Author: admin

Via Off-Guardian.org,

If you believe in academic freedom, as well as free speech overall, please consider signing this petition, and sharing it with others who believe that higher education must be free from censorship of any kind, whether by the state, corporations, foreign interests, pressure groups, or by the university itself.

A full professor in NYU’s Department of Media, Culture and Communication (since 1997), and a recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill Foundations, Prof. Miller teaches a course on propaganda, focusing not only on the history of modern propaganda, but – necessarily – on propaganda drives ongoing at the time.

The aim is to teach students to identify such drives for what they are, think carefully about their claims, seek out whatever data and/or arguments have been blacked out or misreported to protect those claims from contradiction, and look into the interests financing and managing the propaganda, so as to figure out its purpose.

On Sept. 20, after a class discussion of the case for universal masking as defense against transmission of SARS-COV-2 (in which discussion she did not participate), a student took to Twitter to express her fury that Prof. Miller had brought up the randomized, controlled tests – all of those so far conducted on the subject – finding that masks and ventilators are ineffective at preventing such transmission, because the COVID-19 virions are too small for such expedients to block them.

Prof. Miller urged the students to read those studies, as well as others that purport to show the opposite, with due attention to the scientific reviews thereof, and possible financial links between the researchers conducting them, and such interests as Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation. Prof. Miller followed up by providing the links to the former studies (not easily found on Google, though they have all appeared in reputable medical journals), and other materials, including a video of a debate on the subject.

The student was so outraged by Prof. Miller even mentioning those studies that she called on NYU to fire him:

I hope @nyuniversity, @nyusteinhardt, and @mccNYU agree that this professor should not be trusted with educating and advising students, and I hope they take immediate steps to relieve him of these duties. 8/

— Julia Jackson (@julia_jacks) September 21, 2020

Having contacted NYU’s bias response line to report him, and getting no satisfaction there, the student kept on tweeting her demand for Prof. Miller’s termination, due to his “unhealthy amount of skepticism around health professionals,” and a range of other posts that she had seen on News from Underground, Prof. Miller’s website, and found no less insidious, misreporting that their sources were “many far right and conspiracy websites,” and therefore, evidently, not worth reading.

The student’s call provoked a storm of tweets, many attacking her, and others thanking her – one of which was posted by Prof. Miller’s department chair, promising to act on her demand:

“Julia, thank you for reporting this issue. We as a department have made this a priority and are discussing next steps.”

Soon after this pledge of institutional support, the dean of NYU’s Steinhardt School (in which Prof. Miller teaches), together with a doctor who advises them on COVID-19 policy, emailed each of Prof. Miller’s students (without putting him on copy), starting with a ritual nod to “academic freedom,” then hinting that the studies noted in that class were dangerous misinformation. To set them straight, the two advised the students to consult the “authoritative” CDC—specifically, its list of several recent studies finding that masks are effective against COVID-19.

(That the CDC itself, as well as Dr. Fauci, had, until April, publicly adhered to the consensus of those “dangerous” studies went unmentioned.) The two concluded with a stern reminder that the students are obliged to mask on campus (although Prof. Miller had made quite clear that he was not suggesting that they break NYU’s rule, which he observes himself.)

Thus that student’s tweets immediately prompted NYU to take her side, and several media outlets to attack Prof. Miller for his dissidence, without interviewing him. The following week, NYU followed up by urging him to cancel his propaganda course next term, and, instead, teach two sections of his course on cinema. Their rationale was that it would be “better for the department,” because enrollment in the latter course is always high; but then so are the enrollments for Prof. Miller’s propaganda course, which has earned the highest praises from its students.

For testimonials from Prof. Miller’s students click here.

Below is the text change.org petition, you can sign it here.

We the undersigned support the academic freedom of Prof. Mark Crispin Miller, now under siege at New York University for urging students in his propaganda course to read scientific literature on the effectiveness of masks against transmission of COVID-19.

We see his situation as but one example of a growing global trend toward rigid censorship of expert views on urgent subjects of all kinds; so this petition is not just in his defense, but a protest on behalf of all professors, doctors, scientists and journalists who have been gagged, or punished for their rights to freely research, study, and interpret data on a variety of matters regardless of their controversial nature.

