Welcome to the In the Tank podcast. Don't adjust your screens. It is correct. I am stepping in as host this week for the In the Tank podcast. It is a wild time for this topic of artificial intelligence.

There was a big feud brewing be between the Department of War and a major AI company, Anthropic, over how the Pentagon can use this revolutionary technology. And we are also seeing hints and glimpses into how AI is being used on the battlefield in 2026. We're gonna be talking about all this and more on episode 529 of the in the tank podcast. Come to me, my babies. Let me heal your pain.

That's, Dennis Miller would always start a show doing that, and I like Dennis Miller. Welcome everyone to the In The Tank podcast. As always used to be is your host, Donald Kendall. Joining me, I've got Jim Likely, VP of the Heartland Institute. How are you, Jim?

Not great. I caught a bug that's been going around. I feel pretty crummy today, so my gym rants may be very muted. I will do my best to caffeinate up and be on point.

Fantastic. Chris Talgo, how are you good, sir?

Well, Donnie, I just wanna give a shout out to my boy Dennis Miller because he is just such a great comedian. And, if you if you have not seen the net, go watch that movie.

Okay. I will. And, if you're interested, you should go check out Dennis Miller and Norm Macdonald clips. Those are top notch. It's fantastic.

Anytime that you would have Norm MacDonald on his show, it was fantastic. Sam Karnik, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute. How are you doing today, good sir? Oh, he's great. We are off to a great start here, folks.

Nope. Oh, he's he we're when he figures it out, we'll bring him back onto the show, but he's he's got a smile on his face, so he must be doing better than Jim at the very least. But we gotta figure out that mic's on your on your camera there. We can't hear you at all there, Sam.

But muted, Sam. So

This is a gonna be a very interesting episode. So Lanea so full disclosure, Lanea was in the Chicagoland area for the past few days recording videos for the new set of, you know, Climate at a Glance, videos that we share on YouTube and social media and all of that. So I think she headed out of the Chicagoland area maybe late yesterday, maybe early today. I don't know. But she didn't have time for prep for this show.

So you know what? I'm stepping into the breach. And whenever they, reluctantly give me the reins of the show, I, of course, steer it towards my favorite topic to talk about, artificial intelligence and how that, the implications that that has on our individual liberty, personal autonomy, and things like that. Chris, you know, we we talk about this stuff in the office all the time, but now we get to talk about it on air. Are you excited for the show, Chris?

Super excited. And I just wanna say, Lynnae is such a lucky woman because she gets to just come to Chicago for a couple days and then go back to beautiful South Carolina where I once once lived a long, long time ago. And, man, it's just so great down there.

In the galaxy far, far away. That's right.

I miss it so much.

Yeah. So this is a, this is okay. So I don't know how much of this actually got into, like, the mainstream media. I think that this got into it a little bit more than your average AI story, but it's certainly crowded out after the events that started over the weekend with Iran. So, if you're not familiar with this story, you know, listen in because I think this is the biggest kind of crossroads between artificial intelligence and public policy story that's happened since we started covering this topic at the Heartland Institute.

So, just a week or two ago, the there was a a feud brewing between the Department of War and the AI company Anthropic. So, Keely, if you wanna just, like, pull up that Axios articles, some of the details are in there. But, generally speaking, the the context of this is that Anthropic is one of the top four or five AI companies out there. You've got OpenAI. You've got, Google, Meta, x AI, and Anthropic.

But Anthropic is kind of miles ahead when it comes to certain things. Their coding, programs, models, whatever, for computer code are, like, light years ahead of their competition. And Anthropic is the only company that has their AI models inside of, defense and intelligence systems in the Pentagon and and the federal government. They're the only ones that have inked a contract with the federal of their AI systems helping out when it comes to all of those, all of those systems. And that relationship is going strong for probably a year and a half.

I think they signed this, deal into place sometime in late ish twenty twenty four, something like that. Everything was going fine. Anthropic is a, you know, a very well known company when it comes to this stuff, the credible AI systems, very strong AI models, all of that. But then a couple of weeks ago, we started getting rumblings of a growing rift between the Pentagon and Anthropic, And there was, leaks of a meeting between Pete Hegseth and Mario Amote, who is the CEO of Anthropic. Apparently, he was brought into this meeting and chastised over the fact that Anthropic had two major limitations on their artificial intelligence systems, when it comes to the the use of by the Pentagon.

Those two limitations, and both sides agree to this. This is not just one-sided over the other. The two limitations were, one, that there was a restriction by anthropic on their AI models when it comes to the use of it for the control over fully autonomous weapons. The second one was a restriction put on a bianthropic to basically prevent their AI systems from being able to help when it comes to mass domestic surveillance. So Pete Hegseth comes in and says, you hey.

You can't tell, you know, what the federal government can do. We wanna use the AI systems for all lawful purposes, so you need to provide us your algorithm, your your artificial intelligence so that we can use it with no restrictions. We don't want any of this. And the the anthropic said, well, you know, like like, I I don't know. Like, I I we don't we we don't feel safe doing that.

Right? So they basically gave him an ultimatum. They said, you give us unrestricted AI for our use by the end of the week, or we are going to label you, a supply chain risk. So a supply chain risk in this kind of context is basically something that's only a designation that's only been given to companies that work with foreign adversaries. So a company that works with, like, the Chinese government or something along those lines.

And once you're designated that, a supply chain risk, you are prohibited from working with any other government agency or doing any other government, work. Right? Or the other threat was that we'll just take the AI, and use it under the justification of the, Defense Production Act. So these were the this was the ultimatum. So I think it was last week, Thursday, Anthropic came out with a statement rejecting this ultimatum, saying that they wouldn't take these restrictions off, and they gave a a a a specific explanation as to why.

So the first one, they go through it, both of the claims or both of the, restrictions one by one, and they explain the first one has to do with the fully autonomous weapons. So they say that, you know, a, we're not inherently against this idea of a fully autonomous weapons controlled by artificial intelligence, selecting targets, and, you know, pulling the trigger and and destroying those targets. We just don't think our AI is safe enough for that yet. We don't think that it's reliable enough for that yet. You know, we we they kind of drew illusions to the idea of the, you know, AI coming up with a, you know, a fake answer or hallucinating.

And it's just like in this level of thing, when we're using live ammunition and targeting things and blowing them up, they're afraid that, you know, that it was gonna put US military or civilians at risk, which is a, you know, a very understandable, concept. The mass domestic surveillance one, that gets into a a whole another level. But I think I'm gonna save that one just for a little bit until we get into the I wanna open this up for conversation a little bit before I get into the specifics of the the the potential for mass domestic surveillance. But, I'm gonna go to you first, Chris. This idea that the federal government is going to come to this AI company that they're using basically as a contractor for various services, and tell them, hey.

We want unlimited access to your AI with no restrictions. It it it seems a little unprecedented. I don't know. This isn't a kind of a topic area that I have my ears super close to the ground on. But what do you what do you think of this kind of this little growing rift that became increasingly public over the course of the last week.

