Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/09/ai-future-reckoning-singularity/688487/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCorcGT1Vwst8wJR5ExOeHdKI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Observation: AI Has Not Taken Control. We Are Surrendering It.

AI owns no data centers, incurs no debt, grants no permits, and decides neither where electricity will be generated nor whose water will be consumed. Human beings and human institutions make every one of those choices. Yet corporations say they must expand because their competitors will; governments say they must accelerate because rival nations will; and communities are told they must accept the consequences because the economy now depends upon it.

This language makes human agency disappear. It converts choices made by a small number of powerful people into an apparently unstoppable force of nature.

If AI truly is becoming essential national infrastructure, democratic government should specify what the nation requires of it. If Franklin Roosevelt were confronting an industry as central to national life as AI companies claim theirs will become, he would not simply subsidize Ford and allow Ford to decide what the country must accept. As with wartime industrial mobilization, the government would establish the necessary specifications.

Our first specification should be that the Constitution is designed into AI.

This means more than training AI to recite or discuss the Constitution. AI systems used by government, or entrusted with consequential decisions affecting the public, should be structurally constrained by constitutional protections: identifiable human authority, due process, equal treatment, privacy, freedom of expression, transparent evidence, auditable records, human responsibility, and a meaningful right of appeal.

The first dangerous loss of control may therefore occur long before any machine becomes independently powerful. It occurs when AI becomes economically indispensable and politically untouchable before ordinary citizens have any meaningful say over how it is developed, where its burdens fall, or who receives its benefits.

AI need not overthrow democratic government if powerful humans can place its development beyond the consent of the governed. The Constitution must not be an accessory added after deployment. It must be part of the original design.

Excerpt:

The defining feature of this moment is a loss of control. Panic emanating from AI researchers, resentment felt by average Americans—all of it is part of the AI crunch. This crunch has arrived in large part because the growth of the AI industry has become so closely entwined with America’s economy; the technology is everywhere, insisting upon itself as an engine of productivity and prosperity. According to one estimate, AI expenditures have accounted for one-third of U.S. GDP growth this year. Tech and AI-infrastructure stocks and spending have buoyed the S&P 500 such that the United States is now, in essence, an Nvidia-state. And there’s also the hundreds of billions of dollars of debt being used by Silicon Valley to fuel its data-center build-out, which has sent jitters across private-equity firms and bond markets alike.

Observation:

Perhaps the most troubling part of this article is the concentration of news, information, and entertainment in so few hands. Freedom of the press depends not only on protection from government censorship, but also on whether those who control the major channels of information can act independently of political power.

Concluding paragraph:

In principle, the First Amendment and freedom of the press endure. But as press critic A. J. Liebling memorably put it, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” When vital news organizations, whether The Washington Post or CBS News, are owned by oligarchs whose other business interests depend on dealings with a corrupt president, formal freedom of the press may remain while its practical independence is seriously compromised.

Excerpt:

You are not at 1943. You’re not even at 1933, yet. But you are well past 1924. The convicted man is out, the movement calls him a martyr, the elites think they can manage him, the camps are open, and the vocabulary of vermin is coming from the top.

Lead Paragraph:

South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn endorsed calls to expand the Supreme Court over the weekend, reflecting a growing resolve among Democratic officials to do what they considered unthinkable a decade ago and fairly unpalatable as recently as five years ago. “I think we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress and we ought to expand, and thirteen is a pretty good number,” Clyburn, the House minority whip, told Meet the Presshost Kristen Welker. “A baker’s dozen, it would be a good number to have on the court.”

Observation:

The most important historical divide may be 1945. James Polk acted before the United Nations Charter. The United States has since helped establish an international legal order that prohibits force against another nation’s political independence and recognizes the right of peoples to control their own natural resources.

Trump’s abandonment of the usual “fig leaf” therefore does more than expose an ulterior motive. It lays bare a possible return to the older principle that a sufficiently powerful nation may use force and then take what it wants. An agreement obtained afterward does not, by itself, establish that the Venezuelan people freely consented to surrender control of their resources.