Censorship is nothing new. We have been edging toward it ever more for decades, as both academia and the media have long discouraged free investigation and discussion of urgent public questions of all kinds, as those who would attempt to tackle them empirically have been slandered as “conspiracy theorists” or “truthers” and other slurs deployed to shut them up, or purge them as purveyors of “misinformation,” “fake science” or “hate speech.”

Such censorship has blocked the sort of open, civil, reasoned give-and-take without which higher education—indeed, any education—is impossible, as is scientific progress overall.

We see Prof. Miller’s situation as a flashpoint in the struggle not just to reclaim but to protect free speech and free inquiry. NYU officials have no right to intervene in Prof. Miller’s courses or message his students surreptitiously undermining his integrity as an instructor.

They have no right to deprive him of the courses he was hired to teach and they should not join in a public smear campaign against the very rights they should uphold at a university.

That so stated, we urge that NYU respect his academic freedom, and thereby set a good example for all other schools with faculty who dare contest official narratives. Otherwise, “education” there will be mere training for compliance, stunting students’ minds instead of opening them – a practice fatal to democracy, and, finally, to humanity itself.

As the country inches closer to the Nov. 03 presidential election, federal agencies, city governments, and local police forces are preparing for political and social instabilities, no matter the election outcome. 

Concerns are mounting that mass protests, violent confrontations between extremist groups, and widespread property damage could be seen on election day and days after. If the outcome of the election is undecided, chaos could linger for weeks, if not months. 

The prospects of civil unrest around election day have prompted a chain of US survival communities to “activate” – opening their doors for members to hunker down in bomb shelters, with an abundance of weapons and ammo, and years worth of food.

Reuters reports Fortitude Ranch doomsday camps in West Virginia and Colorado will open both facilities to members on election day because of the threat of social unrest. 

Fortitude Ranch’s October newsletter suggested “looting and violence” across major US metro areas, similar to what was seen over the summer following the police killing of George Floyd, could follow the elections next month. The newsletter warned social instabilities could transform into long-term issues. 

Reuters quotes the survival camp’s CEO Drew Miller as pointing out that chatter on social media suggest election results could tilt the country into civil war. Miller did not rule out that possibility… 

“This will be the first time we have opened for a collapse disaster, though it may end up not being so,” said Miller in an emailed statement. “We consider the risk of violence that could escalate in irrational, unpredictable ways into widespread loss of law and order is real.”

Readers may recall, in April, we highlighted soaring demand for Fortitude Ranch’s doomsday bunkers came as the virus pandemic resulted in nationwide lockdowns. We then suggested, given the socio-economic implosion, that a “social bomb” was getting ready to explode across Western cities. And it wasn’t until late May, after Floyd was killed by police, that unrest broke out in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the country.

Fortitude Ranch describes itself as “a survival community equipped to survive any disaster and long-term loss of law and order,” and its actual location(s) are unknown to non-members.

“Fortitude Ranch is a survival community equipped to survive any type of disaster and long-term loss of law and order, managed by full-time staff. Fortitude Ranch is affordable (about $1,000/person annually) because of large numbers of members and economies of scale. Fortitude Ranch is especially attractive to join because it doubles as a recreation and vacation facility as well as a survival retreat. Members can vacation, hunt, fish and recreate at our forest and mountain locations in good times, and shelter at Fortitude Ranch to survive a collapse,” the company’s website said.

At the moment, Fortitude Ranch has two locations in West Virginia and Colorado, with ten more locations expected in the coming years. The goal is to create a nationwide network of doomsday bunkers. 

The countdown has started. All levels of government to doomsday bunker facilities are now preparing for what could be a violent November. 

 

 

Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

Cameras are everywhere…

Do you have a cell phone? Unless it’s an old antiquated flip phone, there’s a camera. Public parks, roadways, the parking garage at your favorite shopping center, police officers wearing body cameras, school…they are everywhere.

There was a time when Americans viewed the presence of security cameras in a private business as a creepy Orwellian intrusion into their private lives. They didn’t want to be recorded and watched as they did their shopping or when they went into the bank to cash their paychecks. Those days came and went and Americans accepted and adapted those cameras.

Then along came public surveillance cameras and traffic light cameras. And, once again people felt their lives were being infringed upon. Not only were private businesses still conducting the surveillance, but the government was now watching too. This left many people feeling as though their privacy rights had been taken away from them.

All that changed when 9/11 happened. Suddenly Americans couldn’t be stopped from stuffing their concerns over privacy as far down the toilet bowl as they could.

