Artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration within various sectors is moving at a speed that couldn’t have been imagined just a few years ago. As a result, the United States now stands on the brink of a new era of cybersecurity challenges. With AI technologies becoming increasingly sophisticated, the potential for their exploitation by malicious actors grows exponentially.
Because of this evolving threat, government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alongside private sector entities, must urgently work to harden America’s defenses to account for any soft spots that may be exploited. Failure to do so could have dire consequences on a multitude of levels, especially as we approach the upcoming U.S. presidential election, which is likely to be the first to contend with the profound implications of AI-driven cyber warfare.
AI’s transformative potential is undeniable, revolutionizing industries from healthcare to finance. However, this same potential poses a significant threat when harnessed by cybercriminals.According to a report by the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the rise of AI is expected to lead to a marked increase in cyberattacks in the coming years. AI can automate and enhance the scale, speed, and sophistication of these attacks, making them more difficult to detect and counteract.
The nature of AI-driven cyber threats is multifaceted. AI can be used to create highly convincing phishing attacks, automate vulnerability discovery by foreign adversaries in software systems to identify backdoors, and launch large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Moreover, AI algorithms can be employed to develop malware or trojans that adapt and evolve to evade detection. The GCHQ report warns of the growing use of AI by cyber adversaries to improve the effectiveness of their attacks, posing a significant challenge for traditional cybersecurity protocols.
The stakes are particularly high as the United States prepares for the November election. DHS has already issued warnings about the threats posed by AI to the election process. Among the potential threats posed by AI are deepfakes, automated disinformation campaigns, and targeted social engineering attacks. These tactics could undermine the integrity of the election, erode public trust in democratic institutions, and sow discord among the electorate.
The potential for disruptions in trust and accuracy in the election process is not exactly an unprecedented threat. In the 2020 election, there were already instances of misinformation and foreign interference. With AI’s capabilities advancing rapidly, the 2024 election could see these efforts become more sophisticated and harder to counter.
It seems that every day, more and more AI-generated deepfakes are being disseminated on social media. Many of these are intended to be humorous, or they are being used in digital marketing campaigns to sell products, but in an election scenario, disrupters could create realistic but fake videos of candidates, potentially influencing voter perceptions and decisions.
One of the most significant challenges in addressing AI-driven cyber threats is the pervasive underestimation of their potential impact. Many in both the public and private sectors fail to grasp the severity and immediacy of these threats. This complacency is partly due to the abstract nature of AI and a lack of understanding of how it can be weaponized. However, as AI continues to integrate into critical infrastructure and various sectors of the economy, the risks become more tangible and immediate.
In response to funding proposals from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a bipartisan group of senators just unveiled a $32 billion spending proposal. This investment is not merely in developing AI for civilian or commercial use but explicitly in enhancing offensive cyber capabilities. The potential for AI to augment cyberwarfare necessitates a reevaluation of our current cybersecurity strategies.
Addressing the AI-driven cyber threat landscape requires a concerted effort from both government agencies and the private sector. Government agencies like DHS and CISA must update and expand existing cybersecurity frameworks to address AI-specific threats. This includes developing guidelines for detecting and mitigating AI-driven malware attacks and ensuring that these guidelines are disseminated across all levels of government and critical infrastructure sectors.
Beyond the scope of just the public sector, we must realize that effective cybersecurity is a collaborative effort. The government must foster stronger partnerships with the private sector, leveraging the expertise and resources of technology companies, cybersecurity firms, and other stakeholders. These kinds of joint initiatives and information-sharing platforms can help in the rapid identification and response to AI-driven threats. CISA has previously attempted to strengthen these relationships, but much more must be done.
Additionally, raising public awareness about the risks posed by AI-driven cyber threats is essential. Educational campaigns can help individuals recognize and respond to phishing attempts, data collection efforts, disinformation, and other cyber threats, while fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness in organizations can reduce the risk of successful attacks.
Lastly, policymakers must consider new regulations and legislative measures to address the unique challenges posed by AI in cybersecurity. This includes updating cybersecurity laws to incorporate AI-specific considerations and ensuring that regulatory frameworks keep pace with technological advancements.
America, as a nation, stands on the precipice of an increasingly AI-driven future. The potential for AI-based cyber attacks represents one of the most pressing security challenges of our time, and November’s election underscores the urgency of addressing these threats as the integrity of our democratic process hangs in the balance.
The time for complacency has passed. The United States must act decisively to protect its digital infrastructure and democratic institutions from the evolving threats posed by AI-driven cyber attacks. Our national security, economic and global stability, and the very fabric of our democracy depend on it.
Trust The “Science”…That Just Retracted 11,000 “Peer Reviewed” Papers
It’s yet another reminder of why blindly ‘trusting the science’ may not always be the best go-to move in the future.
217 year old Wiley science publisher has reportedly “peer reviewed” more than 11,000 papers that were determined to be fake without ever noticing. The papers were referred to as “naked gobbledygook sandwiches”, Australian blogger Jo Nova wrote on her blog last week.
“It’s not just a scam, it’s an industry,” she said. “Who knew, academic journals were a $30 billion dollar industry?”
According to Nova‘s post, professional cheating services are employing AI to craft seemingly “original” academic papers by shuffling around words. For instance, terms like “breast cancer” morphed into “bosom peril,” and a “naïve Bayes” classifier turns into “gullible Bayes.”