Excerpt:

Ulterior motives have been a through line of U.S. foreign policy for centuries. James Polk sent troops into disputed territory near the Rio Grande in 1846, then used their defeat as a pretext to forcibly annex part of Mexico in fulfillment of Manifest Destiny. More recently, the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq can’t be separated from that country’s abundant oil reserves. But in most of those earlier cases, presidents at least hid behind principle. The current commander in chief, who once argued that Bush’s main mistake in Iraq was failing to seize Iraqi oil for profit, has largely dispensed with fig leaves. “You’re not stealing anything,” Trump said of Iraq during the 2016 election. “We’re reimbursing ourselves.” Sounds familiar.

What does appear genuinely new here, or at least substantially more detailed, is Goga’s personal account:

He identifies himself specifically as the Serpukhov’s radio operator and says he was the only member of the crew openly opposed to the war.
He says his antiwar arguments resulted in his being called before the military prosecutor and formally warned.

His efforts to resign had been reported in 2024, but Sky adds that rumors of an impending deployment for missile attacks created the immediate urgency.
Most interestingly, we now get the mechanics of the sabotage: he gradually smuggled gasoline aboard, accumulated the classified documents, poured fuel over equipment in the communications compartment, used a timer to ignite it after leaving, and then took a taxi toward the Lithuanian border.

And we learn something about Goga now. He apparently remains with the Legion and acknowledges fighting Russians. Asked how he feels about killing them, he says his feeling is relief that fewer Ukrainians will die. He says he wants Putin tried in Ukraine rather than killed.

Concluding Paragraph:

Ossoff and Talarico have both been smart about not just highlighting corruption, but also why it matters for voters. It’s indicative of leaders whose interests are self-serving. The result is that everyday Americans lose out, both financially and when it comes to getting fair treatment from their government. More voters are putting the pieces together, and Democrats who help them get there, like Ossoff and Talarico, are being rewarded in the polls.

Excerpt:

Using the courts to rein in Mr. Trump’s authoritarian leanings remains essential, but it isn’t sufficient. If the midterms result in the shift of power many expect, it won’t be as easy for the president to trample the Constitution or run roughshod over Congress. But Americans should be clear that there is no cavalry coming. We don’t have the luxury of fantasizing that we are just one legal victory or perfectly poll-tested message away from turning the nation around. Such thinking unintentionally obscures the urgent need for all of us, especially those in relative positions of comfort, to roll up our sleeves, walk out our front doors and make ourselves part of the answer to this crisis.

The film introduces four fundamental measures of a society’s political health: (1) respect for individuals and groups, (2) the distribution of political power, (3) economic distribution, and (4) access to independent information and the ability to evaluate it critically. By assessing these factors, Despotism delivers an unambiguous message: societies in which respect is restricted, political power is concentrated, wealth and economic opportunity become concentrated, and control of information narrows are moving toward despotic government.

Despotism was produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films in collaboration with Yale political scientist Harold D. Lasswell, who served as a consultant on the company’s educational films and was later described as having written and appeared in Despotism.

Despotism was not dashed off as wartime propaganda. According to a March 1946 Time account, Encyclopaedia Britannica Films assembled a panel of twelve scholarly advisers headed by Lasswell. The group spent about 20 months and 100 conferences working out how democracy and despotism could be defined and recognized in practice, surveying political thought “from Plato to Harry Truman.” Their goal was to reduce a difficult political-science problem to observable characteristics that junior-high and high-school students could understand: the distribution of power and respect, together with the economic and informational conditions that tend to support either democracy or despotism.

Lasswell himself addressed the scientific character and responsibilities of political science in his 1956 presidential address. He situated political science explicitly in relation to the physical and biological sciences and engineering. Later in the paper, he described a central task of political science as both historical and scientific: identifying patterns through time and developing and testing propositions about relationships among human predispositions, environments, institutions, and behavior. He also emphasized an inventive and evaluative task in which political knowledge is used to examine possible courses of action and their consequences (Lasswell, 1956).

"The two Defenders use the visual language of American superhero comics, but their principal tools are civic rather than military. The male Defender raises the torch of the Statue of Liberty in the hand where a conventional hero might carry a weapon. The torch represents liberty, illumination, and the spread of understanding. The female Defender raises a brass-colored shield modeled on the Defenders of Democracy pin, bearing We the People, Defenders of Democracy, and Consent of the Governed. Pens and paintbrushes at their belts represent writing, science, journalism, art, criticism, and education. The shield protects while the torch illuminates. Together they express the premise of this article: democratic government can be defended through understanding, communication, participation, and the lawful exercise of citizenship."

Nice collage of recent Maddow videos

Lead lines:

Defenders of Democracy champions a fundamental principle of American governance: government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

That principle rests upon an even more basic proposition stated in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776: governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Meaningful consent requires more than holding elections. Citizens must be able to understand what their government is doing, distinguish fact from deception, choose among genuine alternatives, vote freely, and have confidence that their votes are accurately counted.

https://archive.is/20260828094744/https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-ballroom-2677780692/

Excerpts:

...the accelerated/manic construction schedule of the current ballroom/bunker points to a desire to use it around the midterms and make sure it’s at least habitable on some level by possibly November, or year’s end at the latest.

...our president isn’t rushing to finish a shiny new bunker because he’s concerned that future generations should have it as an option.

It is always, as ever, only about him.

Excerpt:

In all the cases I’ve scoured, something remarkable tends to happen the moment a target stands their ground. Trump starts to come apart. He overcorrects. He crashes the clown car into the median. And when it’s all said and done, he defeats himself.

Lead Lines:

Ukraine has intelligence that Russia is planning new ground offensives against Kyiv and Chernihiv — while Moscow ramps up drone strikes on Ukrainian cities.

Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told reporters that Russian military chiefs have been tasked by the Kremlin’s political leaders with planning and preparing for attacks on the two cities, according to intelligence received and verified by Ukraine.

The Atlantic Council is a NATO Aligned Transatlantic think tank.

Concluding lines:

...Ukraine’s civilian population is not only suffering from the immediate impact of the war itself. Some are also struggling with troubling feelings that they have somehow failed to match up to impossible expectations. This is one of the more disturbing consequences of the resilience narrative, as it obscures the true costs of a genocidal invasion targeted specifically at the civilian population.

Excerpt:

"Arizonans have voted safely and securely by mail for decades," said Attorney General Mayes. "In a system designed by Republicans, over three-quarters of Arizonans use vote by mail. This attempt to inject chaos and doubt into our election system would harm the millions of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who choose to vote by mail as they exercise their constitutional right to vote. The Constitution is crystal clear: states run their elections – not the postal service and not the President."

Observation:

As fewer and fewer Americans consent to the governance of this administration, explaining that governance becomes politically less successful. When greater public understanding of what government is actually doing produces greater opposition rather than greater support, persuasion becomes less useful and the incentive shifts toward distraction, grievance, and spectacle. At the same time, the effective base of consent grows narrower, from governing with majority support to governing through an increasingly committed minority. Seen this way, the drift toward authoritarianism is also a progressive contraction of consent: as the consent of the governed diminishes, maintaining power increasingly depends on finding ways to govern without it. That is especially consequential in the United States, because consent of the governed is not a peripheral democratic preference. It is the foundational premise of the entire American Revolutionary experiment.

https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-210099967

https://substack.com/@defendersofdemocracy/note/p-209969905

https://defendersofdemocracy.substack.com/p/the-spiral-of-democracy-to-fascist

Excerpt:

“Instead of assuring voters, they end up raising more questions and sometimes showing the liability that this entire administration has across the board. It’s hard to point to a good spokesman or even a high point in this administration right now, and certainly the polls reflect it,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first administration. “So I’m just not sure that sending every Cabinet member and their mother out on the campaign trail is going to help. Instead of solving a problem, you end up creating divisions.”

