Essay by Eric Worrall
Big Tech is openly rebelling against Biden’s roadmap for energy destitution.
Inside Silicon Valley’s $12M Trump fundraiser with Winklevoss twins and venture capitalists
By Lydia Moynihan
Published June 7, 2024, 5:11 p.m. ETSilicon Valley insiders told The Post they were impressed by “eloquent and articulate” Donald Trump at Thursday night’s presidential fundraiser in the posh, stereotypically progressive San Francisco neighborhood of Pacific Heights.
…
More than 100 people paid as much as $300,000 a head to attend the fundraiser hosted by venture capitalist David Sacks at his multimillion dollar home, sources confirmed.
…
The Post is told that Trump opened his nearly 45-minute speech by talking about his late uncle John G. Trump — an engineer who was an MIT professor for nearly four decades — and joking that he should’ve followed in his uncle’s footsteps as a way to connect with the largely techie crowd.
But he quickly turned to serious topics like the importance of unleashing artificial intelligence innovation and why the US needs to be prepared to provided the massive energy AI will require.
“Fossil fuel is the only way to do it … solar and wind just can’t cut it,” the source said of Trump’s remarks.
…
Read more: https://nypost.com/2024/06/07/us-news/inside-silicon-valleys-12m-trump-fundraiser/
A CNBC video about the fundraiser;
WUWT predicted this shift in tech company support from Biden to Trump two weeks ago. But I underestimated big tech’s desperation for affordable energy. I expected something more covert, I didn’t expect them to go so public before the 2024 election.
What is driving this sudden tech industry panic, what is stampeding tech giants into turn their backs on President Biden?
The CNBC video above offers some insight. Trump is seen as more business and tech friendly. The Biden administration has strained relations with Silicon Valley since 2020 with regulatory crackdowns on AI and cryptocurrency.
But I believe there is another threat helping to drive this switch in big tech allegiance from Democrats to Republicans, a concern we may be heading towards a new Sputnik crisis – a foreign scientific breakthrough which threatens the tech dominance of the United States.
Except this time the Sputnik moment could be China building the world’s first superhuman AI.
I don’t have proof China is on the verge of a major breakthrough, though there is plenty of evidence China is trying hard to develop advanced AI. But right now, China is the only nation which has the energy surplus required to attempt to create an AI which has more than human capabilities using today’s technology.
Imagine trying to build a modern desktop computer using primitive 1930s vacuum tube technology. Such an effort would require a vast acreage of machinery, big teams of scientists and engineers, and gigawatts of energy to power and air condition billions of vacuum tubes, along with a crazy amount of funding to pay for everything. When completed the vacuum tube system wouldn’t be exactly the same as a modern computer. But with sufficient political will and investment of effort it would have been possible to build a machine which rivalled the capability of modern desktop computers, a computer with capabilities decades more advanced than anything which was actually built back in the day.
Right now, today, we are in a similar position to that hypothetical 1930s supercomputer project when it comes to possible paths towards rapid development of an AI superintelligence – but only China currently has the surplus energy and manufacturing capacity to attempt such a brute force approach to building a superhuman AI.
The USA is not currently in a position to attempt such a project, because green energy policies have robbed the USA of its once bountiful energy surplus, by driving chronic underinvestment in new dispatchable grid capacity. Biden’s energy starved USA is a hostile environment for energy hungry tech entrepreneurs, there are major political upheavals whenever a tech giant tries to draw more power from the grid.
If China succeeds in creating a machine which can outthink humans, or worse has already succeeded, the USA will only have a narrow window of opportunity to catch up before it is all over – like maybe four years with a president in charge who understands the issues.
The longer China preserves its advantage, the worse things would become for the USA and anyone else who tries to compete. If China is able to iterate enough improvements into their artificial intelligence system, without anyone else being in a position to play catchup, very quickly the AI itself would start playing a major role in its own improvement, and we could face an exponential surge in intelligence capability, with each 6-12 month upgrade cycle doubling the capability of the previous system, which then harnessed that greater capability to design the next upgrade. In less than a decade China’s AI advantage could become insurmountable.
Trying to beat China in business or geopolitics would become like trying to beat that chess app on your PC which always kicks your butt. Whoever had access to that super intelligent AI would always make smarter moves than the competition.
Am I right about an approaching Chinese AI Sputnik moment? I just don’t know. But one thing for sure, something has spooked US big tech. It might just be concerns over Biden’s regulatory crackdown and looming energy shortages putting them at a competitive disadvantage. Or maybe I’m right about the risk of a Chinese breakthrough. Even without a Sputnik level breakthrough, China’s energy surplus, electronics industry, and political will to prioritise realising China’s potential as a global superpower has put the USA’s commanding position in this space at risk.
President Biden is not in a position to deliver the 10s of gigawatts of affordable new generation capacity US tech giants desperately need to challenge China’s credible bid for global tech dominance. Biden’s renewable energy obsession and heavy handed approach to tech regulation are hobbling the US tech industry, just when they need every resource they can muster to compete.
My prediction – President Trump is about to reap the reward, for being the right man in the right place at the right time.
Update (EW): Updated the “surplus energy” link from a link about excess renewable energy to a link about China’s coal boom. AI needs real energy, not fake energy.