Similarly, in one paper, an ant colony was bizarrely rebranded as an “underground creepy crawly state.”
The misuse of terminology extends to machine learning, where a ‘random forest’ is whimsically translated to ‘irregular backwoods’ or ‘arbitrary timberland’.
Nova writes that shockingly, these papers undergo peer review without any rigorous human oversight, allowing egregious errors, like converting ‘local average energy’ to ‘territorial normal vitality’, to slip through.
The publisher Wiley has confessed that fraudulent activities have rendered 19 of its journals so compromised that they must be shuttered. In response, the industry is developing AI tools to detect these fakes, a necessary yet disheartening development. Nova writes:
The rot at Wiley started decades ago, but it got caught when it spent US $298 million on an Egyptian publishing house called Hindawi. We could say we hope no babies were hurt by fake papers but we know bad science already kills people. What we need are not “peer reviewed” papers but actual live face to face debate. Only when the best of both sides have to answer questions, with the data will we get real science:
In March, it revealed to the NYSE a $US9 million ($13.5 million) plunge in research revenue after being forced to “pause” the publication of so-called “special issue” journals by its Hindawi imprint, which it had acquired in 2021 for US$298 million ($450 million).
Its statement noted the Hindawi program, which comprised some 250 journals, had been “suspended temporarily due to the presence in certain special issues of compromised articles”.
Many of these suspect papers purported to be serious medical studies, including examinations of drug resistance in newborns with pneumonia and the value of MRI scans in the diagnosis of early liver disease. The journals involved included Disease Markers, BioMed Research International and Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience.
The problem is only becoming more urgent. The recent explosion of artificial intelligence raises the stakes even further. A researcher at University College London recently found more than 1 per cent of all scientific articles published last year, some 60,000 papers, were likely written by a computer.
In some sectors, it’s worse. Almost one out of every five computer science papers published in the past four years may not have been written by humans.
In Australia, ABC has reported on this issue, reflecting concerns over diminishing public trust in universities, which are increasingly seen as businesses rather than educational institutions. This perception is fueled by incidents where universities, driven by financial incentives, overlook academic fraud.
The core of the scientific community is corroded, exacerbated by entities like the ABC Science Unit, which rather than scrutinizing dubious research, often shields it.
This ongoing degradation calls for a shift from traditional peer review to rigorous live debates, ensuring accountability by having people argue their cases in real time.
In December 2023, Nature posted that more than 10,000 papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record.
Judge Approves Class-Action Lawsuit Against American Airlines Over ESG Pension Investments
Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),A district judge has granted a pilot’s request for a class-action lawsuit against American Airlines for allegedly investing pension funds into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds.
The case revolves around the allegation that American Airlines—headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas—violated its fiduciary obligation to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) “by investing millions of dollars of American Airlines employees’ retirement savings with investment managers and investment funds that pursue political agendas” through ESG initiatives.
“By pursuing ESG goals, Defendants gave Plan assets to fund managers, such as BlackRock, who allegedly ignored financial returns as the exclusive purpose and lowered the value of Plan participants’ investments,” the order states.
In addition to being disloyal to the employees, the plaintiff, Bryan Spence, argues that American Airlines’ investments were “imprudent because it is well known that ESG funds are associated with poor performance given the detrimental effects of such activism on stock prices.”
“To remedy these alleged ERISA violations, Plaintiff filed this lawsuit individually and on behalf of a proposed class of Plan participants and beneficiaries,” the order says. “ERISA authorized participants in a qualifying plan to bring an action on behalf of other participants to enforce the statute’s fiduciary obligations and remedial provisions, as well as recover all losses to a plan caused by a breach of a fiduciary duty.”
Texas District Judge Reed O’Conner—a George W. Bush appointee—writes in his order that the case is eligible for class action because of the similarities of ERISA violations.
“Even if the damages are diverse, finding in favor of Plaintiff on his ERISA claims would also resolve the ERISA claims of this class,” he writes.
The remedy for damages would be the same for all plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit, he says.
‘Underperforms Financially’
According to the complaint, ESG funds are usually more expensive for pension enrollees than non-ESG funds.
They also “underperform financially,” and instead of maximizing “risk-adjusted financial returns” for enrollees, they “engage in shareholder activism to achieve ESG policy agendas.”
“Defendants have also selected and included as investment options funds that are managed by investment companies that pursue ESG policy agendas through proxy voting and shareholding activism,” the complaint says. “Many of these funds are not branded or marketed as ESG funds; however, the actions of their investment advisors and managers give rise to the same ERISA violations as those funds that do market themselves as ESG funds.”
The complaint states that Mr. Spence, an American Airlines pilot and Lt. Col. in the U.S. Air Force, “has suffered specific financial damages” as a result of American Airlines’ “unlawful conduct.”
The pension plan itself “has suffered millions of dollars in losses because of the Defendants’ fiduciary breaches and the Plan remains vulnerable to continuing harm.”
The complaint defines ESG as an investment strategy “aimed at influencing societal changes.”
“Generally, three criteria are used to evaluate companies for ESG investing,” the complaint says.
‘Aggressive Climate Goals’
Among the criteria are environmental commitments to reduce a company’s carbon footprint and a pledge to support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agendas.
“American Airlines is fully committed to ESG strategy as a company,” the complaint says. “According to its annual ESG Report, American Airlines views its ESG efforts as a ‘key part of American’s success,’ and ‘an important part of American’s long-term strategy,’’ the complaint says. “It sets DEI goals and strives to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.”