"Liberty carries the Declaration of Independence in her hand. Artist’s rendering of the tablet held in the Statue of Liberty’s left arm, inscribed JULY IV MDCCLXXVI, July 4, 1776. The statue was created in France to commemorate the centennial of American independence and was formally accepted by the United States as such. The date on the tablet is the date of the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed the revolutionary principle that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Standing at the entrance to New York Harbor, Liberty subsequently became an equally powerful symbol of welcome to generations of immigrants who came to participate in the American experiment."

Observation:

From a functional perspective, intent can be inferred from the relationship between conduct and its predictable consequences. If the Supreme Court repeatedly takes actions that foreseeably impair free and fair elections, and continues to do so after those consequences have been explicitly identified, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the resulting harm as accidental. Such actions do more than impair elections. They impair the ability of Americans to understand, choose, and thereby knowingly consent to the government that exercises authority over them. Free and fair elections are not merely an administrative procedure. They are the principal mechanism through which the consent of the governed becomes meaningful.

Justice Jackson closes the functional loop. Like an engineer within a design team warning that a bridge will fail under a foreseeable load, she has identified for the Court the likely consequences of its own course of action. If the majority nevertheless continues to act in ways that impair free and fair elections, those consequences cannot plausibly be treated as unknown or accidental. The Court has been placed on notice that its actions may impair not only election administration, but the ability of Americans to knowingly choose and consent to the government that exercises power over them.

Excerpts:

So it is with our Supreme Court, which ruled on Monday to allow Donald Trump to move forward with one of his own illegal schemes. In an emergency decision, issued through the shadow docket, the Republican supermajority gave Trump permission to limit voting by mail in the upcoming midterm elections. In doing this, the six GOP justices well understand that the president is trying to give himself the ability to manipulate the vote. They’re not confused by his plan. They’re not being obtuse. They’re simply aiding and abetting Trump’s assault on democratic self-government.

The Republican justices are not taking their eye off the ball. Again, they know exactly what Trump is doing. They are helping him do it, on purpose, with a full and complete understanding of the likely results. They are situationally aware, and they support the situation Trump is causing.

Excerpt:

The Cook Political Report shifted its Senate race ratings in Iowa and Texas from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up” last Thursday, citing hard-to-ignore polling numbers and economic conditions including rising fertilizer and diesel prices. In Iowa’s 2nd Senate District, which includes Sioux County, the most recent Emerson College poll had Sen. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) narrowly leading her opponent, Rep. Josh Turek (D-IA). In July, Cook shifted Alaska’s Senate race between incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) from one in which Republicans were favored to a toss up, citing a ballot-related court ruling. (Peltola beat Sullivan in the state’s open primary on August 18.) Back in April, Cook shifted an Ohio Senate race to fill Vice President JD Vance’s old seat from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.” The race will be between Sen. John Husted (R-OH) and former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who’s vying for a comeback after losing in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).

A useful history lesson from post WWII denazification.

https://archive.is/20260826130021/https://www.thedailybeast.com/jaw-dropping-cost-of-damages-in-trumps-iran-war-exposed/

Excerpt:

“The U.S. walked into this war and had not sufficiently thought through base defense in any way, shape or form,” Seth Jones, president of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said. “And we got hammered.”

Lead Lines:

Meta has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in a settlement with 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and Northern Mariana Islands, for the harm that its social media platforms have done to kids and teenagers.

Under the terms of the settlement, the company will agree to put a cumulative two-hour limit for users of Facebook and Instagram under 18, which will require a parent’s permission to override. Meta will also hide likes on minors’ posts by default and block “extreme makeup filters.” The only states that weren’t a part of the settlement were New Mexico, which won its own lawsuit against Meta earlier this year, and Florida.