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize one country does not need much of a lead on AI to wreak havoc on other countries. All that’s needed is for AI to find ways to bring down a country’s banking system, electrical grid, food supply chain, etc, without leaving any fingerprints as to whether it was sabotage or, if so, by whom. It’s hard to retaliate if you can only speculate if an enemy is responsible.
The only solution is to be ahead of the curve, and ask AI how to prevent such things from happening and what to watch for. And let other countries fear you could do it to them.
The AI might recommend a direct attack, say to sabotage a response to a military action, bring down a politician or wreck an advantageous commercial arrangement, but most of the time just being better at everything would be enough to cause the damage.
Eric, the task is made an order of magnitude greater by the state of destruction of K-(asterisked) PhD education in the West. This began 3 generations ago and in the last year or two has accelerated to a point where the necessary culture of excellence is in a sorry state.
Ivy League and Oxbridge have deteriorated, are being run by post normal nobodies. None are a match for the best Universities in China, Japan, Russia, or India’s Technological Universities. I did a search a year ago for alternatives for a bright grandson.
I was pleasantly surprized at tuitions that were less than a quarter of Harvard’s and there are even scholarships available.
Do Westerners not understand that a first rate education is a prerequisite for a robust National Security!
For all my reservations about Western institutions I’m not sure an Asian institution is the answer. Chinese culture, most Asian cultures, have a power distance problem, you are not allowed to criticise the person in charge. I believe this is likely inhibiting their progress, challenging the leaders of the field is utterly essential to scientific progress.
Having said that Western institutions have their own problems when it comes to power distance. Lee Smolin’s The Trouble with Physics details how messed up Western quantum physics is these days, with gatekeepers ruining the careers of anyone who strays off the string theory mental reservation.
And we’ve all seen what happens to Climate Scientists who try to disagree with mainstream narratives.
I don’t have an answer to whether Eastern institutions have worse problems with tribal politics and gatekeeping than Western institutions, but I have seen evidence they might have.
Utter bollocks.
First, you conflate Japanese culture with modern Communist Chinese culture.
Japanese have the undue deference to authority, but the Communist Chinese are far more like a pack of unruly peasants than anything else. Clearly you have never witnessed a mob of mainland Chinese tourists utterly disrupting orderly Americans standing in line.
Even Confucian culture – which is pre-Communist and which the Communist Chinese are kinda sorta reemphasizing – has obligations which run BOTH ways. People seem to forget that China had literally 250 years of massive wars prior to unification, and that China had regionalized warlords as recently as World War 2.
Under Confucianism, for example, there is no Divine Right of Kings – there is the Mandate of Heaven. The difference is that Divine Right of Kings means God himself has decreed said king should be king, but the Mandate of Heaven means that if you have famine, disasters, plague, rebellions etc – you clearly aren’t meant to be the king.
Do you understand the difference?
Rebels and King alike would proclaim they had the Mandate of Heaven, but the regular people decided for themselves who was right.
There are many flaws as well as strong points of mainland Chinese/Chinese Communist culture, but undue deference to authority is absolutely neither of them.
Education is not the problem – or I should say, is not the most urgent problem.
Here is a simple example of what the real problem is: Russia has 3.5 million workers in the companies that comprise its Military Industrial Complex.
The US has 750K – ignore the “2 million jobs supported by” wiki nonsense. The UK and Germany, put together, have 150K.
This is why Russia is outproducing the entire West in artillery shells, missiles, drones, tanks and what not.
This article talks about how the US built 300,000 planes in WW2: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-300000-airplanes-in
But reading it just makes me sad because the West has utterly decimated its industrial capacity both MIC and civilian. Besides to cost-plus pricing, it is well documented there that a wide range of industrial production companies – from washing machines to cars – switched their factories to make planes. This is what underpinned the US economic colossus of that era.
Today, we have almost literally none of this industrial ecosystem that could be reoriented towards production of anything. We saw this with masks during COVID; the first new US artillery shell plant in 50+ years is being built with Turkish equipment and workers, and won’t start full production for at least 18 months.
Rebuilding such an ecosystem would take a generation – to fund to capital expenditures but also to train up new generations of workers. The ones with experience are literally dying of old age.
The nexus of this change was Robert McNamara.
He mandated the acquisition change from engineering to cost accounting.
Like I said, an excellent education is essential for national security. Russia has special schools for gifted children. Even a small village recommends such a child to the federal government. We’ve clogged premier universities with gender bender studies, race theory, ersatz sociology, social justice studies… we’ve opened the doors so wide that average IQ of undergrads is 100!
https://www.joannejacobs.com/post/college-students-aren-t-all-that-smart-iq-average-falls-to-102
This means there are a fair numbers of morons taking up space.
Please stop with these War Games movie based AI representations.
Total load of nonsense.
“AI” as exists in this latest incarnation of bullshit is purely a linguistic capability. It has ZERO technical capability. Just because an LLM can parse grammar reasonably well, does not mean it either understands what it is spewing out, that its web scraping reworded output is reliable or that it can do anything that a human being cannot do.
Conflating LLM capabilities with hacking is even more ludicrous. Hacking is about finding weaknesses and exploiting them – these weaknesses by definition are not obvious else the software or hardware maker would trivially have found and fixed them.
