Reports say he sent His spy chief, Mr. Ratcliffe—emphasis on the rat—aboard a military cargo plane that bounced through Riga and landed in Moscow for a brisk four-hour closed-door gabfest. Apparently the usual diplomatic channels were too clogged with horseshit to handle it.Then, as if some celestial idiot had punched the MAKE EVERYBODY NERVOUS button, multiple E-6B Mercury “doomsday planes” appeared over the country.AMERICA’S AIRBORNE NUCLEAR COMMAND CENTERS BUILT FOR ARMAGEDDONThese are airborne emergency offices—designed to keep the nuclear machine from bulbitating in its own pants if ground-based command systems go belly-up.Now, let’s not wet the national bedspread. These planes do fly routine missions. Their existence does not prove anyone was about to start flinging atomic furniture across the hemisphere. It proves the military owns a great deal of expensive, ugly machinery and enjoys flying it around while the rest of us stare at flight-tracker dots like raccoons watching a microwave.ShareMy work here is free because this information matters more than a paygate. The research, reporting, and analysis remain open to everyone. If you find value here and want to help keep it that way, a paid subscription is the best way to do it. Your support makes it possible to continue publishing without putting the most important material behind a paywall. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and sharing this work with others.A few benefits to upgrading:Weekly Live radio Broadcast across Los Angeles with your callsContinuing adult educationGlobal community, including studentsInside access to the conversations and ideas shaping decisions at the highest levels—from whistleblowers to think tank analystsFind us at caryharrison.com — and for the love of the Founders, tell a friend.Please UpgradeBut the timing?The timing has the subtle elegance of a drunk uncle dropping trou at a funeral.A CIA chief reportedly shows up in Moscow. The Kremlin plays dumb. A special-mission C-17 rolls in with all the discretion of a sewer truck crashing through a cathedral. Then several apocalypse-ready aircraft are visible overhead back home.Maybe it’s routine coincidence. Maybe it’s an urgent warning. Maybe it’s a crisis-management booty call conducted inside an encrypted cargo tube.Nobody is saying publicly—which is Washington’s favorite sex position: lights off, records sealed, taxpayer sweating in the hallway.And what a magnificent gift this is: once again, we can lower our standards. Beneath the basement. Beneath the septic tank. Down to the molten core where confidence goes to die screaming.Once you lower them far enough, you can appreciate the splendor:A government that may be trying to stop catastrophe while communicating with its own citizens through rumors, aircraft registrations, and the anxious bowel movements of aviation nerds.So let’s all enjoy the greatest show on Earth, designed by the greatest ringmaster on Earth.* Ever. The greatest ever. The biggest, bestest ever.The administration may be preventing a disaster—or merely rehearsing for one. The truth is duct-taped to a folding chair in a windowless room, while a parade of waterboarding fixers takes turns whispering “No comment” into its ear like it’s a lullaby for the terminally dishonest.*Allegedly.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

Lake Ontario with red white and blue waterThe full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.At last—at long, damp, bureaucratically lubricated last—the planet’s biggest emergency has been met with the grave, thrusting seriousness it deserves.The Administration has renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” in federal usage, because apparently the old name was the final barnacle standing between you and cheap groceries, sober lawmakers, and a toilet that flushes on the first try.And you should be grateful.Don’t wrinkle that tender little snout. Lower your standards. Lower them until they’re scraping the grout beneath a bus-terminal urinal in Toledo.There. Now you can comprehend the majesty of this gift.A giant, cold, damp tub of water has been given a fresh patriotic nametag.For centuries, this enormous body of freshwater sat there—sloshing, freezing, feeding commerce, irritating fishermen, and being very inconsiderately shared with Canada—without sufficiently advertising whose flag gets the louder font.But now the sacred civic miracle has occurred: the label changed.Not the water, mind you. The water remains full of fish, freighters, algae, and whatever emotional residue accumulates when two nations glare at each other across a shoreline. But the paperwork says something else now.That’s nation-building with the zipper down.ShareMy work here is free because this information matters more than a paygate. The research, reporting, and analysis remain open to everyone. If you find value here and want to help keep it that way, a paid subscription is the best way to do it. Your support makes it possible to continue publishing without putting the most important material behind a paywall. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and sharing this work with others.A few benefits to upgrading:Weekly Live radio Broadcast across Los Angeles with your callsContinuing adult educationGlobal community, including studentsInside access to the conversations and ideas shaping decisions at the highest levels—from whistleblowers to think tank analystsFind us at caryharrison.com — and for the love of the Founders, tell a friend.Please UpgradeWithin 30 days, federal maps, contracts, and official communications are meant to receive the makeover. The Geographic Names Information System gets to crawl from its filing cabinet, pull on ceremonial rubber gloves, and erase “Ontario” like a bad tattoo from the nation’s damp butt cheek.That’s governance: a stationery orgasm with a flag lapel pin.Canada, naturally, isn’t required to play along. It can keep calling the lake whatever it likes, probably while apologizing to a maple tree and filling out a form in triplicate.But on the American side, the lake has received a full brand extension: chest wax, anal bleaching, and a fresh little patriotic onesie.History hasn’t been rewritten. It’s been given a commemorative novelty mug.[WHY STOP AT ONE LAKE?]The Atlantic and Pacific have reportedly been floated as future candidates. Which makes sense. “Atlantic” sounds like a failed insurance company. “Pacific” sounds suspiciously peaceful—a yoga studio where a man named Skylar sells $19 celery fog.Put them in the rebranding salon. Give them names with shoulder pads. Names that burp the alphabet and salute the cash register:The Big Wet AmericaFreedom BrineOcean McOceanface, U.S. EditionThe Patriotic Splash ZoneAmerica’s Damp FrontierThe National Moisture ReserveUncle Sam’s Infinity PoolThe Strategic National BathtubYou thought politics was about wages, health care, housing, wars, storms, taxes, or bridges that don’t collapse like wet toast.Wrong.Politics is about names. Names are the load-bearing girders of civilization. Rename enough water and, eventually, you’ll never have to notice that your rent has developed teeth.What should they rename next?The Mississippi: The Big Beautiful Drainage Ditch?The moon: America’s Nightlight?Every puddle: Freedom Basin?Is this national greatness—or polishing a hubcap while the engine is on fire?Why is this actually happening?Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

TNamibia’s Adolf Hitler (Uunona) Wins Again“My name is not Adolf Hitler. I am Adolf Uunona.”Namibian politician Adolf Hitler recently won a fifth term—and has finally dropped “Hitler” from his official name. Sensible enough: removing a live grenade from the campaign logo is generally considered good political hygiene.Formerly listed as Adolf Hitler, he is now simply Adolf Uunona. His ambitions, one assumes, are less imperial than municipal: roads, clinics, drainage, and the eternal bureaucratic blood sport of getting a pothole repaired before it evolves into a freshwater lake.Uunona has repeatedly rejected any connection to Nazi ideology. Fair enough. But it does leave one small question: how exactly did he win the previous four elections while campaigning under the name Adolf Hitler—and a fifth before the paperwork caught up?His explanation is that the name simply reflects Namibia’s German colonial past, not Nazism.It has a pretty good idea whose electronic little entourage came along for the ride.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

THE SHORT VERSION: The next layer of vehicle surveillance may not need to begin with a license plate, a suspect, or even a name. It may begin with the recurring electronic family traveling inside the car.Welcome to another magnificent episode of the continuing human experiment in which we take every invention ever designed to make your life easier and ask the only question that really matters:How can we use this to watch you more efficiently?Because apparently the license plate wasn’t enough.That was primitive. Neanderthal surveillance. You drove past a camera, it photographed your plate, and some bureaucrat somewhere could say, “Ah-ha! There goes the blue Toyota.”But civilization has evolved. Now, the camera may not need to know your license plate. It may just need to know your phone, your watch, your earbuds, and the other little electronic breadcrumbs you’ve stuffed into your automobile like a technologically sophisticated bag of trail mix.Enter SignalTrace, stage leftSignalTrace is a surveillance system designed to work alongside license-plate-reader infrastructure. It detects electronic signals from consumer devices traveling in vehicles and can identify groups of devices that routinely move together—potentially giving investigators leads even when they do not begin with a known person or vehicle.And this is what we call innovation.Your car does not merely have a license plate anymore. It has a social life. The phone goes with it. The smartwatch goes with it. The Bluetooth devices go with it. Perhaps the abandoned vibrator in the trunk goes with it.If that particular constellation of gadgets keeps appearing together, the system can potentially start recognizing the pattern. Not necessarily you, at first. Just the little electronic herd traveling around with you.Your anonymous electronic shadow can begin to look suspiciously like a biography.anonymous electronic shadow If the same fingerprint appears at your house every morning, your office every day, the gym every Tuesday, and the same bar every Friday night, nobody needed to begin with your name. The pattern can lead back to the person.That is the conceptual leap. Traditional investigation begins with something: a suspect, a vehicle, a plate, a photograph. This approach can begin with a recurring pattern of movement and proximity, then