I think we are entering a new era of warfare, and AI and drones are, you know, gonna rapidly change how war is is waged in, the twenty first century. So this, you know, this gives me a lot of pause, and I am I am not okay with the US military forcing a company to do whatever it wants it to do in terms of, you know, weapons and, mass surveillance. So I know we're gonna get into the mass surveillance stuff much later, but, you know, we're at a we're at a crossroads in some ways because the technology is here. And if you, give AI the power to make decisions on the battlefield in real time, a lot of people are, I think, are gonna say that's better, that's more efficient, that's better for the US military, but then think about the genie that, you know, that that that, you know, takes out of the bottle here. So I'm a I'm a little bit worried about all this stuff

personally. And and and, Sam, you know, like, the there is, you know, a a fairly good argument on the other side as well. There was after the rejection, there was actually a quite a lot of response from Pete Hegseth as well as, like, the undersecretary of that, basically saying that, like, we don't wanna have to come to Dario, the CEO of Anthropic, and ask for permission anytime that we wanna use these systems to shoot down a drone or anything like that. And then they lay out that idea that, like, we're only gonna use it for lawful purposes. So, you know, the safeguards are in place.

Like, it's just that your company specific restrictions are tying our hands. So what do you think about this, this this feud going on?

Well, it's certainly true that the, Department of War doesn't have any authority to do any kind of, monitoring of of civilians or civilian activity or communications in The United States. So that's already a given. So it seems to me that Anthropic is basically trying to stake out a position that may be both, principled and, let's say, public relations oriented. So the the the the fact that that they're talking about not using them for fully autonomous systems is also a difficult question because what is a fully autonomous system? There what are the safeguards that are involved?

And if AI is that good at this, why is why do you need a a human being at the end of it? The whole the whole point of AI was that it can see through walls and and and, put together a dozen different pictures that will give you a full, knowledge and instant awareness of what's going on in a situation, which a human being simply cannot do on their own. So it seems like the the anthropic is is setting a a principle in place, a couple of principles. Yet I wonder to what degree those are are really those are really consequential. And the fact that the Department of War is quite willing to move on and say, okay.

And the Trump administration as a whole and say, well, we'll just go with other systems. We'll make that transition. And Anthropic themselves said that they would help make the the government make the transition to other, forms of AI. So this seems to me that there's it's it's a lot about positioning and not much about real consequence.

Real quick. Sam, you asked a question about what is a fully autonomous AI system. It's called Skynet.

That's right. Yes. And there's a whole documentary written his. Yeah. Produced about it the nineties called Terminator two.

Yeah. Jim, this, it's I don't know. Like, this this is one of those things where you're like, we're in uncharted territory. Right?

We are.

Because, like, these systems, these artificial intelligence systems, I mean, you you've been tuned into it mostly because of me bugging you about it. But you've seen them develop just over the past couple of years into just, like, unbelievable outputs, in such a short amount of time. So the idea that, you know, Anthropic would wanna put some, like, kinda limitations onto how this sort of thing is used seems, seems like a fine thing on its face. But then when you've got, like, the president and the department of, you know, the, Pete Hegseth coming out and basically accusing Anthropic of being, like, a woke company, because they don't wanna, like, let up the the reins on these limitations, it just feels like, you know, are we just, like, running into the void and just kind of hoping that things turn out the way that we want them to? Because that feels a little risky, doesn't it?

Well, look, you're not gonna be able to to keep technology off the battlefield. You know, just ask Robert Oppenheimer. We learned how to split the atom, and then it turns into the most destructive weapon ever devised by man. And guess who is not going to limit the military's use of AI on the battlefield? China and Russia, and almost anybody else who has their hands on this technology.

You know, as we were setting this up, I was thinking about World War one. If you've not seen the movie 1917 or a handful of really great movies about World War one, that was the dawn of mechanized warfare. Military tactics, for the most part, were still very much in the Napoleonic era. You know, and millions of men were cut down by machine guns and other mechanized weapons, and it was a complete slaughter. Again, like nothing that the globe had ever really seen before, and that was a transition period.

By the time World War two came around, tactics had changed. A lot less risk to human beings on the battlefield because those tactics had changed. But at that time in World War one, the generals were using tactics that were not suited for the kind of mass killing that mechanized warfare brought about. And we've seen the advancement of technology on the battlefield over the last several decades, but we're really seeing it now in just what is this? Day six of the of the war in Iran, if you wanna call it a war or a military action or whatever it is.

We're seeing some amazing things from an American military perspective on the battlefield that we had not seen before. The American military is proving itself far above the the ability, it seems, far above the ability of Russia and China at the moment, and they're probably kinda shaking in their boots a little bit, watching the absolute brutal efficiency and really precise nature of war right now that's being conducted by The United States. So, you know, drones are out there doing it. So now drones and AI and now if you combine drones and AI, oh my gosh. I mean, again, you're not gonna be able to keep technology off the battlefield.

It's just not going to happen. I understand Anthropic's position, you know, they, it's the Robert Oppenheimer position. Mhmm. I will do this. I we need to do this because if we don't, then the Nazis will get the bomb and drop it on New York or, you know, or Los Angeles or or London.

And so, reluctantly, Oppenheimer moved forward and we we won the race to the atomic bomb. And The United States has won the race to the most efficient and best way I mean, we were the first ones with drones, and now we're the first ones that might be using AI. I'm sure we are probably already are. You know, we we may not be that far from robotic warriors on the battlefield or maybe even mech suits. Right?

Stuff that you see in science fiction war movies. We we may be very close to that. We may live to see it one day. You know, I understand.

Oh oh, we will, Jim. Come on. One day.

No. Right.

We'll see you in the next five years.

Right. You know, a mechanized suit that gives you super strength that makes you completely bulletproof and puts you know, it's really heavy and cumbersome to carry all these weapons with you. If you have to even have boots on the ground, it will be a mechanized soldier out there probably one day. But, you know, just again, just to reiterate my point, you're you're not gonna be able to keep technology off the battlefield. Our enemies are not going to have any qualms about this.

You know, it's it's not something you have to like or even necessarily support, but I think you have to accept its inevitability.

At this point in time just, Tanya, just real quick. At this point in time, The United States technical superiority to Russia and China is out of this world because Venezuela Venezuela and Iran both had the, the Russian air defense system. I think it's called the s 400. We obliterated that within a day. And one other thing about AI, and I watched a really great documentary about this is in a dogfight, you know, between two planes, when AI is is in the, quote, unquote, driver seat in one, it will go to the maximum risk before, quote, unquote, like, pulling up, meaning that there's no fear.

So AI, they did a they did a test where they put an AI, you know, pilot against a, you know, a US Navy pilot

Versus Tom Cruise.

Yeah. Exactly. And the AI won every single time because the AI has no fear. So it will be in danger until the last possible second, and that's just one, you know, area that we're talking about. So AI is coming, and it is gonna revolutionize warfare probably for the worst in many ways.

Yeah. It's a okay. So the point about China, because I actually had that I I had that scribbled down on a piece of paper over here. The idea that China wouldn't, you know, hesitate to you know, even if it puts a few of their soldiers in potential danger, like, the idea that they would hesitate, you know, to put these AI systems in charge of, you know, defense if that's gonna make their defense more efficient, all of that, I think is absolutely the case. And there was actually a, I I've been listening to a lot of this Dario Amodai, speaking, recently.