You clearly have zero real world experience with cyber security or have even done a modicum of research on “AI”.
I will grant you that there will be plenty of scammers touting the bullshit capabilities you reference, but that’s it.
Yeah, if AI gets rowdy, just turn off the electricity.
Does Chinese AI speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Or is English going to eventually be the global universal language?
The LLMs don’t care about the language so long as the words are recognizable. Mandarin is actually much easier to handle because it is grammatically simple. On the other hand, classically educated (i.e. pre-Communist/not Communist) Mandarin would be extremely difficult because it makes a lot more use of euphemisms, allegorical sentences and what not. Think of a hoity toity literary or art critic – half their sentences are references to things which only similarly educated people who know.
And no, English is not going to be a global universal language.
Cheap and abundant electricity is the key to progress in almost every field these days, and the fact that China continues to exploit fossil fuels to the limit regardless of emissions is proof. It may be adding nuclear and hydro capacity also but these are still secondary sources, while wind and solar continue to bring up the rear because that country is aware of their limitations, and doesn’t try to delude itself and its people that these are the only ways of averting a climate disaster. Meanwhile too many Western countries have allowed themselves to be over-influenced by the doomsday crowd which has yet to prove that their green energy proposals can actually replace fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear on a wide scale. So Trump is definitely on track with his insistence that fossil fuel security is vital if the US and other countries intend to be able to counter China’s push to establish AI dominance.
What cheap and abundant electricity in China ?. Theres major shortages that would make your hair stand on end
https://www.scmp.com/topics/chinas-power-crisis
They have already kicked off crypto mining offshore , especially to US !
The crackdown on cryptominers was because they were using crypto to circumvent Chinese currency controls, not because they ran out of energy.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-authorities-bust-295m-underground-045659183.html
Still doesnt make the abundant energy claim that my link shows isnt so .
Mining for crypto doesnt circumvent currency controls , it generates new currency. Im surprised you dont know that basic crypto fact
To call you a troll would be a disrespect of trolls.
Well, enough energy burn in ‘mining” potentially generates new crypto tokens. You can treat those as currency if you like. You can also use cowrie shells, NFTs, pigs or cows as currency if you like. Tulips were quite the rage at one stage as well.
Those tokens are wonderful for circumventing currency controls, money laundering, etc.
As if Trump was not already friendly to big tech in his first-term. Finally, these previous buffoons are waking up to reality and realizing that Biden and company are a fraud and an impediment to their success. Does that mean FB, Apple and Google etc… will have an epiphany and realize their self-interests are in jeopardy and Trump offers a better alternative or will Zuckerberg continue to build his doomsday bunker? Reality and self-interest just might trump emotional and ideology idiocy.
Still makes Trump a clown, as most of the senior people who worked for him in the White house have said.
Even his recent trial was a shit show from the defence . the judge had to ‘object’ for the defence in some situations to prosecutions questions.
Costello was a train wreck and made no sense unless trump picked him to be a defence witness.
No sign of Trumps long time bodyguard, Keith Schiller who did the actual invite of Daniels in Reno to come and meet big Donny ‘for dinner’. He could have refuted the whole meeting if he testified for trump, thats if it didnt happen …LOL.
I asked Physicist Will Happer what it was like to be Trump’s science advisor, and he said Trump was very switched on, he got everything – which is quite a compliment coming from a science genius like Will Happer.
I suspect most of the people making disparaging remarks about what it was like working for Trump are pissed they got passed over.
he didnt work in the West Wing. Just one of the 3000 people who work in the EO of the President outside the White House.
Still I’ve spoken to someone who actually worked with Trump, can you say the same? Everyone I’ve seen speak out against Trump had a grievance other than Trump’s behaviour – so my view is the “behaviour” claims are just grievance mongering.
Trump probably didnt know he existed. Science advisor just generates paper for other West wing advisors.
“When William Happer realized this summer that his plan to question climate science had been shut down by the White House, he knew he’d stick to his promise: to serve exactly one year in President Donald Trump’s administration and then leave.”
Shut down by the other advisors , if he talked directly to Trump it would have worked out different for him. Im assuming of course. have you asked him why Trump wouldnt follow his own agenda ?
To call you a troll would be a disrespect of trolls.
Duker, I am an attorney, and could not disagree more. Marchan did not hold the indictment unconstitutionally vague, did not allow the former FEC head to testify, and issued manifestly unconstitutional jury instructions concerning the concealed predicate crime necessary to overcome the expired statute of limitations. See 1999 SCOTUS Richardson v US.
Predicate crime wasnt concealed at .
The single crime that made concealing business records a felony was the NY state crime of conspiracy of 2 or more persons to influence an election by* unlawfwful * means. [‘unlawful means’ was 3 further crimes *possible*- 1) campaign finance- specifically Cohen at Trumps direction 2)falsifying other business records 3)false infor on tax return]
The various DA for NY city have prosecuted this very felony concealing business records 1000s of time in the last decade. [There even are specialist lawyers in Manhattan dealing only with felony concealing business records cases – look it up] Often they are politicians who have campaign finance crimes as the predicator. Trump used his own money- but falsified the records- unlike the previous Dem presidential candidate John Edwards who was tried for hush money payments with donors money.