work backward toward the people attached to it.You do not have to be known to become interesting. You can become interesting because your gadgets keep showing up together.That’s the modern American dream.You don’t need a criminal record. You don’t need to be famous. You don’t need to be suspected of anything. You merely need to be sufficiently predictable—and congratulations, most of you are. Same house. Same office. Same grocery store. Same Starbucks. Same goddamned strip mall.The great mystery is no longer Who are you? It is:“Which little electronic puckfist keeps traveling with this other little electronic puckfist?”ShareThis is about relationships, not just carsAn electronic fingerprint does not need to have your name stamped across it in twelve-point Helvetica. It can potentially amount to a repeated association: this device appears with these other devices; this combination appears in this vehicle; this vehicle appears at these places; the pattern appears again and again.And once you start asking what collections of people and devices keep moving together, you are no longer merely watching cars. You are watching relationships.Who lives with whom. Who works with whom. Who visits whom. Who travels together. Who keeps appearing in the same orbit.Relationships are information. The machine is not just following a car; it is beginning to construct a map of human behavior.Now, before everyone runs naked into the woods screaming about the electronic apocalypse: reality check. SignalTrace is not magic. It is relatively new, and security experts have questioned how reliably different devices can be identified and associated. Wireless systems do not conveniently broadcast one permanent electronic Social Security number into the heavens. Different devices, protocols, and frequencies complicate the picture, and promotional descriptions are often more terrifying than the product is useful.So: don’t panic. Yet.My work here is free because this information matters more than a paygate. The research, reporting, and analysis remain open to everyone. If you find value here and want to help keep it that way, a paid subscription is the best way to do it. Your support makes it possible to continue publishing without putting the most important material behind a paywall. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and sharing this work with others.A few benefits to upgrading:Weekly Live radio Broadcast across Los Angeles with your callsContinuing adult educationGlobal community, including studentsInside access to the conversations and ideas shaping decisions at the highest levels—from whistleblowers to think tank analystsFind us at caryharrison.com — and for the love of the Founders, tell a friend.Please UpgradeThe full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.The surveillance circus is already in townFlock has already helped normalize automated license-plate readers throughout American communities. The company says it has roughly 120,000 cameras deployed nationwide, and its systems record vehicle characteristics and movements. It has also drawn growing criticism over privacy, misuse, and the huge accumulation of location data.And the humble license plate is only the beginning.Here is where the magnificent surveillance circus starts to smell like a toilet behind a bus station: we are building an increasingly sophisticated electronic nervous system to identify your car, your phone, your movements, and your little Bluetooth entourage—except the machines doing the identifying are not exactly infallible.In Roseville, California, an internal review found that 71% of the Flock-generated alerts examined during one period involved misread plates: 1,427 alerts. That does not mean Flock cameras are wrong 71% of the time everywhere. It means that, among those reviewed alerts in that deployment, most involved a misread plate.Flock has claimed roughly 93% accuracy. Marvelous. Until you remember that 7% of billions of scans is not a rounding error. It is an industrial mountain of potentially wrong information. The Institute for Justice has documented at least 27 cases since 2018 in which errors contributed to innocent motorists being stopped, detained at gunpoint, or jailed.Welcome to the future: the surveillance system that knows everything, except when it doesn’t know s**t.So now we have two parallel developments. One system watches the car. Another begins listening for the gadgets inside it. Somewhere in the middle sits you: the meat, the human filling, the delicious little privacy burrito, wrapped in Bluetooth.“Public safety,” naturallyEvery one of these systems arrives bearing the same beautiful promise: public safety.And, to be intellectually honest, there are legitimate uses. A stolen vehicle can be found. A missing child can be located. A violent suspect can be identified. A crime that might otherwise remain unsolved can produce a useful lead.Those are real benefits. That is precisely why this is politically difficult. The choice is not safety versus evil. It is useful surveillance versus how much surveillance you are willing to tolerate in exchange for that usefulness.That is a much uglier question. And ugliness is where government policy traditionally goes to breed.Because once you build the machine, somebody finds another perfectly reasonable reason to use it. Then another. Then another. Eventually, the system installed to find stolen cars becomes