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sam altman
AI-tocracy Complete?
The AI regulatory moratorium threatens to obliterate America’s frayed social contract.
Jun 05, 2025
I grew up under Enver Hoxha’s totalitarian regime in Albania, where paranoia reigned supreme, propaganda was relentless, dissent was crushed, and concrete bunkers dotted the landscape. Now, as I witness the United States marching toward authoritarianism, I am struck by the haunting echoes of my past. The effort to reshape society through fear, intimidation, and division;the attack on independent institutions;the surveillance state; and the apocalyptic fever remind me so of the dynamics that once suffocated Albania. Beneath it all simmers a pervasive social malaise and a sense of moral decay.
Today’s crisis is not accidental. It’s a long time in the making and the result of powerful interests—Silicon Valley billionaires, MAGA ideologues, Christian nationalists, and Project 2025 architects—who have set aside their differences and coalesced to accelerate collapse, fuel division, and destroy democracy.
AI Regulatory Moratorium
A chief goal of this agenda is the race to build and deregulate artificial intelligence (AI). Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, we’ve been subjected to the largest tech experiment in history. AI evangelists promise miracles—curing intractable diseases, solving climate crisis, even eternal life—while ignoring its insatiable appetite for water and energy, much of it still sourced from fossil fuels. Revealingly, some billionaires who once called for AI regulation now fund efforts to ban states from regulating AI for the next decade.
Tucked in over 1,000 pages of the recent Republican reconciliation bill is a sweeping moratorium which would ban states and municipalities from regulating AI for 10 years. The same bill slashes hundreds of billions from Medicaid, Medicare, and food aid—an unprecedented transfer of wealth upward that will gravely harm both the most vulnerable and the working class—while pouring over a billion dollars into AI development at the Departments of Defense and Commerce.
The real risk is not that the U.S. will lose to China by regulating AI, but that it will lose the trust of its own people and the world by failing to do so.
The impact would be immediate and profound. It would preempt existing state AI laws in California, Colorado, New York, Illinois, and Utah, and block pending state bills aimed at ensuring transparency, preventing discrimination, and protecting individuals and communities from harm. The broad definition of “automated decision systems” would undermine oversight in healthcare, finance, education, consumer protection, housing, employment, civil rights, and even election integrity. In effect, it would rewrite the social contract, stripping states of the power to protect their residents.
The “End Times Fascism” Forces and the “Network State”
Make no mistake—this isn’t an isolated effort. It’s what Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor call “the rise of end times fascism”—an apocalyptic project of convergent factions to accelerate societal collapse and redraw sovereignty for profit. Particularly, the Silicon Valley contingent merits closer scrutiny. Its ultra-libertarian and neo-reactionary wing, including Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen has abandoned faith in democracy and invested in Pronomos Capital—a venture capital fund backing “network states” that can best be described as digital fiefdoms run by corporate monarchs. Existing enclaves include Próspera in Honduras and Itana in Nigeria where the wealthy bypass local regulation and often displace communities. Now, billionaires lobby for “Freedom Cities” within the U.S.—autonomous zones exempt from state and federal law, potentially enabling unregulated genetic experimentation and other risky activities.
Silicon Valley’s Ideologies
Animating this project is a bundle of techno-utopian ideologies permeating Silicon Valley’s zeitgeist—most prominently, longtermism and transhumanism. Longtermists believe our duty is to maximize the well-being of hypothetical future humans, even at today’s expense. These worldviews envision replacing humanity with AI or digital posthuman species as inevitable, even desirable. Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who publicly warn of AI extinction, stand to benefit by positioning their products as humanity’s salvation. As philosopher Émile P. Torres warns, these ideologies spring from the same poisoned well as eugenics and provide cover for dismantling democratic safeguards and social protections in pursuit of a pro-extinctionist future.
DOGE
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exemplifies the risks. Operating as an unelected, extra legal entity, it has employed AI-driven systems to automate mass firings of federal employees, and deployed Musk’s X AI Grok chatbot to analyze sensitive government data, potentially turning millions of Americans’ personal information into training fodder for the model. Reports indicate DOGE is building a data panopticon pooling the personal information of millions of Americans to surveil immigrants and to aid the Department of Justice in investigating spurious claims of widespread voter fraud.
AI Harms and the Threat of Mass Unemployment
The perils of unregulated AI are not theoretical. Like any powerful technology, AI has enormous potential for both benefit and harm, depending on how it is developed, deployed, and regulated. Embedded within AI systems are the biases and assumptions of the training data and algorithmic choices, which—if left unchecked—can perpetuate and amplify existing social disparities at scale. AI is not merely a technical tool. Rather, it is part of a larger sociotechnical system, deeply intertwined with human institutions, infrastructure, laws, and social norms.
The states must “flip the script,” drawing on the strength of our democratic tradition and shared humanity, to build a future where people and not the “end times fascism” forces can flourish.
Documented AI harms include wrongful denial of health services;discrimination in housing, hiring, and lending; and the spread of misinformation and deepfakes, among others. Where Congress has failed to act, states have stepped in to fill the regulatory void. If they are now prevented from addressing these harms, without a federal framework to take their place, the consequences will likely be severe. Not only will known harms worsen, but new risks will emerge, including the specter of mass unemployment. Some tech CEOs, anxious on making good on their massive AI investments, boast about automating away people’s jobs and another warns of mass job losses, regardless of whether AI is up to the job.
The Purported China Threat
Supporters of the moratorium claim that state-level regulation impedes America’s ability to compete with China. But flooding the market with unregulated, potentially harmful AI risks eroding public trust and creating instability. Contrary to the perennial argument propounded by Big Tech, targeted regulation does not slow innovation. Rather, it creates the stability, predictability, and safety that allow American companies to thrive and lead globally. The real risk is not that the U.S. will lose to China by regulating AI, but that it will lose the trust of its own people and the world by failing to do so.
The Public Opinion Is for AI Regulation
The American public is not fooled. Polls show overwhelming bipartisan support for strong AI oversight. State attorneys general and civil society groups have also opposed the moratorium. In the Senate, the provision may face challenges under the Byrd Rule, which prohibits including provisions in budget reconciliation bills that are “extraneous” to fiscal policy. If enacted, the moratorium would likely be challenged as unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government. Regardless of its fate, the intent of its supporters is clear: to harness AI without guardrails, in pursuit of a monarchical dystopian agenda.
The Way Forward
Americans do not aspire to a future of despotic power and unaccountable surveillance—akin to the unfreedom I experienced in communist Albania. We know where that road leads: oppression, corruption, mass brainwashing, and eventually the breakdown of social order. But America’s story isn’t written by those who surrender to fear, fatalism, or nihilism. As James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Now is the time to face this challenge together. The states must “flip the script,” drawing on the strength of our democratic tradition and shared humanity, to build a future where people and not the “end times fascism” forces can flourish. Let us answer this moment not with resignation, but with courage and resolve, and ensure that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”
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In Bonanza for Arms Industry, Trump Announces Record $142 Billion Weapons Sale to Saudis
"I like him a lot," Trump said of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a prolific human rights violator. "I like him too much."
May 13, 2025
In what the White House described as "the largest defense sales agreement in history," U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a deal for prolific human rights violator Saudi Arabia to purchase $142 billion worth of arms from a dozen different American companies.
The White House unveiled the sale as Trump visited Saudi leaders including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the kingdom's capital city of Riyadh on the first leg of a Mideast tour, with stops also scheduled in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
A fact sheet published by the executive office said the arms sale involves "air force advancement and space capabilities, air and missile defense, maritime and coastal security, border security and land forces modernization, and information and communication systems upgrades."
"Oh, what I do for the crown prince."
Reutersreported that military-industrial complex titans including Lockheed Martin, RTX—formerly Raytheon—Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics are involved in the deal. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia reportedly discussed the potential sale of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom, but it remains unclear if the Trump administration will allow the transfer of the highly advanced warplanes.
The agreement is part of a broader Saudi commitment to invest $600 billion in the United States, which the White House said will "strengthen our energy security, defense industry, technology leadership, and access to global infrastructure and critical minerals."
Trump and his relatives, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, enjoy close personal and financial relations with the Saudi royal family, which has poured billions of dollars into their business ventures.
During a signing ceremony, Trump—who apparently fell asleep during the proceedings—joked that the Saudis should invest $1 trillion.
Business leaders including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—who is also the de facto Department of Government Efficiency chief—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, CitiGroup CEO Jane Fraser, and the heads of investment firms including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Blackstone Group also traveled to Saudi Arabia.
Critics including congressional progressives and anti-war groups have long opposed U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which stands accused of a litany of human rights violations including bombing and starving civilians in Yemen, massacring African migrants, and the 2018 murder of journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.
In 2019, during Trump's first term, Congress passed three bipartisan bills aimed at blocking an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partner in the U.S.-backed war on Yemen, the United Arab Emirates. Trump vetoed the legislation. His successor, former President Joe Biden, paused U.S. arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the UAE but subsequently lifted the freeze despite pleas from human rights defenders.
The record arms sale comes amid Trump's effort to broker a diplomatic normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The president is no longer demanding that the Saudis normalize relations with Israel as a precondition for a civilian nuclear cooperation deal, a move that reportedly alarmed Israel's far-right government.
Trump lavished praise on the Saudi monarchy in a rambling speech in Riyadh on Tuesday, hailing bin Salman as an "incredible man."
Trump gushes over MBS: "We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger and nobody like the gentleman right before me. He's your greatest representative. And if I didn't like him, I'd get out of here so fast. He knows me well. I do. I like him a lot. I like him too much."
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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 13, 2025 at 9:01 AM
"We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger, and nobody like the gentleman that's right before me, he's your greatest representative, your greatest representative," Trump said. "And if I didn't like him, I would get out of here so fast. You know that don't you? He knows me well."
"I do, I like him a lot. I like him too much, that's why we give so much, you know?" the president continued. "Too much. I like you too much!"
"Oh, what I do for the crown prince," he added.
Trump also announced that the U.S. would lift sanctions on Syria and restore relations with the country's new government, a move the peace group CodePink called "good news."
"The bad news is he's making new arms deals with Saudi Arabia, jeopardizing diplomacy with Iran, and continuing to ignore the U.S. and Israel's genocide in Gaza as they drop bombs on hospitals," the group added.
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Renowned Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Refusal to Publish Critique of Jeff Bezos
Jan 04, 2025
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from the Washington Post, where she has worked since 2008, due to what she claims was editorial interference.
Telnaes claimed an editor at the paper killed her draft cartoon depicting Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaire tech and media chief executives groveling on their knees at the feet of President-elect Donald Trump.
Along with Bezos, Telnaes depicted Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman bringing Trump sacks of cash. Los Angeles Times owner and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong was shown with a tube of lipstick.
In a post to her Substack, Telnaes wrote:
“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time, I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”
"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning because, as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Over three hundred thousand people canceled their digital subscriptions after Jeff Bezos decided to squash a Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris in October.
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