On its ESG webpage, American Airlines declares its commitment to “aggressive climate goals.”
American Airlines states on its DEI webpage that it strives for diversity in hiring and that its employees “work to make American a place where people of all generations, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, gender identity, disabilities, religious affiliations and backgrounds feel welcome and valued.”
The Human Rights Campaign awarded American Airlines a “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality” in 2021, according to the webpage.
The Epoch Times contacted American Airlines for comment.
Sacrificing Safety for Ideology
Currently, the airline industry is under scrutiny for what critics say is sacrificing safety and performance for DEI ideology.
The airline has faced several complications this year, including an “anomaly” in the braking system on one of its aircraft to run past the end of a runway, The Associated Press reported, and another mechanical issue in one of its planes while in flight.
In January, one of its flights landed hard, putting five flight attendants and one passenger in the hospital.
In January, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized the airline industry’s emphasis on DEI initiatives in a post on X.
“Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening,” he said.
Biden Marketing Team To Create Trump Mega-Martyr With ‘Guilty’ Verdict Campaign Strategy
Joe Biden’s galaxy brain handlers plan to use any ‘guilty’ verdicts in Donald Trump’s criminal trials to campaign on, unaware that most of the country views them as political lawfare by the permanent ruling class hatched in coordination with Biden’s own DOJ.
Biden intends to initially address the verdict in a White House setting — not a campaign one — to show his statement isn’t political, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
If the jury convicts Trump, Biden’s team will then argue that the result shows Trump is ill-suited for office and that it demonstrates the extremes to which the former president would go to win again. The campaign’s social media team is considering leveraging the line of attack further, with discussions underway about referring to the ex-president online as “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.”
The report comes as closing arguments are set for Tuesday in Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial, which saw the prosecution’s star witness, Michael Cohen, implode on the stand. Of course, a Manhattan jury won’t care – so a Trump ‘guilty’ verdict wouldn’t come as a surprise.
“This is an important moment and the president first and foremost needs to stress that the American system works, even and especially in an election year,” said one of Politico‘s anonymous sources. “And in a measured way, it becomes part of his argument against Trump too:Do Americans really want this?“
Do voters want a president being transparently pursued for partisan reasons by a behemoth government that fewer than two-in-ten Americans trust?
This goes hand-in-hand with why the left can’t meme and are desperate to find someone who can.
At least one Democrat sees how stupid this is.
“I don’t think it’s important to rub it in,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Politico. “I don’t think anybody on our side should be reacting with glee. It just should be a tragedy that an American president has been convicted of real crimes.”
Recently, I gave a presentation about edible plants at my local library. Kitchen herbs, in fact, that double as medicinals, which people can easily grow in their gardens or on window sills. While preparing my presentation, I was reminded that this topic is immense in its breadth and depth. One number especially stood out and even stopped me in my tracks.
There are 50,000 – 80,000 plants used medicinally worldwide, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. What a number! I feel a bit inadequate with my limited knowledge of several hundred of them.
The millennia-old knowledge of herbal medicine is practiced in all regions of the world and backed up by much international research—the Near East, Russia, East Africa, North East India, and even Transylvania. The list clearly goes on.
New Review Reapproves Plants’ Anti-Cancer Qualities
In recent years, scientists have re-discovered their urge to learn more about our floral companions. This rekindling of passed-down wisdom is possibly driven by the need to find remedies for diseases that otherwise modern medicine seems unable to prevail over.
A 2024 review, published in the journal Pharmaceuticals, appears to follow this direction. The new release highlights 15 medicinal plants with potential anti-tumorigenic qualities, meaning these plants have active compounds that fight abnormal cell growth.
Interesting to me was the selection of plants featured in the review. Some of them, we are familiar with—much having been written about them—for instance, dandelion, nettles, or Curcuma longa, better known as turmeric.
Others, like the Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), the tropical soursop, and even a houseplant with the name of Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, we find less familiar.
However, all these plants have one common characteristic —they work “against the Majority of Common Types of Cancer,” reads the review’s headline.
Efficient Treatment for Immediate Development
The International Agency for Research on Cancer describes the worldwide cancer situation as dire. Their 2022 report states that globally most people died from lung cancer (18.7 percent), followed by colorectal cancer (9.3 percent), and liver cancer (7.8 percent). A total of 3,480,213 individuals.
Therefore, researchers of the current review call for an immediate development of “more targeted and efficient treatment plans.” In their eyes, “Plants and products derived from them have promising potential as a source of less toxic anticancer drugs.”
Blending Traditional Wisdom and Novel Nanotechnologies
To accomplish this goal, herbs are employed to keep the immune system strong, kill off carcinogens, and improve antioxidant levels in our bodies. Scientists see new nanomedicines and bioengineering techniques for immune cell therapies as innovative approaches to treating the disease.
As a community herbalist, I view things with the eyes of longevity. What traditional wisdom about these herbs has been passed on for centuries? How can the two worlds of novel research and ancient knowledge be combined for the benefit of the patient?
Anti-Cancer Plants: Research and Application
There are several herbs the recently released review mentions, which might grow abundantly in our gardens—often, we might even see them as annoying weeds that need to be fended off. Such is frequently the case for dandelions.