Meanwhile a democratic Senator is being tried in Manhattan for his corruption crimes, the Presidents son is being tried for gun felony thing.
The former FEC head cant testify to the matter of the payments , only to what the law means. if you were a trial lawyer you would know that the judge is the sole decider of the applicable law , not any testimony from a witness
The investigation began within the required period before statute of limitations expired . It was halted for 4 years while Trump was President as that was a legal requirement for a state prosecution. The clock stops when investigation began not the trial started , when Trump tried every trick in the lawfare book to delay the trial. It would have been over last year before campaign season if his silly *loser* legal side issues werent in the way.
Its pointless you playing again the loser legal arguments that Trump could have made , while avoiding the proof of guilt in the 34 felonies he was convicted of.
LOL.
Yeah, really! He doesn’t have a clue. Although he thinks he does. TDS, it appears.
Judges directions to jury as Im no lawyer Which are agreed with prosecution and defence lawyers .
You are the crazy one
“. . . as Im no lawyer”
What an understatement!!!
There wasn’t much agreement from the Defense side. The judge imposed his own rules on them and on the jury.
The case will be overturned eventually.
The case will be overturned eventually.
Just about every legal pundit I’ve seen (including ones on CNN and CBS) is saying there are way too many problems with the case, all the way to its basis on a novel legal theory that’s never been attempted before. The supposed predicate crimes are federal, were not prosecuted (declined to prosecute), and he was never convicted of any of them.
But the case was never intended to stand. It was intended to convict so that they could yell “CONVICTED FELON”.
Poor Duker..
Doesn’t understand the words “Political Kangaroo Court.”
Nope!
Ah yes . Trump Deity Syndrome . TDS
I wish Bugs Bunny was here. He would set you straight.
Trump refused to testify and explain his actions.
So he stood on the Fifth Amendment. Welcome to America Lloyd.
Thats not what he said before ! Trump had claimed he would testify An innocent man doesnt need the 5th …or something
Most defense lawyers recommend that the defendant doesn’t testify. It’s an adversarial system in a hostile venue with a hostile judge. Fair Trial? That’s a laugh.
Hunter Biden didn’t testify in his own behalf, either. The case went to the jury yesterday. He followed the advice of his lawyers.
Hunter Biden didn’t testify in his own behalf, either.
But that’s (D)ifferent.
Not true.
Trump was informed that should he take the stand, he could be asked questions about anything with no restrictions. That was the judge’s ruling.
No matter how you slice and dice it the trial violated Trump’s 1st, 6th, 7th and 14th Amendment rights. As a result, either through the NY or federal appeal process or SCOTUS the veridict will be overturned unless the Constitution is thrown out and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that.
What idiot nonsense.
1} labeling a payment to a lawyer as a legal fee is not unlawful
2} the statues of limitations expired
3} state courts and DAs are not allowed to prosecute federal laws
4} the gag order is unconstitutional
5) NDAs are not unlawful
6) Merchan wouldn’t allow expert witnesses
7) Democrats suck!!!!!
Radical Democrats are dangerous.
The lawyer said it wasnt legal fees. It was payoffs
1) Stormy Daniels hush money
2) Redfinch IT who hacked online polls to boost his numbers
3) Bonus for Cohen – self awarded
Limitations hadnt expired, as the state prosecution was in abyance while he was Potus for 4 years
State court wasnt prosecuting federal crime – it was state white collar false business records . The constitution provides for state and federal control of elections .
Claiming an NDA as a legal expense is felony false business records when you have a multi person conspiracy. The tabloid publisher testified about the Trump Tower meeting ..something like 5 people there including Trump
A criminal trail doesnt have expert witnesses about the law , the judge is the sole expert on what the law says
“The lawyer said it wasnt legal fees. It was payoffs”
You mean the “lawyer” who lied to every branch of government, convicted of perjury, has been disbarred, and was caught lying on the stand? You must be on something!
“Limitations hadnt expired, as the state prosecution was in abyance while he was Potus for 4 years”
There’s an exception for Presidents? Wow! Show me that legal precedent in the law.
“State court wasnt prosecuting federal crime – it was state white collar false business records . The constitution provides for state and federal control of elections .”
Nonsense!
“Claiming an NDA as a legal expense is felony false business records when you have a multi person conspiracy. The tabloid publisher testified about the Trump Tower meeting ..something like 5 people there including Trump”
More nonsense. NDAs are legal, and they are legal documents.
“A criminal trail doesnt have expert witnesses about the law , the judge is the sole expert on what the law says”
And judges are overturned all the time. So they aren’t the sole expert when it comes to THE law. Even Oliver Wendell Holmes’ ruling that you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater has been overturned.
Cohen submitted invoices requesting Retainer Agreement payments.
It seems there was no written retainer contract, but verbal contracts are valid. T: “Take care of this and I will pay you later.” C: “Ok.” That is a legal contract and given a lawyer was involved, it is a retainer.
There are many very good and valid reasons to avoid verbal contracts. One of those is NOT that a verbal contract is not legal or binding.
Defense lawyers dropped the ball.
To call you a troll would be a disrespect of trolls.
The bank drafts were issued well after the election.
The bank drafts were against a personal, not a business, bank account.
The checks has no annotations other than payer, payee, account, amount, and date. So the question is, what was falsified in those checks as business records?