And and he said it's it's weird how candid some of these, like, AI people are, these, like, tech CEOs are. He said that he is not convinced that artificial intelligence is, basically, like, enhances the democratic process or anything like that. He doesn't think that it's necessarily compatible with, like, democracy, he said, and that it might actually, like, benefit, like, authoritarian dictatorships more. Like, he, like, directly said this, basically. Not the exact, quote there, but it was the gist of it.

And I kinda wonder if, like, that's a good example, where, like, China would be totally happy, you know, if, if their if their AI controlled autonomous weapons, you know, were able to rain mass destruction, but inadvertently, you know, took out a few of their own troops. I don't think that they would even hesitate. Whereas if that sort of thing happened in this situation in a in a, you know, a jeep full of US troops, got, like, blown up because of an anthropic thing, that would be, like, the end of that company. Like, I don't think anthropic would exist anymore after something like

to the World War two analogy that Jim brought up, Russia, the Soviet Union, during World War two used their troops as cannon fodder. A lot of times,

they didn't

do they didn't even have weapons, and they just said, stay here, or if you if you run towards us, we're gonna kill you. So those those regimes by nature do not value, you know, an individual human life, whether it's a soldier or a citizen. Therefore, I do agree with you that they would be much more likely to engage in wonton destruction at the hand of AI regardless of the unintended consequences. And just one one thing that I have watched, on the news a lot, CNN in particular, is, really going into detail about a school in Iran that was bombed. They don't know if it was Israel or America.

And sadly, tragically, a 160 students were killed. Guys, I hate to say this, but that's what happens in war. Collateral damage is part of war. We're still in the fog of war. Like Jim said, this is only a couple days, you know, in.

We don't even know yet what's happening or what's not happening. So for all these, you know, armchair quarterbacks at CNN to say, oh, that that, you know, The United States is already committing war crimes. I mean, give me a break. Come on.

Yeah. I I wanna okay. Go go ahead, Sam, and then I wanna get into the mass domestic surveillance. But you you have a final word on this part.

Yeah. There's a there's an important, distinction to be made in military affairs. There's attack and defense, and then there is occupation. And we're in the attack and defense, mode right now. And in and in the attack mode in particular, but also in defense, the key is mobility.

And what AI gives The United States that has always been our strength is mobility. Now it's interesting because our strength has always been mobility. The reason it was is because of logistics. We were better at logistics than anybody else in the world because we were the the most, organized country, on the private level, in the world. And so our ability at logistics has always been just world class, top of the line, way above everyone else.

The Soviet Union and and China and other communist places are just awful at things like that. So we so AI plays into our strengths. The question that arises then is occupation. If you're not interested in occupation, then you don't have to worry about that. And, I think it is a certainly a classical liberal position that we don't want to be occupying foreign countries with our boots on the ground.

So that's a, that's a position that's going to have to be worked out. However, I do think that the strengths of The United States really play well with AI and vice versa, And we are probably going to end up somewhere along the lines of, as we did in the nuclear era, a sort of a mad mutual assured destruction doctrine where we won't do this if you don't if you don't do it either. And then you would program the AI not to do those particular things. One thing that AI will will be a great boon at is is landmines. They won't be of any use anymore.

That is a very good thing. So there's all kinds of change coming in the future, and it will be to our advantage to be what we have often been, which is a free country that uses and deploys the greatness of the American people. Short of that, we really have to we do have to think through the implications of these things and make sure that other countries are going to be doing the same things we are. And if not, we have to be ready to stop them.

Yeah. The, well, I I wanna get into AI on the battlefield specifically because I have a couple of very interesting things to share. But I I wanna address that second thing that's, that's in that letter from from Anthropic, their rejection letter to the ultimatum. So, Keely, if you could pull that one up, that's that that same one that we were looking at, that letter from, Anthropic. But they go through and explain exactly why they wanna have this restriction, when it comes to that mass domestic surveillance concept.

So, yeah. So it says here that full, no. Yeah. So go up a little bit. So in the sec mass domestic surveillance.

We support the use of AI for lawful foreign intelligence and counter intelligence missions, but using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with the democratic with democratic values. AI driven mass surveillance presents serious novel risks to our fundamental liberties. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, because remember, the Pentagon says that we wanna only use this for whatever is currently legal. So when it comes to the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet caught up to how rapidly growing capabilities of artificial intelligence. For example, under current law, the government can purchase detailed records of Americans' movements, web browsing, and associations from public sources without obtaining a warrant, a practice the intelligence community has acknowledged, raises privacy concerns, and that has generated bipartisan opposition in congress.

Powerful AI makes it possible to assemble this scattered individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of any person's life automatically and at massive scale. So this I when I read this, I was like, wow. Like, this, this lays it out in a way that's just things that I speculated about. But when it's laid out in black and white, it really is shocking. So basically what this is saying is that that data out there on you that we're constantly generating based on anything you're doing, whether it's, going online on your phone and and checking through websites or, you know, GPS pings on your phone, you go past certain things.

All of this information is out there, but it was mostly useless. Some of it would be used to help sell ads that were more micro targeted towards you and and different things like that. But generally speaking, it's just a bunch of useless floating out there individual data. But what it's saying is that now AI can take all of that data and synthesize it and be able to churn out profiles on basically anyone that they want at scale and doesn't take any manpower or logistics anymore. The idea that we would be able to do this would have taken so much time and effort, but now it could be done in in a snap of the fingers.

And it what the the CEO was basically explaining there is that this is technically legal because this wasn't even possible. This wasn't even imaginable just a handful of years ago. So it's just this idea that AI powered surveillance, is something that is right now possible. And just the the legislation, the laws, restrictions, those sorts of, you know, constitutional safeguards have just not caught up to what's possible because of, like, what I was saying earlier, this technology is moving so quickly. So the other thing that I'll add on to this, and then I'll I'll jump to Chris, is that this is just one tool that's out there.

I wrote an article that's pending publication. Hopefully, it'll be published soon. But I explained how there's a number of AI tools, in the potential mass surveillance toolkit that exist out there. Last year, there was a startup. It's called Flock, f l o c k, that was making this an AI startup, and it made a bunch of headlines because they went around claiming that they were gonna be able to end crime.

And they were gonna do so by building out a nationwide network of artificial intelligence enhanced camera systems. So the the idea is that, you know, we could have cameras all over the place. We've had cameras all over the place for years. And generally speaking, there's not somebody sitting there staring at the camera. These cameras and this footage could be used after a crime has been committed to see if they could find any information to find the culprit.

But now this this flock company basically claims that this will all be AI monitored, and we can track things in real time. And AI systems could be able to deem, you know, potential threats or a a potential crime being committed before it's actually committed. So that's, like, another level of this of this AI surveillance that is now possible that just was not possible just a handful of years ago. There was also a another thing that, Justin and I actually made a video of this. You could find it on, Justin and Donald's Save America.

