-aligned in the United States or part of the global movement that includes Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and others—are not blind to the potential of AI. They understand it instinctively: its ability to simulate, to deceive, to surveil, and to dominate. While progressives and democratic institutions have scrambled to comprehend its implications, the authoritarians have already started weaponizing it with devastating efficiency.

Let’s look at the mechanisms.

AI can now generate millions of personalized political messages in seconds, each calibrated to manipulate a voter’s specific fears or biases. It can create entire fake news outlets, populate them with AI-generated journalists, and flood your social feed with content that looks real, sounds real, and feels familiar, all without a single human behind it. Imagine the power of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, but with superintelligence behind the wheel and zero friction. That’s where we’re heading.

And that’s just the beginning.

Authoritarian regimes can—and already are—using AI to surveil and intimidate their citizens. What China has perfected with facial recognition and loyalty scoring, MAGA-aligned figures in the U.S. are watching closely, eager to adopt and adapt. Right-wing sheriffs and local governments could soon use AI to track protestors, compile digital dossiers, and “predict” criminal behavior in communities deemed politically undesirable.

If the government knows not just where you are, but what you’re thinking, organizing, or reading—and it can fabricate “evidence” to match—freedom of thought becomes a quaint memory...

Imagine a future where police departments outsource their decision-making to “neutral” algorithms, algorithms coded with the biases of their creators like Elon Musk is doing by training Grok on Xitter. Where AI-driven systems deny permits, benefits, or even due process based on behavioral profiles. Where loyalty to the regime is rewarded with access, and dissent is flagged by invisible systems you can’t appeal.

That’s not democracy. That’s techno-feudalism, wrapped in a red-white-and-blue flag...

As the White House convened its new World Cup task force, Vice President JD Vance threatened to deport World Cup tourists who come to the U.S. next summer. He then kicked it to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose face is already quite familiar to World Cup fans. A disgusting Homeland Security ad starring Noem has been airing during major soccer matches in Mexico. Her message to our World Cup co-host? "We will hunt you down," she says in the ad. "Criminals are not welcome in the United States."

... [crypto] sector veteran and compliance expert TuongVy Le, a former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer, argues that what Congress and the regulators are working on isn't just for today's digital assets space but for the core of the future financial system.

Le, who has held top legal and regulator positions at Anchorage Digital, Bain Capital and the former Worldcoin (now World Network), told CoinDesk that she expects the new rules coming to her old regulatory employer will eventually govern the business at the heart of the markets. Migrating the securities and commodities transactions in traditional finance onto the blockchain is a dramatic move for a field that's been stuck in a legacy approach to handling transactions, rooted in lengthy clearing and settlement approaches established decades ago.

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She's so far been impressed with the changes congressional lawmakers have made in the latest discussion draft of the market-structure bill that is built on the back of the previous session's Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), calling it "much more practical, workable and streamlined." She praised its approach to getting multiple types of transactions under the reach of single trading platforms and also its views on blockchain maturity.

She said that the legislation underway in Congress right now will be a "huge unlock" for the industry, but the U.S. financial agencies, including the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are already moving.

https://archive.is/k1GLg

“This is the Empire State,” Adams said at a press briefing at Gracie Mansion on Monday. “We should be looking forward to building empires, particularly in the crypto space.”

Adams, who is running for reelection, reiterated his commitment to making New York City a crypto hub, telling reporters that he would work with tech and crypto companies, both big and small, to create a friendly environment to attract them and help them succeed.

“My goal remains the same as it was on day one as mayor: making New York City the crypto capital of the globe,” Adams said. His remarks echo similar pledges from President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly said he wants to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”

https://archive.is/c2fEL

Countries are meeting at the United Nations on Monday to revive efforts to regulate the kinds of AI-controlled autonomous weapons increasingly used in modern warfare, as experts warn time is running out to put guardrails on new lethal technology. Autonomous and artificial intelligence-assisted weapons systems are already playing a greater role in conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza. And rising defence spending worldwide promises to provide a further boost for burgeoning AI-assisted military technology.

Progress towards establishing global rules governing their development and use, however, has not kept pace. And internationally binding standards remain virtually non-existent. Since 2014, countries that are part of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) have been meeting in Geneva to discuss a potential ban fully autonomous systems that operate without meaningful human control and regulate others. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has set a 2026 deadline for states to establish clear rules on AI weapon use. But human rights groups warn that consensus among governments is lacking. Alexander Kmentt, head of arms control at Austria's foreign ministry, said that must quickly change.

"Time is really running out to put in some guardrails so that the nightmare scenarios that some of the most noted experts are warning of don't come to pass," he told Reuters. Monday's gathering of the U.N. General Assembly in New York will be the body's first meeting dedicated to autonomous weapons. Though not legally binding, diplomatic officials want the consultations to ramp up pressure on military powers that are resisting regulation due to concerns the rules could dull the technology's battlefield advantages. Campaign groups hope the meeting, which will also address critical issues not covered by the CCW, including ethical and human rights concerns and the use of autonomous weapons by non-state actors, will push states to agree on a legal instrument. They view it as a crucial litmus test on whether countries are able to bridge divisions ahead of the next round of CCW talks in September.

https://archive.is/8dzXb

Republicans try to use the Budget Reconciliation bill to stop states from regulating AI entirely for 10 years.