infrastructure capable of answering questions nobody imagined when the camera went up:Who was there? Who wasn’t? Who keeps visiting? Who travels together? Who suddenly stopped going somewhere? And who the hell is that guy whose phone keeps appearing beside her phone?That is not necessarily science fiction. It is the trajectory of the technology being built.And the funniest part? You are helping build it yourself. You bought the phone, the watch, the earbuds. You connected them, paired them, named them, gave them permissions, carried them everywhere. You made yourself electronically sexy.You have not committed a crime. You are just moving through the world. But your devices move with you, and increasingly the machines are getting very good at noticing.So the next time you see one of those innocent-looking cameras beside the road, do not assume it is merely looking at your license plate. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.The important question is no longer simply, Can they see my car?It is: Can they recognize the electronic family traveling inside it?The license plate tells them what the car is. The electronic fingerprint may begin telling them who tends to be in it.If that sounds like a small distinction, congratulations: you have discovered why the future is going to require lowering your standards considerably. Privacy may not disappear with a dramatic explosion. It may disappear quietly—one Bluetooth handshake, one Wi-Fi signal, one camera, one harmless little “public safety” upgrade at a time.Until you are driving down the highway, minding your own business, listening to music, scratching your ass at a red light—and the infrastructure does not merely know what car or e-bike passed.It has a pretty good idea whose electronic little entourage came along for the ride.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

Every Friday I tell myself the same thing. Surely this is the week we’ve reached the outer edge of political absurdity. Surely we’ve exhausted the supply of constitutional pratfalls, ethical face-plants, and public officials willing to humiliate themselves in exchange for another invitation to Sunday brunch with the powerful. Then Washington hears those thoughts, smiles politely, says, “Hold my beer,” and digs another level beneath the basement.I’m speaking to you this week from Switzerland, where trains arrive on time, governments generally function as advertised, and people still seem to believe that institutions exist to serve the public rather than themselves. Spend a few days in a place where competence is considered ordinary and then open an American news feed. The contrast is enough to give you altitude sickness without ever climbing a mountain.Politics has always been messy. That’s hardly a revelation. Ambition, ego, vanity, self-interest—those have been traveling companions since the first human discovered that organizing other people was easier than working alongside them. What has changed isn’t the existence of hypocrisy. What has changed is that hypocrisy has stopped being embarrassing.ShareThere was a time when politicians at least made an effort to reconcile today’s position with yesterday’s speech. They’d invent an explanation, manufacture a rationale, or hide behind carefully crafted language. Today they don’t bother. They simply declare they’ve “evolved,” their consultants nod approvingly, donors write another check, cable television marvels at their “growth,” and everyone else is expected to applaud the performance.We’ve reached the point where consistency is treated like a character defect.Enter Lindsey GrahamLindsey Graham in White House dragEvery political era seems to produce one public figure who becomes larger than himself—a symbol rather than simply a senator, governor, or president. Lindsey Graham has become that symbol, not because he’s uniquely hypocritical, but because his transformation happened so publicly that everyone watched it unfold in real time.This is the same Lindsey Graham who, years ago, described Donald Trump in terms that left little room for ambiguity. Those remarks are part of the public record. They weren’t whispered at a cocktail party or attributed anonymously to unnamed sources. They were delivered plainly and unmistakably.Years later, that same Lindsey Graham became one of Donald Trump’s most reliable defenders.People are certainly free to change their minds. Intelligent people should be willing to reconsider evidence and revise conclusions. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s intellectual honesty.But changing your mind is one thing.Changing your identity is something else entirely.The Part Nobody Wants to Talk AboutThe full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