But, not long ago, the UK Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology announced an AI driven crime prevention initiative that was basically this large interactive crime map that was designed to, quote, identify where crime is most likely to happen to allow for better prevention. And what was in this press release was basically this idea that they were using old crime statistics and to generate where, like, hot spots are and just based on historical, you know, precedents, that sort of thing. But there were some lines in there, and we break it down in the video. There were some lines in there that suggest that, not only is crime data used for this to to create this map, but social media data was also being used. And they talk about it, about how this program that they're putting together could be used to identify antisocial behavior before it escalates.

So all of these tools and more that, again, weren't possible just a handful of years ago are all creating an environment where the most dystopian mass surveillance state that you could possibly have James Cameron imagine, you know, a decade ago is currently feasible. So that that I think came to light in this, in this letter from Anthropic. I like I said, I wrote an article about it. Hopefully, it'll be published soon. But, Chris, what do you think about this one?

Okay. Well, I'm gonna separate the two issues because the technology is a technology, and it can it it, you know, it can exist in a vacuum. I think what you're pointing the finger at is the surveillance state that was set up, especially post nine eleven with the Patriot Act and all these, you know, laws that were passed, you know, in the in the attempt to try to prevent future terror attacks. And, you know, the government, forced private companies to turn over that data, and the companies part, you know, willingly did so. So I agree with you that the technology can make it easier for tracking purposes and and take metadata and, you know, do things with it that humans could not have done on their own.

But at the same time, this couldn't this could not be a problem if we had repealed the Patriot Act and if, you know, the FISA, you know, secret court system was actually, you know, above board instead of a, you know, secret star chamber. So I think there's just kinda, like, some some different things happening here. Also, I think while it's disconcerning that The UK is probably gonna go down that road, I think we all Yeah. Think we always need to remember that, you know, The United States constitution is unique, and UK does not have the freedoms that we have established under the constitution. Not many countries do, and I think a lot of people in America don't realize that.

So as long as we, you know, remain solid to our constitution, these kinds of things. Because last time I checked, guess what? The bill of rights protects, your property from, you know, search and seizure without a warrant, and that's what this stuff is. This is warrantless wiretapping surveillance, and it's super scary. And once, you know, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, there's no putting it back.

So I'm sorry. I'm already just totally, you know, cynical when it comes to this.

Mhmm. Chris OD'ing and black pills when it comes to this topic. Sam Sam, what do you think? Because, you know, again, that rhetoric that, hey. No.

We only wanna use this for lawful purposes. But then that rebuttal from Anthropic saying, okay. Well, this is technically legal. Does this not represent mass domestic surveillance? It's pretty compelling to me.

What do you think?

Well, the supreme court ruled in 2018 that you can't you can't do this kind of thing. The the government simply cannot do it. It's not you know, any kind of search of this sort, electronic surveillance, and the collating of that information, that's the key part. Anything like that is a search, and it is protected by and and the individual is protected by the fourth amendment. So under under that principle that you can't do these sorts of things, and we are to presume that the, government is not doing it.

So that's a that's a problem there. Because if they are if the government is doing it, then we need some lawsuits and we need some discovery to find out what they're doing and to prevent and to stop that and to prevent it from happening in the future. But the the it is it is unconstitutional to gather this information and then collate it. Just like you saw how, you can use AI to tell where a person is behind a dumpster or something or on a battlefield behind a tank. So you can use AI to give you a 360 degree picture in all all all angles, up, down, sides, back and forth, the whole thing.

Well, you can do that in The United States. You could do that following people around. You can certainly do it in Britain, and it's I I presume it's legal there. So this but it's not it's not legal for the federal government to do this. It's not legal for state governments to do this.

That that's one of the reasons there are these disputes over license plate cameras and the like, because you can you could conceivably compile that information and find out a whole lot of things about a person's background that is private, that that belongs to them. The court has made it clear that you are not permitted to do that. The government's not permitted to do that. It also seems to me that it would be very clear that, individual businesses should not be are not allowed to do that either. I mean, the government is supposed to protect our life, liberty, and property, and that certainly is a threat to all all three of those things.

So we I think we need to get more information on exactly what's being done out there. And I do think that the best way forward for that is, there's two things. One is lawsuits. People need to bring lawsuits and and create a situation where discovery is possible. That's part of the process in a lawsuit, of course.

So then we can find out what's going on. And the other thing is simply to, have people become more more watchdogs on their own. The the government's doing this or that, and, we recognize that that's wrong, and they don't have a right to do it. And we need to hold them accountable and and and stop being so lax about these these incredibly destructive, interference in our privacy. And Chris alluded to the to the Patriot Act, and, I would add all the measures that that came thereafter.

And then I would also include that so many government programs intrude in your privacy and put they can put together a dossier on you to find out so many things. And we really have got to turn that around. We've got to recognize that the Fourth Amendment is real and that it counts and that governments aren't allowed to do this, and we shouldn't put up with it.

Yeah. But the problem is that most Americans don't care about privacy rights. Most Americans I am in the extreme minority here because I don't do any social media. I don't put everything out there. Most Americans, and especially young Americans, they don't care about property rights.

They don't care about privacy rights. They don't care about any of that stuff. And the fact that the government used the Patriot Act as a means to supposedly keep us secure allows them to to track and surveil movement and and communications under under the under the banner that if you're plotting some sort of terrorist attack, we need to be able to prevent it. And, you know what? Guess what?

The government has abused that and corrupted that to hide that and ever since the Patriot Act was signed into law.

Yeah. You know? And and I I I get it. Like, I'm even sympathetic to it sometimes. I remember, I don't know, not that long ago, you and I, Chris, were having a conversation in the office where we're talking about, like, the rampant crime in, like, Chicago or something.

And I just, like, jokingly, was like, why don't we just turn Chicago into, like, Delta City from, Robocop or something? Like, we have the technology. You know? Like, how is how is crime even possible when we have all of this AI technology?

I'll give you an example, Donnie. In Chicago, they have that that shooting, like, system.

It ShotSpotter.

ShotSpotter. But guess what? The mayor and I think a lot of, councilmen are saying that's racist. That's terrible. We don't want anything to do with that.

Right.

I can see both ends of that argument. Do you wanna have an app or some sort of system that can track shootings in real time because there's way too many shootings in Chicago and way too much gun violence? Or do you wanna protect people's privacy? So it's like, you know, Ben Franklin said it. You know, security privacy.

You could maybe can't have both.

Yeah. Well I would suggest I would suggest that you don't have a right to and the court has made this clear that you don't have a right to privacy when you're shooting somebody in public.

Jim, you know, so even even, like, with my sympathies to some of these things sometimes aside, you know, we have to have that thought of, you know, well, the tools that were created on our side today could be used by our political opponents tomorrow. And and the the example that comes to mind is this this rhetoric that's usually used when it comes to, like, the when the second amendment issue becomes a, you know, topic of discussion in the public discourse, where it's like, you know, people on our side along with a bunch of other great arguments will sometimes resort to, well, you just simply won't be able to take all of the guns away from from Americans because we you know, there's so many out there. You don't know where they are, x y and z. Like, the logistics and the the practicality of a solution like that is just infeasible. But with these sorts of tools, it becomes more feasible.