"Like any product of human creativity, AI can be directed toward positive or negative ends," Francis said in January. "When used in ways that respect human dignity and promote the well-being of individuals and communities, it can contribute positively to the human vocation. Yet, as in all areas where humans are called to make decisions, the shadow of evil also looms here. Where human freedom allows for the possibility of choosing what is wrong, the moral evaluation of this technology will need to take into account how it is directed and used."

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Just as mechanization disrupted traditional labor in the 1890s, artificial intelligence now potentially threatens employment patterns and human dignity in ways that Pope Leo XIV believes demand similar moral leadership from the church.

"In our own day," Leo XIV concluded in his formal address on Saturday, "the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor."

On May 3, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, called for the prosecution of leading European Union officials for complicity in the war crimes committed by Israel.

In a series of interviews and reports, Albanese accused in particular the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kalla. Albanese condemned the EU leaders for aiding and abetting gross violations of international law through their unconditional support for Israel. “The fact that the two highest figures of the EU continue business-as-usual engagements with Israel is beyond deplorable,” Albanese stated. “Immunity cannot equate with impunity. They will have to be judged before history does.”

In an interview with The Intercept Albanese reiterated: “I’m not someone who says, ‘History will judge them’—they will have to be judged before then.”

Police bodycam footage shows Newark Mayor Ras Baraka being arrested outside a detention centre in New Jersey, during a protest about US immigration. Officials claim he trespassed, but Baraka and witnesses say he complied with orders.

"When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research — the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness — the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training," the office said. "But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries."...

"Unlike cases where copying computer programs to access their functional elements was necessary to create new, interoperable works, using images or sound recordings to train a model that generates similar expressive outputs does not merely remove a technical barrier to productive competition," the office said. "In such cases, unless the original work itself is being targeted for comment or parody, it is hard to see the use as transformative."

A day after the office released the report, President Donald Trump fired its director, Shira Perlmutter, a spokesperson told Business Insider.

In February, US President Donald Trump declared that “The US will take over the Gaza Strip” and “level out” the remaining buildings and transfer the Palestinian population to “other countries.” At the time, both US and international media dismissed Trump’s plan as an “outlandish” scheme with no prospect of realization.

The Israeli government approached Trump’s plan with deadly seriousness. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s “bold vision” for an ethnically cleansed Gaza. “We’re working on it,” Trump said during a meeting in Washington last month.

On Monday, the Netanyahu government effectively announced the beginning of the final stage of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The plan includes a full military occupation of the entire Gaza Strip and the mass internment of the population in concentration camps under armed guard, as a prelude to forced marches through the desert or deportation by sea.

These concentration camps will be staffed by private US security contractors, with the Israel Defense Forces overseeing the distribution of starvation rations. According to a report this week by Reuters, the United States and Israel are actively discussing the formation of a “transitional government” headed by a US official to administer Gaza.

Echoing the “final solution,” the Nazi term for the genocide of Europe’s Jews, Netanyahu declared, “It’s time to launch the concluding moves.” The next day, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich explained the meaning of the Israeli government’s plan:

Within a year, ... Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to ... the south to a humanitarian zone ... and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.

The mechanism for the forcible displacement of the Palestinian people will be mass starvation. As National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made clear, “No electricity, and no other aid should be allowed—neither by the [Israeli military] nor by civil society.”

On March 2, Israel imposed a total blockade on all food, water and electricity entering the Gaza Strip. As a result, the majority of Gaza’s community kitchens have been forced to shut down due to a lack of supplies, and cases of acute malnutrition have surged by more than 80 percent. Harrowing images have circulated of emaciated, starving children—victims of a famine that is entirely man-made.

I’ve recently had conversations with a number of people who, it turned out, were completely unaware that before the October 7th attack on Israel, Gazans had tried huge non-violent demonstrations for almost two years.

Every week, thousands of unarmed men, women and children in Gaza’s open air prison had gathered in a nonviolent, Gandhian march to end the Israeli blockade that was strangling them and to return to their stolen homes and villages.

And every week Israeli snipers had shot dozens of them, killing and maiming unarmed people of all ages – men, women, children, medics, journalists. On the first day alone, atleast fifteen people were killed and 750 others were shot. (See detailed reports here. and videos below.)

Yet, US news reports mentioned these so infrequently, if at all, that many Americans have no idea that these massive weekly demonstrations even took place.

One of the most blatant and egregious examples is PBS.

PBS’s Frontline program had actually co-produced a documentary with the BBC about the Great March. While this still contained considerable pro-Israel spin, It showed a level of Israeli violence that most Americans never see.

At the last minute, PBS suddenly canceled the broadcast.

The reason given was that it was simply postponed because of a more important breaking news story.

However, the allegedly timely news story that preempted the Gaza documentary consisted of a minimal, widely known update to a news story that had been on the website for 2 months. PBS told callers the film would be broadcast at some unnamed time in the future.

The next story from PBS was that the film was supposedly not a PBS documentary, even though it had been announced as such in numerous places. Moreover, this fraudulent excuse had not even been mentioned when the film was preempted. The upshot was that PBS now announced it would never show it.

Had this film not been blocked, quite likely vastly more Americans would have seen Palestinians’ courageous attempt to use nonviolence, would have seen Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed demonstraters in cold blood, and more Americans would have demanded that their government stop supporting Israel… And then, perhaps, the desperate October 7th breakout would not have occurred.