Scheming Through the Apocalypse. Who Paid for Thomas Crooks’ Hasty Cremation? Houthis. Higher Education to Turn Patriotic. Catholics, Bishops, & Immigration. Kamala & Konniving. More
Well, well—Doomsday is upon us. Yet again.
Seemingly concerned with the future of humankind, AI executives are demanding to be regulated.
There is a certain amount of skepticism about this projected AI Apocalypse, however. Matthew Hennessey of the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression writes (“Where’s My Pitchfork?“):
It pays to be cynical when a CEO in any industry begs to be regulated. When the three top CEOs in an industry all agree they need to be stopped from settling a frontier they charged into like wildcatters, check your wallet. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the oligopolist’s handbook.
In this case, there’s an urgent wrinkle. [Anthropic CEO Dario] Amodei and his peers want We the People to appreciate that if the AI industry isn’t regulated, a happy outcome can’t be guaranteed. Essentially, Washington must organize a global regulatory regime right now or prepare for the worst. Nice little democracy you have there….
Mr. Amodei writes that the monster he’s created could take over the entire internet and unleash swarms of military drones. The likely outcome, he says, is a world dominated by Chinese autocrats. That’s quite a position to put We the People in, wouldn’t you say?
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway also expressed cynicism during a conversation with Fox’s Shannon Bream:
It is an issue of our common Washington, D.C. People seek regulatory capture. You’ve made it to the top of the heap, and you want to keep everybody else out by regulating so the smaller companies cannot rise.
“Beware the AI bosses ‘please regulate us’ bait-and-switch,” an editorial at the New York Post urges:
Top AI companies are blatantly seeking special privileges under cover of warning against the AI-pocalypse.
That’s the best explanation for the sudden flurry of doom-mongering from CEOs like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker stakes out a different position. His column, headlined “AI Promises Boom, Doom and Both at Once,” suggests that the companies’ calls for regulation may be self-serving, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
Former President Barack Obama emerged as a proponent of regulation. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is seen by Politico as facing a dilemma on AI regulation. President Trump “declared on the AI safety panic,” according to Axios. Fox’s Liz Peek writes that President Trump must take the alarms seriously. Hugh Hewitt is less urgent. “Spare us the AI apocalypse rhetoric. Let Congress decide what comes next,” Hewitt advises, observing that “Americans are not in the habit of agreeing with corporate titans who cry that ‘Something must be done!’”
And a word of caution before we start doing things. In “The Dangerous Ideology Behind the AI Warnings” at The Free Press, an AI insider adds his own warning:
A philosophy called effective altruism has shaped today’s AI safety movement. Its proponents claim to be protecting humanity’s future. Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says think twice before believing them.
It’s more than two years since the Butler, Pa., attempt on President Trump’s life, and we’re now getting new information on Thomas Crooks, the gunman. FBI documents describing the “emotionless” Crooks are featured in a New York Post story:
“When Thomas was born he did not scream and he was always quiet from that point on,” his father, Matthew, told feds in newly unearthed documents about the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.
Another story in the New York Post notes that an “anonymous donor” paid for Crooks’ hasty cremation but does not name the donor:
Thomas’ cremation was first revealed by Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who was infuriated and disturbed that the gunman’s body was turned over to the family less than two weeks after the assassination attempt.
The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s sweeping mail ballot restrictions for midterm elections:
The ruling, a major defeat for President Donald Trump, leaves intact election procedures and prohibits changes that could have had significant impacts for millions of voters set to vote by mail in contests that will determine which party controls the House and Senate.
About one-third of voters used mail ballots in 2024.
In a brief order Monday evening, the majority did not explain its reasoning for leaving in place a lower court order blocking the administration’s plans. The majority wrote that the Trump administration was “unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” to the lower court order.
The lefty media can’t get enough of those Houthis. The Guardian, for example, reports that the Iran-backed Houthis have seized “strategic” Red Sea islands and that this means there is an “impending oil crunch.” Zineb Riboua takes a somewhat different tack in “Houthi Defeat Is Closer Than We Think” at The Free Press. He argues:
The terrorist group has renewed attacks on Saudi Arabia as the kingdom faces a broader regional war. But a weakened Iran could finally threaten their ability to keep fighting.
We’ve all been concerned about the anti-American indoctrination in our colleges and universities. Unlikely as it may seem, this problem may solve itself. Walter Russell Mead tells us how, in a column headlined “Higher Ed Will Soon Get Patriotic.” Renewed great-power rivalry will suppress employer demand for “citizens of the world,” Mead argues:
Smart corporate recruiters will be seeking graduates who don’t want to abolish capitalism, globalize the intifada or destroy the U.S. Given the rise of antibusiness sentiment among DSA Democrats and MAGA Republicans, firms will increasingly see the value of being perceived by the public as loyal, productive members of Team America.
Despite the sometimes robust evidence to the contrary, college students and universities aren’t unintelligent. When top tech companies, law firms and investment banks wanted global citizens, the elite educational complex churned them out. Now colleges are beginning to respond to changing signals from these employers….
Second, as more elite private colleges and universities like Harvard, Yale and Vanderbilt promote greater intellectual diversity and more high-profile public universities establish institutes to study and teach the values of the American founding, more moderate and conservative young people will enter the academy and play a larger role in campus life.
“This issue is splitting the Catholic Church” is a Washington Post headline. The issue is immigration, and the Post publishes a piece by Nathan Pinkoski:
Catholic leaders speak with one voice on the issue of immigration. In July, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, marked his home country’s 250th anniversary by calling on the United States to welcome migrants with “compassion and generosity.”…
But when it comes to Catholics in the pews, the picture looks very different….Lay Catholic support for a border wall is sharply at odds with the official views of the hierarchy. Under the mantra of “building bridges and not walls,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opposed border wall construction in 2017, in 2019 and again in 2023.
But the Catholic hierarchy’s pro-migrant sentiments aren’t the product of these material incentives (the USCCB loses money on migration). Instead, they’re embedded in the way churchmen think and write about the public role of the Catholic Church. Bishops remain captivated by a postwar vision of migration that political leaders across the ideological spectrum are moving away from.
Moralistic discussions of migration are ill-suited to a time when migration is largely about economic aspirations rather than escaping totalitarian regimes. The inadequacy of the present system has impelled anti-populist politicians such as Donald Tusk and Keir Starmer to tighten asylum and immigration law. Yet church officials have taken a position that is squarely to their left.
Former Democratic insider Lindy Li is spilling the beans on her former party:
Li, a former Democratic fundraiser who switched party affiliation over unheeded warning signs about President Joe Biden‘s decline in the 2024 election, believes Kamala Harris was setting herself up to poach Biden’s donors just days before he dropped out of the race — while still telling voters he could win.
“It was all charade….”
Here’s what I find so telling: A woman who cannot put together a coherent, diagrammable sentence is nevertheless able to connive herself into first place on the Democratic ticket. Guess it just depends on what’s important to you.
“Meet the Influencers Boosting Zohran Mamdani’s Administration“: “Some in the mayor’s coterie are relatively innocuous. But others celebrate the assassination of Charlie Kirk, claim America runs “mass concentration camps,” and make apologies for terrorist attacks targeting synagogues.