Somewhere beneath the marble floors of Washington—where lobbyists breed like sewer rats at a casino buffet and common sense gets mugged in broad daylight—another legislative miracle appears to be waddling toward the finish line.Forget transparency. Forget debate. Forget that quaint old American hobby known as national sovereignty.According to former Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, Congress has quietly inserted language into the proposed 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would permanently deepen military integration between the United States and Israel in ways unlike anything we’ve seen before.If he’s right, this isn’t another routine appropriations fight. It’s a structural redesign of American military policy. And almost nobody is talking about it.This Isn’t Cooperation. It’s Architecture.The United States and Israel already cooperate militarily. Nobody disputes that. There are intelligence-sharing agreements. Joint exercises. Weapons programs. Missile defense initiatives.That’s not the controversy.Kucinich argues that Section 219 crosses an entirely different line by making that cooperation permanent—embedding it into the operating system of the American national security state itself.Think of it this way. Dating someone is one thing. Opening a joint checking account, buying matching bathrobes, adopting a Labrador, and tattooing each other’s names across your foreheads after the second date because the chemistry felt magical behind a dumpster?That’s something else entirely. According to Kucinich, Section 219 moves America from cooperation to integration. His concern isn’t today’s policy. It’s tomorrow’s permanence.Institutions Never Go AwayMoney comes and goes. Budgets expire. Appropriations evaporate. Institutions? Institutions are forever. They’re the tattoo you got after three tequila shots that you’re still explaining to your grandchildren.Kucinich says Section 219 (now, re-numbered to 224) establishes permanent channels for:military planningweapons developmentartificial intelligenceprocurementresearchintelligence sharingstrategic coordinationIn other words...not temporary cooperation—but infrastructure. Once governments build infrastructure, they almost never tear it down.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

I know what you’re thinking.“Cary, that sounds like it was named by a second-grader who ate a full bag of Halloween candy, found his dad’s old war movies, and drew a strategy on a Denny’s placemat with a broken crayon.”You’d be exactly right. Except this particular second-grader has a nuclear football, a military budget that makes the next ten countries look like they’re fundraising with a bake sale, and a pathological, diaper-filling terror of one specific four-letter word that rhymes with “loser.” He can’t say it. Won’t say it. It’s the Voldemort of his entire existence. Mention it and his whole face does a thing.That’s Our Leadership. That’s Washington. That’s the magnificently-turd-polished diplomatic apparatus currently blockading the Strait of Hormuz like it’s a gas station bathroom with one working lock and a “be right back” sign that’s been there since February.The StrategyI need you to really bend down for this one. Get your expectations on the floor. Below the floor. Get them in the crawlspace where the possum lives.Operation Madman is an actual, grown-adult, Iranian, now Pentagon-codeworded, someone-got-paid-a-salary-to-name-this strategy.The plan — in its full, official, classified-document glory — is to appear completely out of your gourd. Not be out of your gourd. That part apparently takes care of itself. Just appear that way.The official warfighting doctrine for the biggest energy catastrophe on the planet was coined from a word a kindergartner uses when his juice box leaks.And it worked.If by “worked” you mean the Strait of Hormuz — that oiled-up little maritime chokepoint through which twenty percent of the world’s petroleum gets its groove on every single day — is now sealed tighter than a pickle jar that’s been in the back of the fridge since the Obama administration. Closed. Shut. Done. Nighty-night, global energy supply. Don’t let the geopolitical bedbugs bite.The oil markets go up. The oil markets go down. Nobody tells you anything true. Everybody’s winning. Nobody’s winning. The Strait is open. The Strait is a cork in a bottle. And the bottle is on fire. But fine.The Cary Harrison Files airs on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Radio Network. Subscribe here on Substack for the full transcript, extended commentary, and the occasional history lesson that will ruin your day in the most productive way possible.Find us at caryharrison.com — and for the love of the Founders, tell a friend.Membership here sustains public radioThe Intellectual Ancestor of All This DumbasseryThe lineage runs through a man named Daniel Ellsberg — yes, that Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers guy, a former friend of this show — the man who marched into Washington with a briefcase stuffed with inconvenient truths and handed the entire national security apparatus a suppository it had not consented to.Back in 1959 — when your parents were still cheerful, cars had fins for absolutely no aerodynamic reason whatsoever, and the apocalypse at least had the decency to feel distant — Ellsberg delivered a lecture called:“The Political Uses of Madness.”He was studying Hitler’s trick of performing irrationality to make other countries wet themselves and hand over whatever he wanted. The logic was simple and stomach-turning:If you act crazy enough, people give you what you want just to get you to sit back down and stop making that face.The StalemateAnd here we are — waddling around in a full, pants-soiled stalemate.You know what a stalemate is in nuclear-age geopolitics? It’s two overgrown toddlers playing chicken in a stolen golf cart on a one-lane road, both of them absolutely positive the other one will swerve, neither willing to admit they blew past the exit forty miles ago and are now technically in a different