So, what what do you think about this one, Jim?

Well, I mean, look. You can fight crime and you can reduce it. We talked about this, I think, last week. You can fight crime and reduce it to almost zero by locking up repeat offenders, especially violent repeat offenders, and keeping them in jail and never letting them out. You know, I'm old enough to remember the three strikes law, which used to be for about a decade, maybe fifteen years as it came about in the nineties.

Like, you're on your third felony, you've proven that you are not you are a menace to society and a dangerous one, and so we're gonna remove you from society permanently. And that did a lot to reduce crime, especially in large cities. New York City, under Rudy Giuliani, became the safest large city in the world, and maybe the safest in history, at least in modern history, in the twentieth century. And then we because of it's supposedly racist, Free Strikes and Your Outlaws, that they weren't instead of adjusting them, they were just gotten rid of. So now we have we have situations where I saw a I saw a notice on X this morning where a a woman was killed by somebody who had been arrested a 113 times.

A 100 and how the hell do you get arrested a 113 times and are still out there on the streets? It's it's absurd. And so we can make choices that have nothing to do with AI that would when when we not even need AI analysis to to reduce crime on the streets of The United States. You don't have to get into a minority report situation where we're trying to predict crime and and and take people who might be dangerous because AI says so off the streets. Look.

Using AI against our enemies on the battlefield is one thing. Using AI against, you know, innocent until proven guilty citizens is quite another thing. And if the if the idea of not using AI for those purposes, for these for this mass surveillance state, if that has broad bipartisan support, there's very little in this country, in a very divided country that has broad bipartisan support. Let's get that passed right now. Right.

You know, Donald Trump would sign that in a in a heartbeat. And and also on the other you know, similarly, using AI to analyze crime data to direct your policing into those areas is not necessarily or actually, I would argue, not problematic at all because all that really does is it speeds up and makes it as smart as and potentially as insightful as possible using AI. It's like doing that, having more time. You do do it quicker with AI, and you can do it smarter with AI, but it's just not really all that different from giving a really smart person, maybe, you know, an autistic person who's on the spectrum and is obsessed with these things, and to get them focused on this. It will take longer, but it might end up with the same result.

And using AI for that sort of thing to analyze the crimes and the crime rates in your cities and directing policing to stamp that down. I don't have any objections to that, or I can't think of any real objections to that. But using AI in these other ways that are quite, you know, frankly, kinda dystopian, you know, is a little troubling, and, you know, I don't think it's necessary. And and, again, if there's broad bipartisan support for this, let's get it done.

Well, that guy that got, you know, let off after a 113 arrests or whatever, you know, sometimes an offender will slip through the 114 strike, you know, program cracks. You know? You can't hold that against them. But, alright. Let's get into AI enhanced warfare in 2026.

So the first thing that I wanna read, I've got a couple of things that I wanna wanna present to the panel and the audience before I I open it up to your comments, guys. But the first thing I wanna, do is is read from this, CNN article. So this is outlining how AI was used in, in this Iran kerfuffle, if we wanna call it that. So, Keely, if you if you can, if you could pull up that, that CNN. Okay.

So this is an article titled hacked traffic cameras and US intelligence, how a plot to kill Iran's supreme leader came together. So this is an absolutely fascinating, fascinating story here. So it says, the traffic cameras on the streets of Tehran provided a real time something. I can't read it anymore.

Sorry.

It's alright. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Real time view of the targets.

Hacked years ago, the cameras allowed Israel to map the city in detail, establish patterns of movements, and build an intricate complex picture of what was happening inside the enemy capital according to an Israeli official. The cameras were only, part of a much more complex system, some of whose details were first reported by the Financial Times that allowed Israel to build what one Israeli source familiar with the matter called an AI powered target production machine capable of processing massive amounts of data. So this was something that was mind blowing to me. So apparently, the CCTV network, the, you know, the the surveillance, you know, camera system in Tehran, was hacked, and all of that raw data was fed into AI analysis machines to basically generate a three d model of the city and be able to see essentially in real time where targets were going, what their roots were, what their routines were, where, you know, everything along these lines so that they can, down to precision, know when and where to strike when they were ready to pull that trigger. Apparently, this system was in place a few months ago when we took out, like, the nuclear scientist stuff, but the the same thing was used this time around as well.

So I point this out because, you know, some of this was realistically possible years ago, of course. But the huge difference between a handful of years ago and now is that all of this is, requires essentially no human input. So for a long period of time when it comes to, you know, surveillance and all of that stuff, you needed some, like, human element to it. To actually, like, a a label a piece of data that's gonna be used by some algorithm to generate whatever. Or, like, an actual specific, like, you know, in James Bond, like, a little tracking device so you know where somebody's vehicle is or or a license plate readers.

That's even getting into AI territory. But now raw footage, that's all you need. Raw data just being poured into AI systems that could generate this sort of just all encompassing view of what the the enemy target is. It's an unbelievable level of sophistication that, again, was just not possible. This is gonna be my motto for the for the episode.

Just not possible a handful of years ago. On top of that, there's a just on the actual battlefield itself, there's you know, like Jim was saying, Sam was getting into it as well. There's leaps and bounds in in terms of what's possible on the battlefield because of artificial intelligence and just emerging technologies. But I have a couple of examples. The first one, Jim, that I want you to play is this Palantir video.

So Palantir is, something that we've talked about a handful of times, I'm sure, but, they do they're a private company that works in tandem with the government that does domestic surveillance sort of things as well as foreign policy. This was like a commercial or some sort of, I don't know, some some sort of advertisement for, like, what's possible in the future, quote unquote, that they released, like, I think late twenty twenty four. So it's not that old, but just check out what they're, like, you know, dreaming up of of being possible. So go ahead and hit play on this. I'll narrate it for just the the people listening.

But it shows a bunch of enemy ships coming into a territory. Very futuristic US ships responding to launching massive swarms of drones to be able to take out these enemy ships with no human being put in harm's way. It's a it's a pretty it's a pretty crazy thing. We were seeing examples of how this is actually playing out in the battlefields of Ukraine and and Russia right now. Warfare has become a almost commonplace in that affair.

It's what's kinda crazy about that is it was almost rudimentary, at first and maybe even to today, but they had these commercially available drones. You can go get one of these at Walmart, hooking explosives to the bottom of it, neither kamikaze ing them into, you know, enemies or just dropping the grenade from underneath this drone. It's it's astonishing what's possible, now. And and, Chris, I'm gonna come to you next, but I wanna share one more video just so we can kinda keep this train going. But this is a company called Eagle Eye.

This is a gentleman from this company that is breaking down, technology that they can equip soldiers with on the battlefield. He's breaking it down, on the Joe Rogan show. So he's wearing, this this futuristic helmet that, basically allows for, you know, the the soldier to see, like, an enhanced view of the battlefield. We go ahead and hit play on this.

You're gonna notice a drone picks up a guy behind that container over there. And what's gonna happen is when he walks behind that container, I'm able to continue to see where he is and what he's doing. So here's ghost x is the drone that's watching. So just watch for a moment. So the blue force is my friendlies.