Two decades later the “Privacy Train” has left the station.

Everywhere we go, there are cameras. Whether it be a camera in a retail store, at a stoplight, inside a hospital, inside an Uber car, inside a restaurant, possibly even inside your own home. Oh, and let’s not forget the doorbell cameras. like the ones surveilling the entire neighborhood without their consent. If you have a smartphone, it’s tracking everywhere you go and that data is being used to compile incredibly detailed information about you.

Cameras are everywhere…including in our own hands. While the images being posted on social media may just be static images, they are still pictures of someone who may not even know that image was posted.

According to Social Media Statistics 2020: Top Networks by the Number Facebook alone has over 300 million photos uploaded DAILY.

People are not only being recorded, they are recording themselves and one another.

And this may sound like some crazy high-tech thing that doesn’t really affect us personally, but consider the ramifications on OPSEC if your every move is tracked and your every purchase is documented.

You won’t believe how often the typical American is recorded every day.

An article published by the Daily Mail reports that the typical American is recorded by security cameras 238 times a week. The information was obtained from Safety.com whose security team conducted a study on surveillance technology. That figure includes:

• Video taken at work: average employee spotted on cameras 40 times per week

• Video taken on the road: Americans are filmed 160 times while driving

• Video taken in stores

• Video taken in homes and neighborhoods: 14 times per week

For Americans who travel a lot or who work in “highly patrolled areas,” the number of times they are recorded on film could reach over 1000 times per week. According to the research, it can be difficult to know how many traffic cameras are passively filming or permanently storing footage. Another result of the study was that people underestimate how often they are recorded.

A survey from IPVM  in 2016 found that most people assumed they were being recorded less than five times a day. The example of a typical day was taken from that report:

This example is a running total, including the number of cameras likely present at each stop:

• 8:00AM: 4 Cameras – Get a cup of coffee –  4 cameras in Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts

• 8:30AM: 24 Cameras – School or office – cameras in parking lot and interior, you will be picked up at various angles by 20 cameras at least.

• 12:15PM: 30 Cameras – Stop at ATM before lunch for cash.  Bank will have exterior cameras, ATM will have close-up camera

• 12:30PM: 38 Cameras – Go get lunch – 4 cameras at lunch spot, plus 4 more easily ay surrounding businesses

• 5:00PM: 45 Cameras – Leave work, go to gym to work out. Camera at check-in desk, plus in 6-8 in workout area

• 5:45PM: 46 Cameras – Stop to pick up dry cleaning.  Camera at front register

• 6:00PM: 52 Cameras – Stop for gas.  Cameras at pumps and in store

• 6:15PM: 54 Cameras – Quick car wash.  Cameras at entry and in-bay

• 7:00PM: 58 Cameras – Pick up kids from practice/game.  Cameras in school parking lot or on building exterior

Lawmakers and civil rights advocates are concerned about the growing state of surveillance.

But, of course, civil rights advocates do not have a real voice in American society. And, lawmakers are the ones who have facilitated the surveillance state, to begin with. So, unfortunately, if you are someone who was hoping to get back some of your rights, don’t hold your breath.

Dan Avery, author of the article on the Daily Mail writes reports that by next year, there will be approximately one billion security cameras operating around the globe. And 10 to 18 percent of them will be in the United States. In 2019, with 70 million cameras in the US, there was at least one security camera for every 4.6 Americans, putting the US as the second-highest ratio. China, being the first, has 4.1 cameras per person. (China, of course, is the country most infamous for social credit scores but many believe that the US is not far behind.)

Some people advocate these surveillance cameras as a vital tool for safety and security, and an important law enforcement device. However, in an article on All Together concerns about inequality, false results, and unethical use of this technology:

“There’s strong evidence that many of the systems in deployment are reflecting and amplifying existing forms of inequality,” said Sarah Myers West, a postdoctoral researcher at AI Now Institute, an interdisciplinary research center at New York University dedicated to understanding the social implications of artificial intelligence. “For this reason, it’s critical that we have a public conversation about the social impact of AI systems, and AI Now’s work aims to engage in research to inform that conversation.”

Joy Buolamwini, an MIT graduate, AI researcher, and computer scientist, provided firsthand research to inform the conversation. Buolamwini, a Ghanaian American, wrote a thesis, “Gender Shades,” in 2017, after she was misidentified while working with facial analysis software. The software didn’t detect her face until she put on a white mask, she said, “because the people who coded the algorithm hadn’t taught it to identify a broad range of skin tones and facial structures.” The software returned worse results for women and darker-skinned persons.

“We often assume machines are neutral, but they aren’t,” she said in a Time magazine essay about her discoveries. Her thesis methodology uncovered large racial and gender bias in AI services from such companies as Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon. In response, Buolamwini founded the Algorithmic Justice League to “create a world with more ethical and inclusive technology.”

Owners of smart home security cameras may be in jeopardy.

Those smart home security cameras may not make you as safe as you thought they would.

“Some popular home security cameras could allow would-be burglars to work out when you’ve left the building, according to a study published Monday.” CNN Business

An International study carried out by Queen Mary University of London and the Chinese Academy of Science discovered they could tell if someone was home, and even what they were doing in the home, just by looking at data uploaded by their home security camera, without monitoring the video footage itself. And of course as we just published, the microphones embedded in your smart devices can record you and are being used more and more often by police.

An article written by Brandon Turbeville in 2011,“New Report: ‘Recording Everything’ Details How Governments Can Shape The Dynamics Of Dissent,” details how this data is being stored, at a surprisingly low cost to do so.

According to Turbeville, given the prices (in 2011) and the projected decrease in cost in the future, the United States would be able to store the location data of everyone in the country for a whole year for approximately $18,000, the cost of a low-wage job.

The average American is now videotaped and recorded more times in a day than a Hollywood star fifty years ago.

Clearly, we are no longer entering a “growing” surveillance state, we are already in one.

We detailed Wednesday that China’s state-run Global Times issued a major threat, saying China should “fully prepare itself for war” with Taiwan in the event it restores diplomatic relations with the United States. The tabloid’s chief editor Hu Xijin wrote in his latest English language op-ed that “We must no longer hold any more illusions. The only way forward is for the mainland to fully prepare itself for war and to give Taiwan secessionist forces a decisive punishment at any time.”

On the same day National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien addressed just such a scenario at an event hosted at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, describing as summarized by Al Jazeera that China is “engaged in a significant naval build-up probably not seen since Germany’s attempt to compete with Britain’s Royal Navy prior to WWI.”

“Part of that is to give them the ability to push us back out of the Western Pacific, and allow them to engage in an amphibious landing in Taiwan,” O’Brien said. “The problem with that is that amphibious landings are notoriously difficult.”

As he specified this includes the fact of about a 100-mile distance between the mainland and Taiwan, adding to difficulties of a well-organized amphibious landing.

“It’s not an easy task, and there’s also a lot of ambiguity about what the United States would do in response to an attack by China on Taiwan,” he said, referencing also that China hawks in Congressed have introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act bill. More directly he was referencing the US longtime posture of ‘strategic ambiguity’ regards defending Taiwan.

“You can’t just spend 1 percent of your GDP [gross domestic product], which the Taiwanese have been doing – 1.2 percent – on defense, and hope to deter a China that’s been engaged in the most massive military build up in 70 years,” he said, during a week where Taiwan’s defense spending was up for question at the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference.

O’Brien proffered a strategy that militarily Taiwan needs to “turn themselves into a porcupine” because ultimately “Lions generally don’t like to eat porcupines.”

It didn’t take long for Chinese state media to respond in what it called out as Taiwan’s “weakness”:

Meanwhile, after much of a year which has witnessed Taiwan’s Air Force scramble its jets dozens of times, and conduct deterrence exercises and aerial patrol missions, Taiwan’s Minister of National Defense Yen Teh-fa on Wednesday announced the island has spent nearly $900 million scrambling its jets in response to PLA warplane incursions and provocations.

In the end it appears that the message from Washington continues to be that Taiwan should dramatically boost defense spending, because it’s anything but clear that the Pentagon will be there when the Chinese military machine comes calling.

Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the leading American crypto exchange, caused a stir recently when he announced a policy of keeping Coinbase out of political and social activism to better focus on its core mission. He backed up the decision with a generous buyout for any employees who disagreed. In his own words:

Many companies never stand the test of time, because they decide to dabble in unrelated efforts, and distract and divide their workforce in the process. Paradoxically, by being laser focused on our mission, we will likely have an even greater impact on the world, through our products and growing customer base.”

One should read the entire post before reacting, as some of the people who have responded negatively clearly have not. There’s more to his argument than “we are just here to make money,” and the online pundits who insist on reducing it to some caricature of capitalism just validate the overall argument.

Armstrong says that he doesn’t want the pursuit of outside causes to distract Coinbase from the core work of building an open financial system that provides greater access to everyone, because executing on that mission will have a greater impact than activism.

I support this approach and hope that more crypto companies adopt it — leaving the tweeting, campaigning, protesting and every other kind of vocal activism to others.

My reasoning starts with that famous proverb that Mohandas Gandhi — the man often credited for it — never said: to be the change we want to see in the world. It’s a powerful saying, regardless of who came up with it, but lacking in practical instructions. Thankfully, what Gandhi did say was more nuanced.

“All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

That last sentence makes all of the difference. There’s a false belief in today’s discourse that yelling about a problem, or shaming those considered responsible for it, go a long way toward solving it. They don’t. Outrage is the state of being upset over something and demanding somebody else fix it. Real change takes individual action — but not, as the Mahatma believed — the kind that impacts others, but rather the kind that impacts the self. A million people tweeting about the need to end racism wouldn’t change much. Those same people taking the time (and summoning the humility) needed to confront their own biases — the kind that all of us, myself included, suffer from — would make a genuine impact.

But that’s doing, and doing is hard. Retweeting is easier. So everyone gets caught up in a recursive loop of posting and protesting, then being upset that nothing has changed, then getting louder. Sides are picked, battle lines are drawn, and little is accomplished. Doing is more effective, but easily distracted by the need for validation. A company deciding to have more minorities in executive positions is great. That same company issuing multiple press releases before the first promotion is less great.

Which brings us back to crypto.

One of the things that shocked me about Bitcoin when I first learned about it was its sheer openness. Anyone could do anything, from owning the coins to writing the code to participating in mining to building the supporting infrastructure (as Coinbase has). If you wanted to build the next great crypto wallet, all you had to do was build it. It didn’t matter if you were young or old, black or white, gay or straight, American or Iranian, an experienced coder or a total noob. The only thing that mattered to the rest of the community was the usefulness of your product, which you were free to build however you thought best.

This was a stark contrast to the traditional financial system, where nothing could be done until you were given permission by a gatekeeper, and the first thing the gatekeeper would ask you to do was to fill out a form, and that form asked you to disclose your name, age and address — information which could easily be used (or misused) to make conclusions about your gender, nationality and race.

Decentralization is often portrayed by the skeptics as a negative, an open invitation to the world’s anarchists or criminals to cause mischief. But decentralized also means “doesn’t discriminate.” When there is nobody in charge, there is no ability to oppress or exercise bias. Our existing financial system on the other hand is built on bias.

Case in point KYC, or the almost universal requirement for traditional financial services providers to “know their client.” Such requirements are designed with good intent, to cut down on financial crime and prevent the use of the banking system for illicit activity. But they are costly, and that cost is borne disproportionately by the underprivileged. Even when executed fairly, KYC requirements mean that poor people who don’t have proper ID, migrants who don’t have a fixed address or undocumented workers trying to stay under the radar can’t get a bank account. That is the best case scenario. The worse case scenario is the personal information gathered for these requirements are used to practice racism, sexism and every other kind of discrimination.

The blockchain doesn’t discriminate, because the blockchain doesn’t know, and better yet, doesn’t give a damn. All anyone needs to access bitcoins is free software — making the bitcoin platform the first digital platform that can’t pick favorites. As far as the protocol is concerned, a billionaire in America gets the same amount of access as a farmer in Thailand. Not because there are laws against discrimination or because miners have undergone sensitivity training, but because both users look exactly the same to every other participant.

A more abstract, but arguably more insidious form of discrimination within the legacy financial system is the distribution of new money. In crypto, new coins are generated algorithmically and distributed to those who contribute the most, be they miners, coders or users. It doesn’t matter who they are, where they live or which political candidate they’ve contributed to. The fiat domain works on the opposite principle. Newly minted dollars, euros or pounds usually go to those who deserve it least, like “too big to fail” banks in the last economic crisis or any corporation that has access to public capital markets in this one.

Central banks such as the ECB and Federal Reserve are now using printed money to subsidize the borrowing of large corporations, including that of mega tech companies like Apple and Microsoft, a corporate subsidy for highly profitable companies who have actually benefited from the pandemic. Since they don’t need the money, these companies will just use the subsidy to drive up their stocks via share buybacks. According to the Fed’s own data, stock ownership in the U.S. skews heavily towards the old, the white and the rich. That makes Fed programs that benefit the market (which is practically all of them) a form of systemic discrimination, executed to the tune of trillions of dollars.

No wonder the current chairman has started giving speeches on the need to tackle racism. A little bit of saying to whitewash all of that tragic doing.

All of these issues are amplified in developing countries where access to basic financial services are even more limited and government institutions are a lot more corrupt. But there is hope, because the same meritocratic and open approach to financial services that was pioneered by Bitcoin is now being applied to everything from fiat currencies to banking. Argentinians fed up with endless government defaults and devaluations could now save in a dollar-denominated stablecoin called Dai, and expats who are often can’t use banks will soon have much better remittance options, including Libra.

Further out on the horizon are protocols for borrowing, lending and investing. Not just in crypto, but tokenized versions of every other asset class, from gold to real estate to collectible art. Such products are not available to the vast majority of people today, due to a tragic mix of poor infrastructure and bad policy. This lack of access has been a prime contributor to the explosion in the wealth gap over the past decade, and when combined with the other types of discrimination inherent to our financial system, form a de facto conspiracy by economic elites to make sure nobody else catches up to them. Put differently, the New York Stock Exchange, Sotheby’s and the SEC are not about to make investing a universal right, but the Ethereum blockchain just might.

I don’t mean to exaggerate the benefits as they stand today. Bitcoin is still too small to make a difference and stablecoins and other forms of tokens are too new to make a dent. But they represent a new way of doing things, one that is superior along the axis that society increasingly cares about, such as equal treatment and universal access. Bringing that vision to the masses will take a lot more doing, and some of it will have to be done by companies like Coinbase.

So Brian Armstrong was correct. The company can have a much greater impact on social justice by focusing on its core mission. As can everyone else in crypto.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get more dystopian this year, American multi-national software company Citrix has quietly released into the internet ethos that it expects workers to have “implanted chips” by the year 2035. 

Citrix has joined names like Zoom and Slack as popular talking points during the coronavirus pandemic, as more Americans work from home. The trend, while it may reverse course post-pandemic, is still widely considered to be secular in nature as software and technology has made it easier than ever to work from home.

But just how easy should we be making it? Citrix seems to think that Americans should willingly start turning themselves into cyborgs – a decision that, as champions of liberty we are fine with if people want it – but at the behest of their corporate overlords. 

The company Tweeted out about a week ago that those with “implanted chips” by 2035 will likely have a “labor market advantage”.

54% of business leaders believe that by 2035, workers with implanted chips will have a labor market advantage. Take a step into the future of work at https://t.co/X19yXLk7FY #work2035

— Citrix (@citrix) September 28, 2020

Yeah, and if you turn yourself into a full on robot that never has to use the bathroom, eat or smoke a cigarette on a break, that would probably make you more appealing as well. 

“By 2035 some workers will have taken technology augmentation a step further, choosing to be enhanced with implanted chips,” Citrix’s “Work 2035” report read. “Almost half (48%) of professionals would be willing to have a chip implanted in their body if it would significantly improve their performance and remuneration.”

The report notes an obvious delta between business “leaders” and employees on their feelings about implants: “Almost eight in 10 business leaders (77%) believe that under-the-skin chips and sensors will increase worker performance and productivity by 2035, compared to just 43% of employees who share this view.”

The company followed up in a blog post on its website: “Seventy-seven percent of all surveyed professionals believe that by 2035, AI will significantly speed up their decision-making process. A majority of respondents agree that in the future, tech interfaces will increase human productivity and performance.”

And, like it or not, Citrix predicts AI will have a profound presence in office environments going forward: “Additionally, although over 3/4 of leaders believe that organizations will create functions like AI management departments and cybercrime response units, fewer than half of employees anticipate these business units by 2035.”

But while business leaders are obviously quick to embrace the cost savings that come with AI, the rank and file doesn’t seem to jazzed about the idea: “Whereas most business leaders anticipate a world of strong corporate structures powered by a flourishing human-tech partnership, employees foresee a much more fragmented world, with big corporations no longer dominant, and many roles replaced by technology.”

You can read Citrix’s full “Work 2035” report here, though we’re not sure why you’d want to.

Maybe just wait until 2021 to crack this one open.