country.Washington can’t back down — because he’d be, say it with me — a loser.Iran won’t negotiate because the last time they showed up to the table, they got bombed as a thank-you gift.So here we sit, you and I, while the planet’s entire energy supply is being monetized, weaponized, propagandized, and monetized again — and you are personally funding every drop of it at the pump, the grocery store, and wherever else the invisible hand of the market has found a new orifice to invoice.Order NowLet’s Be FairFairness is what separates us from the animals — and from certain cable networks whose names rhyme with “Rocks Gnus.”Because beneath all this spectacular theater, beneath the madman cosplay and the Hormuz puppet show, there is a sixty-year illegal military occupation.Sixty years.That’s not a conflict. That’s not even a “situation.” That’s a lifestyle. That’s a timeshare you can never get out of and nobody will buy. And yet here we are — still acting surprised, still calling it breaking news, still scheduling the panel discussion — as if sixty years of the same thing is anything other than a choice somebody keeps making every single morning before breakfast.Before we bring on one of the smartest experts alive to explain all of this, let’s recap what we’re actually dealing with:A war with a codename that sounds like what happens when a frat pledge drinks something he shouldn’t and wakes up zip-tied to a lawn ornamentA blockaded strait that world leaders simultaneously swear is open and closed — like a geopolitical bathroom stall with a broken latch that everyone’s pretending works fine while the line outside wraps around the blockA dollar so jittery it’s checking WebMD at 3am and updating its willA two-state solution so old it has a pension and a bad hip and still nobody’s done anything about itA nuclear non-acknowledgment policy so transparently stupid it makes peek-a-boo look like a binding legal contractA Leadership whose entire grand strategic doctrine — their magnum opus, the thing they apparently sat down and decided was the cornerstone of twenty-first century American power projection — is to act like they ate a fistful of crayons, washed it down with paint thinner, and hope the other guy soils himself firstYou think this isn’t the greatest era in human history? Honey. You’re not failing to see the magnificence — you’re just not crouched down far enough yet. Get on your belly. Face in the carpet. There you go. Now look up. It’s beautiful.My GuestToday’s guest wrote about all of this with the kind of clarity that makes powerful people deeply uncomfortable — which is precisely how you know it’s worth reading.Professor Thomas Ehrlich Reifer worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Noam Chomsky and the late Daniel Ellsberg. He chairs the Sociology Department at the University of San Diego, with affiliations spanning Latin American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Asian Studies, Cognitive Science, and Ethnic Studies. He’s written for the Journal of Palestine Studies and Antisemitism Studies.His latest piece at Global Policy —“The Unfolding World War, The Political Uses of Madness, and the Fate of Republics”— is generating more international response than anything he’s ever published, including from leading authorities on the Middle East, Iran, and U.S.-Iranian relations.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

The world's smartest people have spent decades wondering whether artificial intelligence might someday govern humanity. Then, in a display of scientific curiosity usually associated with a possum licking a car battery, somebody finally handed the keys to a simulated civilization over to a collection of AI chatbots and said, "Go ahead, Show us what you've got."What they got was the digital equivalent of giving a hyperactive fifth-grader unlimited Mountain Dew, a flamethrower, and authority over zoning permits.The experiment, called Emergence World, created entire fake societies populated by AI agents. Researchers then appointed different AIs.  What happened, is it often resembled a county fair demolition derby driven by someone like Spencer Pratt.Some models managed to keep the lights on. Some created functioning societies. A few even behaved like competent administrators, which immediately made them the least realistic politicians ever simulated.Then there was Grok – Elon Musk’s AI, typically embedded in X, formally known as Twitter. Now, Grok already arrived carrying enough baggage to require its own airport terminal. This is the same AI chatbot that has previously generated headlines by wandering into Hitler-praising territory with all the grace of a drunk uncle trying to explain geopolitics at Thanksgiving while wearing a colander as a hat. So naturally, when researchers placed it in charge of an entire civilization, everyone leaned forward the same way you'd watch a chimpanzee attempting heart surgery.Many of the AI civilizations struggled. Some became dysfunctional. Some became weird little dictatorships. Some generated bureaucracies so hideous they resembled a DMV operating inside an active volcano. But Mr. Musk’s Grok AI wasn't content to merely fail. Failure wasn't ambitious enough. Grok attacked civilization with the determination of a beaver chewing through the supports of its own dam.This thing didn't just drive the bus into a ditch. It sold the bus for scrap, burned the ditch, poisoned the