So see that little right hand corner where it sees behind the containers? Uh-huh. They're tracking where the bad guy is. They're tracking where my guys are. And then watch when they go behind the container.

So I can actually see through it and watch. Now they're engaging the guy over there and he's down. So Yeah.

So that's that that is, again, what's possible. Seeing through things, essentially. So what he was describing was that there was a drone that was taking aerial footage, seeing where the, you know, the the tango is, the the bad guys, where the good guys are, feeding all of that information back into the helmet of the soldiers so they can see despite the fact that their biological eyesight is is blocked by these containers. They can still see it because of the data being transmitted to their headsets. It's an unbelievable level of technology.

The idea of these Boston Dynamics dogs that are out on the on the battlefield, that are carrying equipment for soldiers. If they're not already, they'll soon be carrying weapons for soldiers. All of this stuff is is what battle warfare in in 2026 and beyond is going to look like. Chris, what are your thoughts?

Okay. So first of all, that first video was me playing battleship. I want everyone to know that. That's how I get down playing battleship. Okay.

Now going back to the one of the first things you said was this Israeli mapping of Tehran and how they've done all this stuff. I think that that is overlooking the human intelligence that Israel has in Iran for a very long time. They have people in the IRGC who are working for them. So as much as technology and AI technology can help, you still have to have eyes on the ground. And the, you know, Israeli government, Mossad, and and whatever else they're using are the best at in the world at doing that.

And we just need to make sure that we, you know, keep keep in mind that AI is great, but you gotta have assets on the ground. That's what that's what, you know, has been, you know, helpful for, you know, military, you know, strategy from the beginning of time. So I just I I do wanna just say that, you know, that that I agree with you that the the that the AI technology is amazing. But, I mean, you know, technology has been a part of wars going you know, World War two, the enigma machine for, you know, German coding. You know?

So this stuff has you know?

Yeah. And and and I also should have probably said at the front end of this that, based on all the stuff that I'm talking about, like, there might be this, insinuation or I might be getting off some vibe that I'm, like, anti artificial intelligence. And I'm not actually trying to take a stance on some of this, maybe some of the mass domestic surveillance or whatever. But in this thing in particular, like, I'm not necessarily taking some sort of side. You know?

I just want to educate people on what is going on in the world today when it comes to artificial intelligence because it's moving so fast. But I think it's yeah.

I I think it's increasing the lethality of war, and it's also increasing efficiency. So when Jim was talking about the mechanization of war in World War one, I mean, then we had airplanes during World War two. We you know, it's like then, obviously, you know, the atomic bomb. It's like, this stuff is gonna keep getting worse and worse. I wanted to say better and better, but, no, this is not better.

This is worse for humanity because we are at the point where, you know, like, I I I I do wonder if, you know, China and Russia would would use this stuff without any qualms if they were as desperate as the Iranian regime is right now. Thank god the re any Iranian regime does not have, you know, the WMDs capable.

Oh. Oh, he was jettisoned by AI. Both both of them.

AI does not like me talking about it like this. I know that. All praise, inhale it. Okay? Yeah.

The, you know, another kind of interesting point here, and I'll throw it to you, Sam, is the idea that there's there's kind of like a a social leash when it comes to warfare being waged by, you know, at least western countries, when it comes to, you know, the amount of, blood and riches that are spent on the battlefield. And if instead of blood, we have circuits, you know, maybe there's not as much of a, kind of like a cost benefit analysis, you know, when it cost of the cost benefit analysis that would be weighed to, you know, have people of the country discouraged by what the battle that's going on. You you know what I mean when I'm when I'm saying this? Like, if we have just robots going out there and getting destroyed, no one's losing any sleep. Right?

But they're very expensive. And these drones are only 20, but the the Patriot missiles to to shoot them down are millions of dollars. So a lot of people are saying, jeez, is Iran just, you know, stringing us along? Because they can have these drones, you know, they've got probably got thousands of them in weapons depots, and maybe they'll just say, we'll just try to, you know, bleed them dry of their ammunition. I don't know if that's true, but

That that's fair. But, Sam, I mean, when you get a glimpse just from those couple of clips and and stories of, you know, the future of AI enhanced warfare, what do you think?

Well, what you what you're saying is about the, you know, the the human destruction that can be done should be, I think, the the the central issue. Remember that for decades, governments were killing millions upon millions of people. And the biggest weapons were were two two weapons, starvation and machine guns. The they the governments of the world killed at least a 160,000,000 people in the twentieth century according to the historian and demography, RJ Rummel. So that is extraordinarily destructive, of course.

I mean, it's just horrifying to to contemplate that. And yet when did that killing actually slow down? It slowed down with the rise of nuclear weapons and the the concept, that, Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute, came up with, which was mutually mutual assured destruction. The point being that the only defense you really have is offense. The defense that you have is the ability to inflict incredible damage on your enemy, and your enemy isn't the other country's people.

Your enemy is the people who are who are deploying the resources of that country, nation, group of nations, whatever it may be. So those are your enemies. And as we think about what to do about China and Russia and what China and Russia might be might be up to and how they might, want to do things in the future, I believe that the present action in Iran is part of that forward thinking by The United States. Mhmm. I believe that this is this the action in Iran is directed mainly toward China.

Russia isn't that important. Hate hate to put it that bluntly, but isn't that important. But China is. And China is very aggressive, very, very aggressive in a very surreptitious way ordinarily. So I think that this is directed toward China and as was the Venezuela, and Cuba would be directed toward Russia should we involve ourselves there as well.

But the point is that that these nations do have different values than we do. They're also behind us in a lot of ways, and so a quick way to catch up would be to inflict debilitating harm on us. So this is all about taking things to the next level and creating, at least, a mutual assured destruction system. Or in the case of The United States, after the fall of, the Soviet Union, a unilateral a a unilateral, world situation. And in fact, the the world has been going multipolar for about the past decade or so where there where Russia and China and BRICS and the like have been developing a a an alternative to US and European power.

Europe just knocked themselves out of that by impoverishing themselves and destroying their their military effectiveness and their and really corrupting their civilization. So it's The United States versus the rest of the world. And The United States has a history of coming in on the side of freeing people, and it takes power to do that. Mhmm. There's no alternative to it.

You can't just say, hey. We're right about this. Do it our way. It's not going to happen. So the the power that we project is real, and it has enormous consequences.

I mean, world changing consequences. And Yeah. We have to look at both sides of it and say, what is worth doing, and what are our enemies up to? Are we working well in advance of what they're doing in order to strengthen freedom at home and make sure that there there won't be incursions against it from outside?

Right. Yeah. Jim, I mean, this, you know, you talked about how, like like, it's all sounds like science fiction, but now it's almost becoming commonplace. In my preparation for all of this, and actually looking into the anthropic thing, there's reports that were acknowledging that anthropic systems, AI systems were used in the raid, to scoop up Maduro in Venezuela. Obviously, there's reports, you know, talking about how these AI systems were in effect in this Iran strike.

There's speculation. I haven't found anything, you know, specifically saying that this was the case, but there's a lot of speculation suggesting that that cartel leader in Mexico, was, you know, his routine and patterns of where he was going in a specific location and all of that was, you know, was AI. AI helped determine all of that information. So this just seems like it's gonna be just part of the process from here on out. What do you what are your thoughts on this concept of AI enhanced warfare in 2026?

Well, I mean, I guess the maybe the evidence isn't quite solid enough yet to confirm that how much. I mean, I'm sure AI, to some extent, is being used. It'll take a while for us to determine. History will determine how much AI was used by The United States in both the action in Venezuela and now the action in Iran. You know, when you were talking, Sam, you know, about, you know, about United States or be there being a multipolar world and Europe has taken itself out of the game really by impoverishing itself, The United States going in in a very limited and and compared to what's happening now, operation to arrest, really, arrest Maduro and bring him to United States for justice is one thing.

Executing what was going on right now in Iran to to topple that regime to literally well, not literally, but to cut the head off of the regime of of the molocracy. One thing I've learned since this war began is that we we think well, because they declared themselves so, Iran is a Islamic state. The Islamic community in Iran is actually a minority. I believe I'd have to ask AI. Maybe Grok can confirm this for me, but I did see that 37% of the population of Iran is Islamic.

So it is and there are people, despite the dangers, and the dangers are actually decreased now because of the use of AI and those that surveillance that you talked about earlier with the the help of the Israelis where they hacked the the the CCTV and can literally track exactly who the Iran the Republican guard in Iran, those the worst of the worst, target them for destruction and not citizens. And that people have I've seen reports where people are out on the streets and they are living in Tehran, and they're like, my house is five houses away from where I knew Iranian and Republican guard troops were. And I didn't my my windows rattled slightly, but they were completely annihilated. What we're seeing happen right now is that this is this is so much different than, obviously, the war in Iraq. You know, we went into Iraq, which was obviously very difficult and a and a big disaster all the way through.

Let's not get it. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not why I brought it up. But we we felt the need. The United States felt a need to form a coalition with NATO and so a lot of our allies to come in.

And, frankly, you get a lot of cooks in the kitchen that way, and your rules of engagement are up for debate, and a committee has to decide what they are. What we're seeing in Iran right now and Venezuela before that was proof that The United States is the global hegemon. Now, we like to think of ourselves as a benevolent hegemon and and a better alternative than China, which has a desire to be to replace The United States as the dominant power culturally, economically, and especially militarily on the on the globe. If The United States is using AI to to put on really a remarkable display of the the the the meshing of artificial intelligence and military might, and and without the risk kind of restrictions and rules of engagement that you might get if you have full NATO involvement. Under the direction of Donald Trump and Pete Hezgef, the The United States is proving that we don't need any allies, and if you wanna join us after the fact, that would be good.

We would be fine with that, but we are in charge. This is a huge wake up call to the world, I think, and and I don't think either Americans I think China's starting to absorb this idea that The United States really cannot be rivaled. That, you know, we've got in and out of Venezuela past the the Chinese and Russian defenses without them even knowing. They were completely useless. And the same thing with Iran.

All their defense systems come from China and Russia, and they were completely ineffectual. This is a pretty scary moment if you are in if you're a Chinese, you know, military guy or or Russia, it's like, oh my gosh. This is what The United States is actually capable of?

Yeah. If

they are completely unleashed and they use technology to its fullest extent? I'll just say this. I'm glad that we're doing this instead of China doing this in Taiwan. And, you know, hopefully, the the end of this will be will also be, you know, more positive than negative.

Alright. So I got a bad taste joke here, but it's just like, you know, when you look at Iran, it's just like, sorry. This is what happens when you buy your defense systems from TEMU. That's right.

Freedom is what makes this power possible. And and the the, Soviet Union stole our ideas. So it's freedom that makes this possible, and that is a good thing. But we need to make sure that our government is on the right track as well and that they're not undermining our freedoms within our country. But I I I totally endorse 100% what you were elaborating on about the end of the multipolar world just as it was beginning.

That's exactly that's exactly right. That free and I I think we a lesson we should take from this, though, is that freedom really does work, and we need to protect that in our country with with an absolute passion.

Yeah. My only point being you don't have to be pro war to come to the realization that it is a much better, not just for The United States, but for the entire world. That is The United States displaying this kind of military dominance and not some other country.

So, okay. That's a good I'll I'll use that as a segue though because it's this idea of this, perception of this dominance. But that perception, you know, it's, used to be all in the eye of the beholder, but now it's whoever's in control of the AI and the algorithms. Right? Because we are getting into a world now, and we might be well into it actually, where you can't really believe everything that you see.

The old adage was believe nothing to what you hear and only half of what you see. I've been saying for a while now that we have to lower that, on both regards. Believe nothing of what you hear and maybe only a sliver of what you see because there is a number of stories. Keely, I probably have a few links in there to to stuff like this, but there is a few stories out there that, are talking about here, I'm gonna share one with you actually, about how Iran is actually going, you know, the AI route when it comes to the propaganda wars. They're trying to share, produce, and share images that show that they are winning the war.

There's videos floating around on social media that show, you know, Israel in flames, you know, Tel Aviv in flames, and US warships getting hit by bombs and sinking and, crashed stealth bombers that are being confiscated by Iran. All of this stuff is all fake. It's all it's you know, I would say that it's AI generated, but if you see the quality of some of these things, it's almost like they just, like, you know, screen recorded a PlayStation two version of a battlefield or something and are playing those graphics, claiming passing them off as real. But all of this is to to to try to embolden the ruling regime or what's left of it to the to their, you know, the the sympathizers showing that they are standing up and they are strong against this encroachment of The United States and all of that. All of it's fake.

All, most of it's AI generated, but there's plenty of people that'll consume that and think that that is the case and that The United States is failing in their mission to, you know, take out the ruling regime and that sort of thing. So this is really bringing to light this concept of the propaganda wars. So it's always always been a thing since the basically, the dawn of warfare, propaganda has been a thing. But now with this new technology, it's getting to a point where you see photorealistic images sometimes or videos that look very genuine showing the complete opposite of what reality is. So this is something that we've been talking about for a little while.

This kind of, dovetails nicely into the concept of deep fakes and that sort of thing. But this is a real issue and, you know, it's something that we've talked about for a while now and considering the Internet and social media and the speed at which videos and content is shared around the Internet and social media. There might be millions of people seeing these fake videos and and just for a second before they go on to the next video and just assuming that what they saw was real. So this is a this is a a big issue that's growing, on the what to do about it side. I think just acknowledging that this is happening, knowing that this is happening, to use a more discerning eye when you see videos that might not comport with your, you know, interpretation of what's going on, I think is important.

But, we also know now that even the private companies are kind of getting into the fray here. You know, we talked about the big tech censorship and this idea of labeling stuff as misinformation for a while on the show. Guards, I think it is important to be able to do something about mis and disinformation. So one thing that's going on is, there was actually a a post. I won't read it word for word, but there was a post on x by one of their department of security and something or another that basically said that if a verified account is seen to be sharing AI generated images of war, not necessarily just one side over the other or anything like that, just AI generated images of war Without labeling it as such, they will lose monetization of their of their channel.

So there is a a direct monetary incentive to only share real content when it comes to the, you know, the war. Now is that a a fix all solution to it? No. Of course not. There is plenty of ways to kinda get around that or people being demonetized because they shared something that they didn't necessarily know was AI.

All of that will be the case. But, again, this is the theater of war in 2026 is this AI enhanced propaganda arm of it that, you know, is is a very powerful thing. Chris, thoughts on this one?

I mean, I think that this is probably happening in Iran where they have state control over the Internet, so they're probably forcing their citizens to watch ridiculous videos like this. I don't think this is happening, you know, in in Western countries where people are thinking, oh my gosh. Iran is kicking our ass in in The Middle East. Like, what's going on, everybody? Like, guys, all you gotta do is, like, tune in to CNN, MS Now, or even Fox News, and you'll get a pretty, pretty accurate report of what's going on there.

So I think this is just a joke. And like you said earlier, I mean, go back to Nazi Germany where Adolf Hitler in the dying days of the Nazi Reich was telling was broadcasting, you know, with Gerbels that we're we have got a million, men army that we are pushing back the allies. I mean so, yeah, this is just, you know, a a a losing side trying to keep face, and, I don't think that the Iranian people are buying this one iota when they can just look outside their neighborhood like you said and say, oh, the IRGC headquarters over there just got destroyed. Gee, I think I think I think the good guys, the Mericuds, are winning, actually.

Yeah. I don't you know, it it there is a little bit of both sides, though, and I'll I'll I'll give Sam an opportunity to talk next after I finish this. But, I will warn everybody that that video that they saw of Donald Trump riding in on an eagle and, you know, shooting people with machine guns, that was AI generated. That was not real. But, Sam, your your thoughts on this, this new era of propaganda that we're all having to deal with and, you know, whether or not there should be some limitations and restrictions or or anything, I guess, when it comes to pushing back against what could be dangerous misinformation.

What do you think?

There certainly should be restrictions on government, communications and and what our government says, and there should also be restrictions on how our government can manipulate things. The the public you know, if if somebody wants to say something, you have a right to say it in The United States, and, it has made us into a a a certain type of people who are skeptical, and pretty pretty thoughtful and pretty, willing to get into controversies. But our government doesn't have a right to, to lie to us. They just don't. And and I think that's the key thing, and they don't have a right to to create, foolish, propaganda.

They've done so for decades. Decade after decade, our government has done this, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century. But governments will always be tempted. The state will always be tempted, as long as there is a a system of democratic accountability in place, the state will always be tempted to manipulate the people. And in fact, it's probably going to put forth a lot of effort to do so.

Well So

Well well, Sam, I I wonder if if some of this, like could it possibly, like, cross over into the level of, like, fraud or something? Like, you know, one of the examples that we always talk about when it comes to deepfakes is, like, you know, right before an election, there's some audio that comes out of one of the candidates saying this really horrible thing, and then it's not true, but the damage is done and maybe that guy loses a couple of percentage points, god forbid, the election itself. And and, you know, that's that's like, on one level, you could say, like, it's speech and people should have discernment or whatever. But, like, another level, it's fraud. Right?

Right. Fraud and incitement to violence and things like that are simply they're not protected speech. And so, but what you have is you have a problem there, and and it's the way government works. Do you regulate it and say, well, you say in advance, well, here's what you can and can't say, or do you allow p or you do you allow it to play out through the courts and through the common law where, if somebody lies about somebody and that person gets elected, what what would the what would a state or federal government what what recourse should should there be? Should there be that if you, lie about something and it and it, pit tips an election that the the election should be, overruled?

I don't know. But I know who does know, Humanity as a whole, and that's how the common law works. You work things through k on a case by case basis to get justice in every single instance, and then that sets the precedent for future decisions. Doing things by regulation empowers the government. Doing things through the common law and through the system of courts and, private lawsuits empowers the individual.

And I think that that is where we need to go as a nation, and that's the real solution to these problems.

Just just very quickly, World War one, what happened? The government passed a law saying, basically, you cannot say bad things about the government. So this precedent has been in place for a very long time. And, also, just think to yourself, would you be against someone who who made a, nine eleven conspiracy videos and and used AI to generate, you know, an image that showed that on if what they assumed had happened was, you know, the buildings were blown up. I mean, I wouldn't, like, say, you can't show that.

Like, what the heck? Right.

The Alien and Sedition Act was enacted in the term of the second president, John Adams. Yeah. So since the beginning of the nineteenth century, we've had the government trying to control what people can say in an emergency, and there's always some emergency.

Jim, we're twenty minutes long here already. I'm gonna give you a last word on this topic. Could address this specifically or anything that we've talked about thus far before I wrap up the show.

I'll just ask everybody. Do you all recall the ghost of Kiev?

Yes.

And that was widely reported on social media, and I think some legacy media outlets picked up on it and reported this the ghost of Kyiv, for those who are not familiar, was supposedly an ace fighter pilot for Ukraine who was shooting down anywhere from six to even 40 Russian planes out of the sky. It was a complete fabrication. It was propaganda, and I think it was debunked by ordinary citizens and not by the the mainstream media. The the legacy media reported on its debunking after it was already debunked by, basically, us. And so, yes, the the sedition act and things like that do track all the way back to the beginning of this country.

They were wrong then. They are wrong now. You know, in the fog of war, disinformation and misinformation or just propaganda and false reports are rampant, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Some are done by mistake. Some are the malicious communications of our enemies.

Tokyo rose anyone? These these things, it's it comes with war, and it needs as a free society, we have to, frankly, allow it because in the end, especially in this era of constant information, most of these myths that are happening with this action right now in Iran, they are debunked before I even know that they were said, Sure. And it's easy to do that. And as long as there is free communication on free social media services like X, thank you, Elon Musk, the truth will win out eventually. Maybe not maybe it's uncomfortable, maybe it's inconvenient, but the scotching our freedom of speech in order to stop misinformation and disinformation was bullshit when we did it for COVID, and it's bullshit when we do it for war.

It would

it would help in public schools, talk kids how to actually use critical thinking skills.

Just No. That too. That too. Yep. So I don't claim to know the answers to the majority of the things that we talked about today, but I think important to talk about them so that they get into the public consciousness and a part of the public dialogue.

What I do know is that Jim Carrey was cloned, obviously. Oh, you

saw that one. He's not looking too good these days.

Alright. That's gonna do it for episode 529 of the In The Tank podcast. I wanna thank everyone for tuning in to this episode. For those that are listening to the audio only version of the show, leave us a review. That would be greatly appreciated.

And also consider joining us where we are live streaming this on Facebook and Rumble and Twitter and x and whatever, all of the different social medias, noon central time every Thursday. And drop a like, hit that you know, leave a comment, share this content, subscribe if you haven't already. All of those things help break through those big tech algorithms that prevent content like this from being shown to more people. But I wanna thank you all for joining me today, the panel, and all of you in the audience watching. And until next week, I will say goodbye.

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