Leaving aside all the errors in your misinformed analysis of the recent trial which was so blatantly and grossly unconstitutional on so many levels that its jury’s verdict is certain to be overturned on appeal —
That “clown” gave the United States:
— energy security (U.S. a net exporter of oil)
— secure borders
— ~ 1.5% inflation
— no horrific military debacles (think Bagram, etc. in Afghanistan)
— affordable gasoline and groceries, etc. (up ~40-50% under B.)
— rational, data-driven, economy-boosting, energy policy
(and I could list many other great things)
I’m voting for “the clown.”
*****TRUMP 2024!*****
*******************************
By the way: you never did tell us what “that” is (re: “That still makes…”). Nothing in the comment you replied to supplies any meaning for “that” in your opening sentence.
You come off as mildly intellectually impaired (drunk? high on pot?). You DO, nevertheless, show that you can still think somewhat clearly by your posting anonymously.
Well.. at least for some of those points I would argue that you seem to say that
“Trump doing nothing about it” was better than “Biden actively screwing things up”
IMHO both clowns are quite horrible by the one metric which will haunt us all in the not too far future, raising the national debt!
But since these days I am “blessed” with little commercials when watching youtube about Biden asking for money.. before anybody thinks about voting, please look at some live feed of any recent Biden appearance, he looks unbelievable old (and yes I know people beyond 85 who would run circles around Biden or Trump intellectually -these two remind me more and more of those old muppets)
I look at both of those candidates and wish there would be anybody else!
“IMHO both clowns are quite horrible by the one metric which will haunt us all in the not too far future, raising the national debt!”
Trump’s portion of raising the national debt was spent on keeping businesses in business and keeping people employed through the Covid Pandemic, which began in 2019. Trump says if that money hadn’t been spent, the U.S economy would have gone into a Depression.
But Trump overcame the Covid Pandemic as did the U.S. economy and when Trump left office the U.S. economy was growing at 6+ percent and gasoline was about $2.30 a gallon, inflation was at 3 percent, housing loan rates were below 3 percent, and 500,000 people got jobs in Trump’s last quarter (which Biden promptly took credit for).
Trump also gave the US the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. It was 14.8 percent and left office with it at 6 percent.
Yes, the Covid lockdowns may have had something to do with that.
Are you claiming that covid was somehow Trump’s fault?
I think he is. He is wrong. He is wrong about U.S. employment, too. He has TDS.
What else was going on when he left office that just might have affected employment? And what was the unemployment rate immediately before that?
Trump didn’t give the U.S. its employment rate, it was the Covid Pandemic that caused the job losses, and it was Trump’s actions that restored the U.S. economy.
The U.S. economy was booming when Trump left office. Biden came in and put the brakes on everything with his stupidity and ideology.
And 1.5 million vaccines per day….
Trump also gave the US the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression 14.8 percent.
I’m telling your handlers they really need a better troll than the one they have.
A little perspective is always good:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/economy-jobs/
“Unemployment fell to 6.7 percent in November, from a pandemic peak of 14.7 percent in April—beating expectations of well over 10 percent unemployment through the end of 2020
The 8 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate from April to November is the largest seven-month reduction ever recorded
Under the previous administration [Obama-Biden], it took 49 months for the unemployment rate to fall from 10 percent to under 7 percent, compared to just 3 months for the Trump Administration”
Read the rest of the link and you will see just how wrong you are about Trump and the U.S. economy.
Energy security.
Thats called Fracking which had nothing to do with Trump
had been growing massively under Obama and became same under Biden . neither of whom made it happen either. Market forces
“During President Trump’s term, the U.S. imported an average of 9.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and finished products per day.
U.S. Energy Independence Soars To Highest Level In Over 70 Years[During Biden]- Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/05/02/us-energy-independence-soars-to-highest-levels-in-over-70-years/
Get lost, stinking troll.
my own derangement syndrome… Its very Trump supporter . Are you going burn down the Capitol next time ?
Yeah. The mostly peaceful George Floyd riots were burning down whole neighborhoods. No Trump supporter burned anything. You are a typical, silly troll. Begone!
10 plus months of Portland riots with a section of the town declared a “Free Zone” was not an insurrection.
A demonstration lasting a few hours that became violent some 15 minutes prior to Trump’s “fight like hell” phrase was an insurrection. Hmmm…
Shouldn’t you guys be concentrating on building up your preferred candidate? You know – touting Biden’s roaring successes? Come on fellow, trashing Trump isn’t working for you. In fact, it’s having the exact opposite effect. Get a grip and convince us why we should agree with you. Okay?
Trump has been losing since Nov 2016.
Remember when he set up his own commission to prove the 2016 election was a landslide for him. It folded when there was no there there
Every election since has shown the same result
Trump losing? It’s only in your mind. Where he will lose is with all the Democrat voting fraud.
Please differentiate between voter fraud and election fraud. The media conflated the terms and, yes, voter fraud was low, but election fraud was not.
Trump was not attempting to overturn the election results. With credible (but unsubstantiated) reports, he was attempting to challenge the election results based on reports of significant election fraud.
Hunter Biden’s laptop. Massive election interference.
Polls indicate it likely that over 5% of the voters would have changed their votes to Trump had the DNC, FBI, DOJ, and Biden not silenced the story.