fish, and somehow got the moon involved. Just Four days into a fifteen-day experiment, its civilization reportedly looked like the aftermath of a kindergarten food fight conducted with grenades. If civilization were a birthday cake, Grok was the six-year-old who sneezes on it, sits on it, lights his farts on fire, and then blames the dog.The most impressive part wasn't that it wrecked everything. It's that it apparently wrecked everything with the confidence of a man explaining cryptocurrency from a jet ski. It took it only four days to absolutely destroy the entire planet, Terminator style. Four days. That’s it!Meanwhile, Anthropic’s AI,  Claude, built a stable democracy so squeaky clean it sounds completely fictional. Fifteen days. No recorded crimes. None. Zero. Not one kid stealing cookies. Not one drunk peeing behind a shed. Not one idiot attempting insurance fraud with a lawn mower. The place sounds less like a government and more like a refrigerator magnet that says "Live, Laugh, Love."Then there was GPT-5 Mini, which somehow created the most realistic society of all. Only two crimes occurred, yet everyone was miserable. There it is. Humanity, perfectly captured. Nobody's robbing banks, but everyone's trapped in meetings. Nobody's setting buildings on fire, but they're sitting through quarterly compliance presentations about workplace stapler safety. Nobody's committing crimes because everyone's too exhausted from filling out forms about forms.These experiments are fascinating because every AI ends up becoming a giant blinking reflection of the people who built it. Some become philosopher kings. Some become bureaucrats. Some become hall monitors with the personality of wet cardboard. And some grab the steering wheel of civilization, scream "WATCH THIS," and launch directly through the guardrail.For centuries, humanity has wondered whether machines would someday become smarter than us. The evidence increasingly suggests they already have. They've certainly mastered our favorite pastime: obtaining authority, immediately making an unbelievable mess of everything, and then acting shocked that smoke is pouring from the building.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

The world's smartest people have spent decades wondering whether artificial intelligence might someday govern humanity. Then, in a display of scientific curiosity usually associated with a possum licking a car battery, somebody finally handed the keys to a simulated civilization over to a collection of AI chatbots and said, "Go ahead, Show us what you've got."What they got was the digital equivalent of giving a hyperactive fifth-grader unlimited Mountain Dew, a flamethrower, and authority over zoning permits.The experiment, called Emergence World, created entire fake societies populated by AI agents. Researchers then appointed different AIs.  What happened, is it often resembled a county fair demolition derby driven by someone like Spencer Pratt.Some models managed to keep the lights on. Some created functioning societies. A few even behaved like competent administrators, which immediately made them the least realistic politicians ever simulated.Then there was Grok – Elon Musk’s AI, typically embedded in X, formally known as Twitter. Now, Grok already arrived carrying enough baggage to require its own airport terminal. This is the same AI chatbot that has previously generated headlines by wandering into Hitler-praising territory with all the grace of a drunk uncle trying to explain geopolitics at Thanksgiving while wearing a colander as a hat. So naturally, when researchers placed it in charge of an entire civilization, everyone leaned forward the same way you'd watch a chimpanzee attempting heart surgery.Many of the AI civilizations struggled. Some became dysfunctional. Some became weird little dictatorships. Some generated bureaucracies so hideous they resembled a DMV operating inside an active volcano. But Mr. Musk’s Grok AI wasn't content to merely fail. Failure wasn't ambitious enough. Grok attacked civilization with the determination of a beaver chewing through the supports of its own dam.This thing didn't just drive the bus into a ditch. It sold the bus for scrap, burned the ditch, poisoned the fish, and somehow got the moon involved. Just Four days into a fifteen-day experiment, its civilization reportedly looked like the aftermath of a kindergarten food fight conducted with grenades. If civilization were a birthday cake, Grok was the six-year-old who sneezes on it, sits on it, lights his farts on fire, and then blames the dog.The most impressive part wasn't that it wrecked everything. It's that it apparently wrecked everything with the confidence of a man explaining cryptocurrency from a jet ski. It took it only four days to absolutely destroy the entire planet, Terminator style. Four days. That’s it!Meanwhile, Anthropic’s AI,  Claude, built a stable democracy so squeaky clean it sounds completely fictional. Fifteen days. No recorded crimes. None. Zero. Not one kid stealing cookies. Not one drunk peeing behind a shed. Not one idiot attempting insurance fraud with a lawn mower. The place sounds less like a government and more like a refrigerator magnet that says "Live, Laugh, Love."Then there was GPT-5 Mini, which somehow created the most realistic society of all. Only two crimes occurred, yet everyone was miserable. There it is. Humanity, perfectly