In the back of my head, I hear my herbal teacher repeat over and over, “Often, the herbs show up where we need them.” This holds true for one of the most robust herbaceous perennials that is native to Europe but grows all over the world in gardens and lawns, along roads and fields, and even waste areas.
Taraxacum officinale, commonly known as dandelion, is not only a medicinal herb but an edible vegetable. Especially young leaves are tender and round out the taste in any salad, gifting it a slightly bitter flavor—which is a sign of assisting digestion.
The Taraxacum genus includes over three hundred species. These have been discovered and utilized in traditional and folk medicines for centuries. German botanist Leonhart Fuchs, for example, featured the healthy properties of the plant in the 16th century in his herbal compendium, “De Historia Stirpium.”
Dandelion was also known as a drug in Arabian medicine. There, physicians recorded its utilization as early as the 10th century. Indian and Chinese medicine treated liver and digestive diseases with the common dandelion, states an article about the plant published in the National Library of Medicine.
Dandelion is a true all-rounder. Featuring among others, vitamins A, C, B, and D, the minerals potassium and calcium, and traces of iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc.
A 2023 review carefully examined the dandelion and remarked upon its bioactive compounds. “Sesquiterpenoids, phenolic compounds, essential oils, saccharides, flavonoids, sphingolipids, triterpenoids, sterols, [and] coumarins” are sources for “therapeutic potential, including anti-bacterial, anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, and anti-rheumatic activities.”
Korean research showed that the amount of phenols and flavonoids in the plant drives its anticancer and antioxidant activities. This varies in different taraxacum species but exists in the common dandelion.
Researchers investigated a dandelion extract combination in a 2023 study. The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, highlight the importance of inhibiting the “rapid proliferation of cancer cells and its invasion into healthy tissues” specific to breast cancer. This is exactly what dandelion extract does—it inhibits their spread and “induce death in them.”
Photodynamic Therapy is another method to target cancerous tissue. In it, a photosensitizing agent is stimulated by light, for instance by a laser. In a 2023 article in Nanomedicine, this process was tested with dandelion for “synergistic chemotherapy and photo-dynamic cancer therapy.” This transportation method succeeded in the delivery of the active compound to the cancer cells and disrupted their homeostasis, thus portraying anti-cancer and anti-tumor effects.
Runner-up in the title of highly medicinal weeds is Urtica dioica. In many temperate places, nettles grow like a pest and are unwanted wildflowers by many.
Contrary to popular reason, I recently transplanted some nettles into my garden and even spread nettle seeds in my best effort to establish them there. Nettles are delicious plant nutrition and are a great addition to soups and salad dressings, as the hairy stingers lose their power when processed.
Full of provitamin beta-carotene, vitamins A, B, and C, minerals iron, magnesium, potassium, and calcium, this protein-rich perennial herb is loaded with health benefits. But the loaded weed can do more.
A 2020 research article features the potentially anticancer properties of nettles. When evaluated, the extract of Urtica dioica showed promising effects on the proliferation rate of “hepatocarcinoma and colon-cancer cell lines at specific doses.”
In a 2022 study published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention, plant medicine proved its anticancer qualities against three different types of cancer cell lines. Testing of urtica dioica’s cytotoxicity was performed in vitro (via mycoplasma testing) and in vivo (in a living organism, in this case, rats). Findings were positive and showed that nettles may work against breast cancer through their anti-tumoral properties.
According to another study, directed to research the herb’s potential healing qualities in regards to human colon and gastric cancer, nettles also induced apoptosis and “inhibited proliferation of gastric and colorectal cancer cells,” while not having any toxic side effects on normal cells.
Continuing to feature weedy wildflowers that grow in many disturbed areas around the United States, and are surely to be found in an empty parking lot, pasture, or along fields and roads in your area, is burdock.
Like Dandelion, burdock is a member of the Asteraceae family (the Aster family) and grows seemingly everywhere. Similarly, the medicinal parts of burdock include roots and leaves, with the addition of seeds.
Arcticum lappa is likewise high in minerals and vitamins, including the B vitamins thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin. However, it also features lignans in roots and seeds, amino acids in the roots, phenols, sterols, and fatty acids in the seeds, and a “plethora of biological activities and pharmacological functions.”
One of burdock’s compounds, lappaol F (a natural lignan), is an anticancer agent that “inhibits tumour cell growth by inducing cell cycle arrest,” states a 2021 study while noting that the underlying processes of burdock’s anticancer qualities remain unclear.
Nevertheless, the plant is effective and researchers suggest that a potential anticancer drug could be developed from the medicinal herb.
A review published in Inflammopharmacology, emphasizes the century-old traditional medicinal uses of burdock in Europe, North America, and Asia. It highlights the plant’s anti-inflammatory qualities and detoxifying effects, as well as anti-tumor properties, especially its “potent inhibitory effects on the growth of tumors such as pancreatic carcinoma.”
Burdock has even proven effective against “multi-drug resistant cancer cells.” A study investigated six lignans present in the burdock seed and combined them as non-toxic chemotherapeutic agents. Results showed that they “possess promising MDR [multidrug resistant] reversal activities.” The study also tested and verified this effect in combination with a chemotherapy drug named doxorubicin.
Remaining 12 Anti-Cancer Plants
The remaining 12 plants examined in the recent review are soursop (Annona muricata), black calla (Arum palaestinum), hemp (Cannabis sativa), Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus), turmeric (Curcuma longa), licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra), moringa (Moringa oleifera), hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), milk thistle (Silybum marianum ), oleander (Nerium oleander), kalanchoe (Kalanchoe blossfeldiana ), and ashwagandha (Withania somnifera L).
Turmeric, licorice, hibiscus, hemp, ashwagandha, and milk thistle are well known—beyond the ears of an herbalist. Soursop might fall into this category for some, especially those living in tropical regions.
Then, some might make us pause, as we see the plants more as blooming decoratives in the garden or house plants, like oleander, the black calla, Madagascar periwinkle, or kalanchoe. Being native to the Indian subcontinent, and being used mostly in Southern Asia, moringa may be the most foreign of them all.
Yet, in total, they are acclaimed plant medicines.
Ongoing Phytopharmaceutical Research
A 2022 review, for instance, hails the healing qualities of soursop. Its “pharmacological effects of anti-cancer, anti-microbial, antioxidant, anti-ulcer, anti-diabetic, anti-hypertensive, and wound healing” are impressive.
Another review features a study in which patients were given 300 milligrams of soursop extract (leaf water) in capsules after breakfast. This restrained colorectal cancer cell growth.
A phytotherapeutic that likewise targets colorectal cancer is ashwagandha. A 2023 study found that the herb and its bioactive compounds “kill cancer cells via at least five separate routes.”
It has even been named “a wonder drug” in the alternative field and has shown remarkable bioactive compounds that function as “anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, apoptotic, immunomodulatory, antimicrobial, anti-diabetic, hepatoprotective, hypoglycaemic, hypolipidemic, cardio-protective and spermatogenic agents,” as outlined in a comprehensive review.
In general, phytopharmaceuticals are powerful medicine.
Although many of the plants do not have any side effects and often naturally target cancer cells without affecting healthy cells, a mechanism not quite understood by science yet (as mentioned above). At the same time, ingesting the wrong plant or the wrong dosage can harm or even kill.
As for dandelions, nettles, and burdock—there are some guiding principles:
Nettles should not be eaten raw. The fresh leaves will sting.
Dandelions can make your stomach upset if too many leaves are ingested or after prolonged use, as it can increase the hydrochloric acid production (HCl) in the stomach and lead to loose stool.
Dandelion root should be taken with caution if the individual suffers from excess HCl, gastritis, ulcers, or heartburn.
During the first trimester of pregnancy, burdock should only be prescribed in mild doses. Also, take with caution if suffering from hypoglycemia.
Tips:
When gathering herbs or plants in the wild or public spaces, please collect your specimens wisely. This means, pick plant matter only away from dirty or polluted areas and wash before eating or processing. Also, never take the whole plant (you want it to continue to live and come back the next year).
Note:
For all individualized herbal recommendations and dosages, please consult with your local herbalist. If you are on any medications consult with a physician before taking herbal supplements. The author is writing for informational purposes only and is not acting in the capacity of a doctor or licensed dietitian-nutritionist.
Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media
While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).
According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.
According to the report, the effort also involved;
a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.
Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security.
Nina Jankowicz And The Alethea Group
Remember Nina? A huge fan of Christopher Steele – architect of the infamous Clinton-funded Dossier which underpinned the Trump-Russia hoax, and who joined the chorus of disinformation agents that downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, Jankowicz previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.
Jankowicz compares the lack of regulation of speech on social media to the lack of government regulation of automobiles in the 1960s. She calls for a “cross-platform” and public-private approach, so whatever actions are taken are taken by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, simultaneously.
Jankowicz points to Europe as the model for regulating speech. “Germany’s NetzDG law requires social media companies and other content hosts to remove ‘obviously illegal’ speech within twenty-four hours,” she says, “or face a fine of up to $50 million.”
By contrast, in the US, she laments, “Congress has yet to pass a bill imposing even the most basic of regulations related to social media and election advertising.” -Public
In a 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, Jankowicz praises a NATO cyber security expert for having created a “Center of Excellence,” a concept promoted by Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in which she made the case for the (now failed) Disinformation Governance Board that Jankowicz would briefly head up.
One year later, Jankowicz began working with ‘anti-disinformation’ consulting firm, Althea Group, staffed by “former” IC analysts.
Althea notablycame after ZeroHedge at one point, shopping a ‘dossier’ around which suggested we were allegedly contributing to “increased online panic” amid the monumental collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
The outlets they peddled said dossier to included Bloomberg – which elected to exclude ZeroHedge from their report following a brief email exchange. Eventually, one of their operatives dropped the dossier on Twitter, only to be mocked as a propagandist.
You mean a financial newsblog published a number of stories about a significant bank failure? How dare they!!
— Reason and analytics in Dallas (@DallasAnalytics) March 17, 2023
Their SVB thesis was debunked by a Federal Reserve report which admitted that its own regulatory failures contributed to the bank’s collapse. We can only imagine what else they’ve cooked up about us behind closed doors.
Alethea notably secured $20 million in Series B financing led by Google Ventures.
Another Alethea Group operative until July 2021 was former CIA analyst, Cindy Otis, who wrote a book called “True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News” – in which she thanks Pieter “Mudge” Zatko – a notorious hacker who was hired by Twitter to “tackle everything from engineering missteps to misinformation,” Reuters wrote at the time.
According to Jankowicz, “My full time employment with Alethea began September 13, 2021. Ms. Otis left Alethea prior to that period. To my knowledge, she has not been employed with Alethea since that time.”