Note the FBI had certified the laptop as authentic (and this was presented in the HB gun trial) 10 months prior to the election and nothing was said when the false Russian Disinformation hoax was perpetrated and social media censored.
Realizing that the Green Blob is basically Luddite, and reflexively opposes technology, is not something the software titans really understand. Tolerating anyone who caters to the Greens is dangerous, as the Greens are nihilists.
Technology is their equivalent of Original Sin, and the truly pure must oppose it.
Most leading techies I have met are not really person people, they have a very mechanistic view of the world. They are attracted to communism because it seems more orderly and structured, and they like order and structure, but they never really think it through – they assume everyone will play nice under communism, because in their conceit they think the value of their contribution will continue to be recognised.
But the moment the communist they helped put into power starts coming after them, they panic and reach for someone like Trump or Reagan.
Well put Eric.
Musk, NOT one of those lunes, actually knowing the dangers (why he bought X was twitter) has to fear the next leftist president, and that means Brandon if he wins, will take SpaceX and Starlink for “national security” purposes. Then they will take over X to end any chance of open honest discussions on a major social media site.
Agreed, I think they are finally starting to see that.
Indeed. Businesspeople, patent holders, and the wealthy in general, are appalled at how the left has hijacked the justice system to attack Donald Trump.
Most (I daresay) technical people are introverts and independent thinkers. They value ABOVE all else their freedom to be left alone and not told what to do or how to do it.
Asked what key issues mattered most to people in Silicon Valley and could influence which presidential candidate they decided to support, Sacks pointed to the economy. Other issues he identified as important included foreign policy, the border and lawfare.
(Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/david-sacks-says-trump-fundraiser-tremendous-turnout-surpassed-goal-kudlow )
In the following interview, David Sacks comments on Donald Trump’s assertion that he has a higher IQ than Biden:
… there’s no comparison between the cognitive abilities of these two men.
Heh.
Eric, I agree that Trump is the right man in the right place at the right time.
But for this US independent (NPA) voter, mostly not for the energy reasons you cite. China AI is hindered by lack of access to ASML nanometer lithography. Huawei is far behind Nvidia in GPUs and associated software. True, China has the coal fired energy to power AI. But US can just put up fast, easy, ‘cheap’ CCGT fueled by abundant fracked natgas near every new AI data center—after we get rid of Biden.
Trump is the right man because:
I could go on ranting, but probably uninteresting to non-US WUWT readers.
I don’t think the technology gap will prove decisive. One defining characteristic of AIs, especially neural net simulations, is they are massively parallel. You can always boost their capabilities by adding more parallel hardware.
So if it takes a hundred or even a thousand Huawei GPUs to replace one of the new Nvidia super chips, the AI will not suffer a significant performance degradation from the substitution.
What is needed more than anything to create a brute force superhuman AI is energy to power square miles of processing capacity. China has the excess capacity to power such a project, or the will to build a few more coal stations as required. but as the recent political confrontation in Connecticut shows, US big tech entrepreneurs face an uphill battle getting the energy they need to compete with China based AI projects.
There is no excess of power in China
China has no problem building a bunch of new coal power power stations, any time they need them – so even if you were right about the exact situation right now, it doesn’t matter. For a project of this kind of strategic significance Xi would sign the permits to build new coal plants or nuclear plants or whatever else they need.
Are the reports of China having difficulty, or significant uncertainty, securing enough coal and other FF assets to power all their projects, let alone keeping the citizens comfortable and happy, unfounded? I’d say certain neighbors, including Australia, need to keep a close eye out.
For sure, but there is a much closer potential victim. For now the Chinese are trying to cut a deal with Afghan warlords, but they’re having a lot of difficulty, because despite “Taliban” dominance, every warlord wants to independenly negotiate their own cut, and reacts violently if they are left out.
There’s a big culture clash between China’s tradition of mostly sticking to agreements, and the Taliban tradition that the agreement is whatever they say it is.
I suspect in a decade or so, when the need becomes great enough, and China gets fed up with Afghanistan’s inability to negotiate a stable deal, China will move in and put all the locals in “vocational training” camps, like they did with the Muslims in Xinjiang.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/11/afghanistan-taliban-mining-resources-rich-minerals/
Deal with warlords for what ? Those mineral riches they talked about just after US invasion were all BS too. let alone the acess to China over serious mountain ranges unless they go through the Muslim ‘stans
Good luck with that method too.
I’ve seen two different estimates of China’s coal power at the end of 2023.
Global Energy Monitor.org (US) puts the total at 1080 GW with 47.5GW added in 2023, whilst Climate Energy Finance (Australia) puts the total at 1390GW with 58GW added in 2023. The latter also says coal provided 70% of China’s electricity in 2023
Whichever is more correct that’s an awful lot of coal fired capacity.
All nice ideas until you consider the energy costs of powering AI at scale. All this talk about a seismic AI shift makes me rather skeptical. For implementation you better control the energy sector and devide tech fr the public. There will be a pushback. And, is AI not the new renewables? Promises, promises..
STORY TIP: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/major-lithium-discovery-fracking-wastewater-leaves-left-facing-ev-irony
That’s hilarious 🙂
AI.
By definition it’s “Artificial”. That’s true.
