I made the mistake Wednesday night of reading Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter before I went to bed.
In it she discussed the incredible damage the DOGE (pronounced dodgy) minions are doing across our government at the behest of Elon Musk — firing employees, cancelling funds already appropriated and approved, and pulling together data that has been carefully kept separate to protect our privacy.
She also pointed out:
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests Musk’s faith in his AI company is at least part of what’s behind the administration’s devastating cuts to biomedical research. Those who believe in a future centered around AI believe that it will be far more effective than human research scientists, so cutting actual research is efficient. At the same time, Marshall suggests, tech oligarchs find the years-long timelines of actual research and the demands of scientists on peer reviews and careful study frustrating, as they want to put their ideas into practice quickly.
And she added:
If the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is an example of what it looks like when a tech oligarch tries to run a government agency, it’s a cautionary tale. Under Trump the FAA has become entangled with Musk’s SpaceX space technology company and its subsidiary Starlink satellite company, and it appears that the American people are being used to make Musk’s dream come true.
While I’ve been saying from the beginning that the damage done by the dodgy minions has to stop and while I’ve been ranting about the idiocy of so-called AI for some time, I’ve been keeping my worries about what the broligarchs in general might do to us all somewhat separate from my fears about what the grifter’s administration is doing to government.
But reading that post from Dr. Richardson reminded me that it’s all part of the same problem.
There are many terrible things being done to our government and to our people by what Rebecca Solnit calls the Stupid Coup. The nonsense at the FAA is an example of attacking parts of the government for the financial benefit of the person doing the attacking.
But there are also a lot of terrible things being done by those broligarchs to whom most of us are merely NPCs. The faith in so-called AI goes far beyond Musk, and the effort to shove it down our throats is happening everywhere, not just in the government. Continue reading “Watch What You Read at Bedtime”…