“My work with Alethea Group as a consultant (summer 2021) was narrowly focused on my subject matter expertise related to Russia,” she continued. “I conducted Russian language translation and provided cultural analysis. When I joined Alethea as an employee (fall 2021) my work was entirely focused on public products: Changes to Alethea’s website, editing public reports, liaising with media, etc.”
Is Nina lying?
According to Shellenberger et. al, “that claim contradicts Alethea’s Statement of Work contract with Twitter, which lists her as “Technical Research Director” for work relating to Twitter’s management of misinformation during the 2020 election, and specifically a “retrospective analysis of how then President Trump or other key figures may have violated Twitters [sic] policies, or otherwise leveraged the platform in a way that may have contributed to key events…”
Alethea Group founder, Lisa Kaplan, told us that Jankowicz “was never given the title Technical Research Director, that is a reference to a labor category for a contract.” Added Kaplan, “We respect client confidentiality and do not discuss relationships with our customers. In reviewing Nina’s timesheets she did provide support to one client that I cannot disclose, however I can confirm that while she was employed as the Director for External Affairs, Nina never conducted work at Alethea on behalf of Twitter.”
When shown the Statement of Work listing her as “Supplier Personnel,” Jankowicz said, “I have never seen this document before. A statement of work is generally a speculative document that informs clients of potential staffing and work plans. They are usually crafted to allow contractors a degree of flexibility in implementation by listing staff even if they are not assigned to a particular project in case they might do future work for that project. I assume this is what happened in this case.”
In fact, the Statement of Work between Alethea and Twitter was a formal contract between the two firms, signed by Alethea’s Founder and CEO and Twitter’s Senior Director and Associate General Counsel, and the contract specifies, “Any changes to the above listed Personnel must be approved by Twitter in writing.” There is no record in the Twitter Files of any change to the project’s personnel. -Public
Jankowicz defended herself, telling Public: “Ms. Otis and I were friends and colleagues prior to my short stint there and remain friends and colleagues. Yes, I knew Ms. Otis had worked — emphasis on the past tense — at the CIA. That does not constitute a ‘relationship’ with the intelligence community.“
Following a phishing attack on Twitter employees in July of 2020 which resulted in Joe Biden’s account tweeting “I am giving back to the community. All Bitcoin sent to the address below will be sent back doubled! If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000,” along with a crypto wallet address (similar fake tweets were sent from the accouints of Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg and Elon Musk,” 17-year-old Graham Ivan Clark was arrested.
Three months later, Jack Dorsey wrote in an email: “Mudge signed.“
Less than three months later, Zatko made his first big recommendation to Twitter execs: “hire the Alethea Group.“
“I feel an external investigation may be quite valuable,” he said over the company’s Slack channel. “I’d recommend Alethea group for the disinformation angle.”
Twitter authorized the move. Several weeks later, Zatko suggested that Twitter’s legal team hire Alethea for a report focusing on Jan. 6.
“We can draw a straight line… between the initial ‘Stop the Steal’ narratives and organizing to what ended up happening on the 6th.”
Alethea’s assessment of Twitter reflects the view of its CEO, Kaplan, that online misinformation leads to violence.
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) May 23, 2024
“As folks can understand,” he wrote on Feb. 4, 2021, “there’s a lot still going on around Jan 6th and the 2020 election in general. Alethea is a boutique consultancy that specializes on disinformation and counter-messaging operations. They have been working with myself and Yoel [Roth].“
Meanwhile, on March 24, 2021, Zatko emailed a 12-page report pushing for more government-linked censorship – suggesting that “The organizations and people behind this recommendation have the connection [sic] to get this in front of the right people in the administration.“
Then it came out that Zatko, who pushed Alethea, “had engaged with members of US intelligence agencies…” As Public notes, “Attitudes toward Zatko would be quite different two years later.”
Zatko turned whistleblower, sued the company, and settled for $7.75 million. He then filed a complaint with the Justice Department, SEC, and FTC, alleging Twitter executives had misled the government, been negligent in protecting user data, and had violated a 2011 consent decree with the FTC.
Somebody leaked Zatko’s complaint to the Washington Post, which reached out to Twitter for comment on August 19, 2022.
In a shared Google Doc, dated August 21, 2022, called “Comms Statements/Tracking,” Twitter executives fine-tuned the language for responding to the news media about Zatko’s allegations.
Buried deep within that discussion was this revelatory sentence:
“Without the knowledge or support of management or the Board, Twitter learned that Zatko had engaged with members of US intelligence agencies and sought to enter a formal agreement that would allow him to work with them and provide information to them.”
CIA, In-Q-Tel, And Alethea
In late 2022, Alethea received$10 million from Ballistic Ventures, whose general partner is Ted Schlein. Ted “provides counsel to the U.S. intelligence community, serves on the Board of Trustees at InQTel [the CIA’s mission-driven venture capital firm] and was recently named as a board member of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.”
In 2022, IQT published a report describing its “Disinformation Workshop,” which recommended several activities similar to those Alethea has offered, including “Track the confluence of bad narratives.”
Schlein can neither confirm nor deny…
According to the Wall Street Journal, a full one-third of IQT investments were secret as of 2016. The Journal also reported that Schlein had at least one connection to a firm in which IQT invested, and that was over seven years ago.
“I do not know Zatko, Jankowicz or Otis.Lisa is the CEO of Alethea and I serve on her board of directors,” Schlein told us. He added that he is not aware of any relationship between Alethea and the IC and that he has no operational role in the firm.
“I get the feeling that Alethea is a byproduct of Ted Schlein,” a high-tech entrepreneur told us, “and the CEO is merely a titular head….Without meaningful experience, it’s not clear to me how [Lisa Kaplan] received $10m in a series A round.”
In March 2022, the Department of Homeland Security made Schlein a member of its advisory council. -Public
Here’s Kaplan on promoting aggressive censorship:
“We have to trust the rules and the systems that are governing us.”
On February 21, 2022, at Colby College, Alethea’s Kaplan again promotes an aggressive censorship vision, including punishments for people who spread misinformation, and says “we have to trust” election rules.… pic.twitter.com/F3JaQNU5vG
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) May 23, 2024
We are now approximately halfway hrough Public‘s report. As X user Sean Michael Murray accurately observes: “It’s such a well sourced report… and there’s so much context to summarize in this post, it’s best to read it..”
Regular Cannabis Users Exceeds Drinkers For First Time Ever
For the first time, a nationwide study providing current data on tobacco, alcohol, and drug use, mental health, and other health-related issues has found that the number of people smoking cannabis daily has surpassed those drinking beer or vodka daily. This development coincides with the Biden administration’s efforts to reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous substance.
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) has been conducted annually since 1990 and four times before (1979, 1982, 1985, and 1988). Data shows an explosive amount of daily cannabis use a few years after the Great Financial Crisis. The trend has become parabolic in the last ten years due to “a period of federal non-interference with the legalization of supply,” according to the study’s authors.
Figure 1 shows sharp declines during the Reagan-Bush era to a nadir in 1992, a partial recovery between then and 2008, and substantial increases since 2008. Increases are greater, proportionally, for measures of more intense use. For example, between 2008 and 2022, the per capita rate of reporting past-year use increased by 120%, and days of use reported per capita increased by 218% (in absolute terms from the annual equivalent of 2.3 to 8.1 billion days per year). Since the 2022 NSDUH-estimated population 12 and older is 282.0 million, that is, 29 days per person per year, on average.
Growth is most striking for DND use, defined here as reporting use on 21 or more days in the past month. 2 From 1992 to 2022, there was a 15-fold increase in the per capita rate of reporting DND marijuana use (in absolute terms, from 0.9 million to 17.7 million DND users). That was because of a fivefold increase in the number of PM users (from 7.9 to 41.9 million) and a fourfold increase in the proportion of PM users who report DND use (from 11% to 42%).
Given the increased marijuana usage nationwide and legalization trends, with the Drug Enforcement Administration moving closer to reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, the gap between the number of daily drinkers and marijuana has officially closed in the multi-decade dataset. In fact, there are now more regular marijuana users than alcohol users for the first time.
Figure 2 compares growth in DND marijuana use to contemporaneous changes in DND alcohol use. In 1992, the household survey recorded 10 times as many DND alcohol as DND marijuana users (8.9 vs 0.9 million). Back then, a conversation about DND use of a dependence-inducing intoxicant was essentially a conversation about alcohol use. In the most recent survey, for the first time, NSDUH recorded more DND marijuana than DND alcohol users (17.7 vs 14.7 million).
That change reflects both growth in the number of PM marijuana users and changes in patterns of marijuana use. In 2022, the median drinker reported alcohol use on 4 to 5 days in the PM, whereas the median marijuana user reported use on 15 to 16 days in the PM.
This increased access has allowed the general population to consume more and more cannabis. A map from think-tank Pew Research shows that 74% of Americans reside in states that have legalized marijuana for either recreational or medical purposes, with 54% living in states where pot is only permitted for recreational use.
Here’s a map of America’s 15,000 cannabis dispensaries.
A separate study from Gallup found regular cannabis usage differs by education and income, with the highest rates seen among the working poor.
In markets, the top exchange-traded funds that buy marijuana companies have been rounding a multi-year bottom after the speculation craze during Covid.
The next market driver could be the DEA’s approval of an opinion by the Department of Health and Human Services that states marijuana should be reclassified from the strictest Schedule I to the less stringent Schedule III.
Hamas said Palestinian fighters captured members of an Israeli force in an ambush inside the Gaza Strip on Saturday, a claim denied by the Israeli military.
Abu Obaida, spokesman for the group’s armed wing, al-Qassam Brigades, said fighters killed, wounded or captured members of the Israeli force during fighting in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
He did not say how many had been abducted and provided no further information about their identities. He said more details would follow soon.
“Our fighters lured a Zionist force into an ambush inside a tunnel … The fighters withdrew after they left all members of the force dead, wounded, and captured,” Abu Obaida said in a recorded message broadcast by Al Jazeera early on Sunday.
The Israeli military was quick to deny the claim. “The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) clarifies that there is no incident in which a soldier was abducted,” a military spokesperson said in a statement.
Abu Obaida’s message was followed by a video released [warning: graphic] by al-Qassam Brigades showing fighters pulling inside a tunnel a man who appeared to be unconscious. He was pulled alongside military gear.
The video separately showed three semi-automatic rifles and other military gear that Hamas said were taken from the captured Israelis. Middle East Eye could not independently verify when or where the video was filmed.
The comments by Abu Obaida came after weeks of renewed intense close-quarter combat across the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, according to Israeli and Palestinian media.
The Israeli military sent tanks and troops to Rafah and north Gaza in fresh attacks early in May. The advances have been met by some of the fiercest resistance by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, especially in the Jabalia refugee camp.
The heavy fighting has coincided with an increase in carpet bombing by Israeli jets, flattening neighborhoods in Jabalia and Rafah.
Meanwhile on Sunday rockets were launched from Gaza on Tel Aviv, a first in months:
Israeli forces have reportedly killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since 7 October, the majority of them children and women according to Gaza Health Ministry figures.
Palestinians have killed more than 1,500 Israelis in the same period, the majority of them during the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on 7 October.
Sam Altman-Backed Oklo Signs Deal To Power Another Data Center
Sam Altman backed nuclear startup Oklo inked a deal to supply 100MW of nuclear power to data center company Wyoming Hyperscale, it was announced last week.
The news sent shares of NYSE-listed Oklo up more than 30% in trading on Friday.
The companies signed a “non-binding letter of intent outlining plans for the PPA, which will last for 10 years,” according to industry publication Data Center Dynamics. This comes on top of the revelation that, last month, Oklo signed to supply up to 500MW of power to another data center, Equinix.
“Wyoming Hyperscale is building a data center campus on 58 acres of land,” the report says.
Jacob DeWitte, co-founder and CEO of Oklo, commented: “As the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence increases, Oklo remains dedicated to providing clean, reliable, and affordable energy solutions to meet the needs of our data center partners.”
“Our partnership with Wyoming Hyperscale underscores our commitment to advancing sustainable energy practices and supporting high-efficiency operations within the data center industry.”
Trenton Thornock, founder of Wyoming Hyperscale, added: “Our goal is to create data centers with minimal environmental impact. This collaboration with Oklo perfectly aligns with our vision for sustainable, efficient operations. By merging sustainability with advanced technology, we are setting a new standard for the future of accelerated computing.”
As we wrote earlier this month, Oklo won shareholder approval on May 8 for its NYSE listing. The company’s mission is “to provide clean, reliable, affordable energy on a global scale through the design and deployment of next-generation fast reactor technology”.
Backed by investors like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Peter Thiel, the who’s who of the AI revolution, nuclear fusion startups are gaining traction. Sam Altman, who invested in Oklo in 2015, believes the company is “best positioned to commercialize advanced fission energy solutions,” per a July press release.
Last month, we published a lengthy report discussing why even as the AI trade may be fizzling, the “electrification” trade, aka the “Power-Up America” trade – so urgently needed to run all those electricity-gobbling data centers needed to run AI – is just getting started and has in fact outperformed substantially both the broader AI and Data-Center Equipment baskets over the past two months…
… and Altman – who teamed up with another power company, Exowatt, earlier this year to focus on clean energy for AI power -agrees: “Fundamentally today in the world, the two limiting commodities you see everywhere are intelligence, which we’re trying to work on with AI, and energy,” Altman told CNBC in 2021.
For those who missed it, in “The Next AI Trade,” we outlined various investment opportunities for powering up America, most of which have dramatically outperformed the market. In the next iteration, we will likely add Oklo to the list of beneficiaries certainly ahead of the inevitable cascade of Buy ratings sure flood the name over the next month.
With those words and pictures like this one of Biden using crack, the Justice Department introduced the Hunter Biden laptop as evidence in his upcoming trial over federal gun violations.
The federal prosecutors went on to denounce suggestions of Russian disinformation, long peddled by the Bidens, the media and former intelligence officials, as nothing more than a “conspiracy theory.”
The media eagerly spread the claim of Russian disinformation before the presidential election. Twitter and others suppressed the story. This was done through one of the most skillful disinformation campaigns in history.
It later came out that associates of the Biden campaign (including now Secretary of State Antony Blinken) pushed a long effort to get former intelligence officials to sign a letter making the claim, knowing that an ever-accommodating media would accept the claim without question or further inquiry.
At the time, some of us wrote that the laptop was “self-authenticating” since many of the emails were confirmed by third parties and other evidence. The Justice Department last week made the same claim of “self-authentication” as well as independent confirmation by federal investigators.
In the now-debunked letter of former intelligence officials just before the election, figures such as Leon Panetta, former CIA Director in the Obama Administration, claimed that the letter had all of the markings of a Russian disinformation effort by intelligence services. (Panetta continued to make the assertion late last year in pushing what the federal government is now calling a “conspiracy theory.”).
The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump and others also continued to push the conspiracy theory. Indeed, in 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”
What is equally astonishing is that in 2023 the Post expressly stood by Bump’s reporting on the laptop and other debunked claims. Even after the government has declared this reporting as part of a “conspiracy theory,” the Post continues to support the reporting by Bump and others.
The laptop includes not just pictures of Hunter using drugs but brandishing a handgun. The court clearly agrees with the government on the authenticity of the laptop. It has ruled against the defense and will allow it to be introduced into evidence.
Despite the conclusions of American intelligence and others, the Biden team continued to push the disinformation.
That led the Justice Department to tell the court that:
“The defendant’s theory about the laptop is a conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence.”
It added that Hunter’s “laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt.”
The response from the media has been a collective shrug.
Worse yet, many of these same political and media figures continue to support censorship and government regulations of “disinformation” while the government is now acknowledging that they carried off one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in history.