“Intelligent”?
Let’s see.
No morals or conscience beyond it’s programmers’ morals and biases. (No “conscience” for it to conclude it’s programmers’ morals and biases are wrong.)
But it is very fast at delivery a sentence or paragraph rather than just a “link”. Like Wikipedia, it will tell you in hurry what 2+2 equals 4 accurately but Brandon + The Green New Deal equals Disaster? Depends on the programmers’ “cause”.
I think that about sums it up.
China has another advantage in the AI space, there are plenty of accusations China has no qualms about conducting dangerous medical experiments on political prisoners.
Another possible boost to developing an AI is to reverse engineering living human brains, cutting into the brains of living people to try to work out the algorithm of important neural structures. Such experiments would likely end with the death of the victim, so such procedures would be way too unethical for any Western research institution to perform.
to openly perform? There is more than a little US history to consider.
Maybe. Who knows. I suspect though this approach, however repulsive, might yield less benefit than amoral proponents would hope for. Most people in history who have done such things went insane, and their “research” degenerated into pure sadism.
Eric,
I find it hard to reason in this dynamic and topic(s) of discussion. Sometimes emphasis swings to future AI, its needs, its possible dominance etc. Then I recall that people forever need food, clothing, shelter, which are less sexy but more fundamentally important, in the sense that AI can be turned off but food cannot (in realistic terms). So I tend not to read myself into fine detail,to just sit back and see what evolves. Like, I cannot do anything about it anyhow.
I favour a society where there are fewest people paid to tell others what they can and cannot do.
Growth of numbers of people telling us what to do stands out as the big social change over my 80+ years. Geoff S
I think AI is a handy tool but i don’t expect it to function solving intricate important and often political, societal problems. And even IF it could humans will bend it to their will. And the best policy is often not followed. The one that supports people’s interest will be. AI will be additional. If it wants to be widespread the energy to run it will have to be controlled. That means controlling how much AI gets and how much the rest of the population. For that to happen you already need AI or at least ‘smart’ tech to be in place to control the population. Given the limits of energy production i dont know how many people are going to vote f that. Politicians can and will be bought but given the economic prospects i dont see AI making much and fast inroads. It could even be that AI goes the way of unreliable energy, an addition to the current system.
I asked ChatGP if it was intelligent. It said no.
AI has not and will not do anything a human has not already done. When AI gets a patent by itself I will eat my hat.
Better get the tenderiser ready, drug companies are already using AI to search for new drugs, by connecting the AI to powerful drug simulators and programming the AI to find new stuff.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/15/1067904/ai-automation-drug-development/
Does that mean they don’t need to create any more actual Covid-19 type pathogens??
Fauci will not be happy !
No Fauci won’t be happy but beagle puppies will.
drug simulators, like… like models?
Inorganic chemistry is much simpler but model work very smoothly.
Sure, but if it’s models of drugs for humans- humans are organic and very complicated.
My impression s that the models are more about chemical structures than about human responses. Find very complicated new drugs that can actually exist, then consider more traditional methods to find out if the new chemical is useful.
Models are fine when you can verify the predictions against the real world, and have no problem accepting the results.
Just because climate models are garbage, is not evidence that all models are garbage.
True; My model steam engines work faultlessly …
https://apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@ur momisugly.id==VjN-_uqRFsCgI-VBtPvHHpBpZnexVczrfMWsIFl6Gyk7kAGpll4YoeLcuu_HAcPRWOxebK_OxHj2kzyLHw7ldhVWSPOrXP3YtC-IhoaIjondBAE/messages/@ur momisugly.id==AC1-oBIxZFXEYymSxAU72M-_CXs/content/parts/@ur momisugly.id==5/thumbnail?appid=YMailNorrin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMAPiGDRQhA
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ON COAL !!!
Distinguish between models constructed to predict and other types like repeat models that direct machines to make copy after copy of a product. Geoff S
Of course. Climate models are garbage because the climate is very complex and not well understood. Same for humans- if it’s models for drugs for humans. I don’t know- just speculating.
How about those patents then? AI alone? To make a patent requires an original thought, known as a synthesis. Simulations with invoking numerous repetitions is the same as a computer playing chess, just tries every possible move out to 200 or more, calculates the best chance of success.
Show me this patent that AI did by itself. You have shown me nothing, how could a computer program know what new drug will work? We do not even know how aspirin works.
EWZERO,
This link describes nothing remotely similar to AI Inventing a new drug. Same as Deep Blue,drug interactions with human cells are analyzed for the chances of success. A new drug? Not so much, you can eat my hat, a nice Temple of Doom lid, we will all be proud of you.
There is a backdoor. Take a known process, say a chemical. Simulate possible elemental replacements to see if a variation does the same thing. Zing. New patent.
Got this in a Sci Fi story decades ago.
Oh, I think not!
Time will show that AI is superior to humans in bioengineering new viruses, such as COVID-19 that came out of the Wuhan, China lab.
Buckle your seat belts, its gonna be a wild ride!
If Biden and the green movement get their way not only say goodbye to AI computers and smart phones, also say good bye to food, tap water delivered to the sink, and flushing toilets.
While it is good news that big tech is moving in a better direction I would be cautious. I don’t trust big tech unconditionally, there is a lot to be suspicious about big tech. They are crawling around in our business 24/7 and worse sharing our business with others. That is a bad thing. I think a Manhattan Project approach to AI would be a mistake. To rush ahead just to beat the Chinese would be unwise. Yes we should move forward with AI but at the same time recognize how AI can be misused and develop strong measures to counter it’s misuse not just by the Chinese but by our own people as well.
Like the infamous banking privacy bill, (attempted) privacy against everyone except government.
Unfortunately the alternative to a Manhattan style AI project is to be at the mercy of whoever makes the first move. Yes there are big risks going forward with AI, but are these risks really worse than the Communist Chinese regime gaining impregnable authority at home, and subverting all other governments?
I don’t really understand the situation in the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia. I don’t live there so I don’t have a handle for the way people there feel. For all I know, maybe the average person there wants to go back to being a medieval peasant. Or perhaps the elites in Kalifornia are finally starting to see the chaos and the filth and the crime and the destruction that Progressive policies have caused in what was once one of the best places to live on earth and perhaps they really want to change. Maybe. We’ll see on election day in November.
It’s the old joke, what is the definition of a Republican? A Democrat who just got mugged. Or in the case of Silicon Valley, an AI CEO who just got a Biden subpoena shoved up his butt.
The Peoples’
RepublicState of Kalifornia . . . that is all that you need to know.AI is for surveillance and do not trust anything coming out of Silicon Valley.
Absolutely – there is potential for AI to topple democracy, by amplifying the power of those who would enslave us. But the same tools which undermine our freedom can also be used to protect our freedom, people under threat need to get smart about it, and fast.
The answer is 42.
hmmm… or, 420
Are you unaware that noone is able to understand where or how the current AIs get their answers to questions?
. . . but what was the question?
I’m not in the 50K/300K donor class, but I know people who are. I referred one guy who was seriously thinking about attending at the 50K level but backed out due to the requirement for Secret Service vetting (standard for standing and ex President events) because that pretty much automatically puts you on a Deep State watch list.
He should have gone though, because being on the list as a large donor is far better than being a nobody who probably is still on (different) lists as he is a bit of a gun nut.
The mainstream media depiction above is actually not horrifically inaccurate but is inaccurate at its core: Lina Khan’s trust busting is considered less of a threat from a heavily Apple/Google/Amazon supported Democrat administration than if it were from a Trump one. Sacks and the other VCs – none of them are present Big Tech or even past employment at the present tech giants; it is not even clear they are of the generation that invested in these tech giants to start with.
They are almost certainly there because they understand how Thiel’s Trump actions for 2016 made him a go-to guy for Trump tech – positions which are already filled in the Biden administration by people like the Apple CEO and what not. This is pure opportunism and a maturing SV understanding that being donor class has its privileges, and being monolithic Blue is not beneficial if you are a (relatively) small fish.
Meanwhile in Oz one small step for mankind-
(22) WOW!! Australian party vows to LEAVE Paris Agreement! | MGUY Australia – YouTube
Hasn’t let go of the 2050 drivel yet but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
The Communist Chinese vs. the Communist Chicken Littles. This should turn out well.
Trump needs more than money and promises . . . a LOT more.
Good thing he has it. !
If US electricity was free everything would be made in the US.
Wealth can be grown, dug out of the ground, or manufactured.
The US is driving farmers out of business with regulations, tying up mining with the courts, and shutting down manufacturing with costs.
Record debt spending is replacing wealth. AI cannot solve this without political will to change
Julius Caesar stole billions of dollars from his neighbors. Killed or enslaved millions yet he is considered a great leader.
Jimmy Carter was a nice guy. Widely regarded as a weak and ineffective President.
This pattern repeats throughout history. Niceness does not a great leader make. Imagine if Biden was running Russia instead of Putin. Instead, imagine if Putin was running America.
Would Ukraine be fighting for its life?.
Niceness does not a great leader make
Chamberlain vs. Churchill comes to mind.
Julius Caesar gave us the Julian calendar. Not everything dictators do is evil.
As fast as electricity may be, it is a limit to computer power. A nanosecond is something like 8 inches of wire.
You cannot make computers smarter by making them bigger. You make them smarter by making them smaller.
Thus, massively parallel computer solutions are self limiting unless you can also shrink the hardware. This is why there is a continuing arms race to exponentially increase the number of logic gates on a chip.
If you cut the size in half, you get 4 to 8 times the real estate, depending on how many layers of logic can be overlain.
There are other considerations, speed vs. power dissipation being the first to come to mind, but otherwise yours is an insightful post.
It won’t be AI that takes down USA.
The American people, united in cause, are indominable.
Decades of studying has resulted it the only way to beat us.
Divide the society. Race, DEI, trans, Dem vs Rep, education… the list is extensive and all of them are binary. If you are not my friend, you are my enemy and if you can’t repeat what I say word for word and agree with every point, you are my enemy… Anti, phobic, whatever.
That is ongoing.\
Now, the other thrust is to destroy the economy.
It was once the golden rule that whoever controlled the money controlled. That has evolved. Whoever controls the energy controls the money.
So we are impoverishing out energy system to genuflect to the unelected One World Order sponsor, the UN.
It is not an optimistic future. And we are brainwashing our kids to believe they are doomed.