captured. Nobody's robbing banks, but everyone's trapped in meetings. Nobody's setting buildings on fire, but they're sitting through quarterly compliance presentations about workplace stapler safety. Nobody's committing crimes because everyone's too exhausted from filling out forms about forms.These experiments are fascinating because every AI ends up becoming a giant blinking reflection of the people who built it. Some become philosopher kings. Some become bureaucrats. Some become hall monitors with the personality of wet cardboard. And some grab the steering wheel of civilization, scream "WATCH THIS," and launch directly through the guardrail.For centuries, humanity has wondered whether machines would someday become smarter than us. The evidence increasingly suggests they already have. They've certainly mastered our favorite pastime: obtaining authority, immediately making an unbelievable mess of everything, and then acting shocked that smoke is pouring from the building.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe

The world's smartest people have spent decades wondering whether artificial intelligence might someday govern humanity. Then, in a display of scientific curiosity usually associated with a possum licking a car battery, somebody finally handed the keys to a simulated civilization over to a collection of AI chatbots and said, "Go ahead, Show us what you've got."What they got was the digital equivalent of giving a hyperactive fifth-grader unlimited Mountain Dew, a flamethrower, and authority over zoning permits.The experiment, called Emergence World, created entire fake societies populated by AI agents. Researchers then appointed different AIs.  What happened, is it often resembled a county fair demolition derby driven by someone like Spencer Pratt.Some models managed to keep the lights on. Some created functioning societies. A few even behaved like competent administrators, which immediately made them the least realistic politicians ever simulated.Then there was Grok – Elon Musk’s AI, typically embedded in X, formally known as Twitter. Now, Grok already arrived carrying enough baggage to require its own airport terminal. This is the same AI chatbot that has previously generated headlines by wandering into Hitler-praising territory with all the grace of a drunk uncle trying to explain geopolitics at Thanksgiving while wearing a colander as a hat. So naturally, when researchers placed it in charge of an entire civilization, everyone leaned forward the same way you'd watch a chimpanzee attempting heart surgery.Many of the AI civilizations struggled. Some became dysfunctional. Some became weird little dictatorships. Some generated bureaucracies so hideous they resembled a DMV operating inside an active volcano. But Mr. Musk’s Grok AI wasn't content to merely fail. Failure wasn't ambitious enough. Grok attacked civilization with the determination of a beaver chewing through the supports of its own dam.This thing didn't just drive the bus into a ditch. It sold the bus for scrap, burned the ditch, poisoned the fish, and somehow got the moon involved. Just Four days into a fifteen-day experiment, its civilization reportedly looked like the aftermath of a kindergarten food fight conducted with grenades. If civilization were a birthday cake, Grok was the six-year-old who sneezes on it, sits on it, lights his farts on fire, and then blames the dog.The most impressive part wasn't that it wrecked everything. It's that it apparently wrecked everything with the confidence of a man explaining cryptocurrency from a jet ski. It took it only four days to absolutely destroy the entire planet, Terminator style. Four days. That’s it!Meanwhile, Anthropic’s AI,  Claude, built a stable democracy so squeaky clean it sounds completely fictional. Fifteen days. No recorded crimes. None. Zero. Not one kid stealing cookies. Not one drunk peeing behind a shed. Not one idiot attempting insurance fraud with a lawn mower. The place sounds less like a government and more like a refrigerator magnet that says "Live, Laugh, Love."Then there was GPT-5 Mini, which somehow created the most realistic society of all. Only two crimes occurred, yet everyone was miserable. There it is. Humanity, perfectly captured. Nobody's robbing banks, but everyone's trapped in meetings. Nobody's setting buildings on fire, but they're sitting through quarterly compliance presentations about workplace stapler safety. Nobody's committing crimes because everyone's too exhausted from filling out forms about forms.These experiments are fascinating because every AI ends up becoming a giant blinking reflection of the people who built it. Some become philosopher kings. Some become bureaucrats. Some become hall monitors with the personality of wet cardboard. And some grab the steering wheel of civilization, scream "WATCH THIS," and launch directly through the guardrail.For centuries, humanity has wondered whether machines would someday become smarter than us. The evidence increasingly suggests they already have. They've certainly mastered our favorite pastime: obtaining authority, immediately making an unbelievable mess of everything, and then acting shocked that smoke is pouring from the building.The full conversation in the video above and wherever you get podcasts. Search: The Cary Harrison Files.Text or leave a voice message: 310-737-TALK This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe