How America Ends

Everything is in place to trigger a national crisis, crash the dollar, declare martial law, and cancel all future elections.

On February 5, in a New York Times opinion column inspired by the "rude shock" of Chinese start-up DeepSeek unveiling an artificial intelligence model that matched America’s best at a fraction of the cost, despite trade restrictions on A.I. chips, Zeynep Tufecki wrote:

If the inevitable proliferation of A.I. endangers our cybersecurity... it’s time to harden our networked infrastructure — which will also protect it against the ever-present threat of hacking, by random agents or hostile governments. And instead of fantasizing about how some future rogue A.I. could attack us, it’s time to start thinking clearly about how corporations and governments could use the A.I. that’s available right now to entrench their dominance, erode our rights, worsen inequality. As the technology continues to expand, who will be left behind? What rights will be threatened? Which institutions will need to be rebuilt and how? And what can we do so that this powerful technology with so much potential for good can benefit the public?

DeepSeek panic was a handy distraction for Elon Musk and his band of "random agents" known as DOGE, who continued their own efforts "to entrench their dominance, erode our rights, worsen inequality."

DOGE's nefarious activities are, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others warned, a "grave" threat to national security, especially when it comes to leaking defense and intelligence secrets.

Experts have raised concerns about known national security risk Musk's operation potentially installing untested software and connecting unauthorized servers, which could serve as backdoors for adversaries.

Foreign Policy put it bluntly in an article headlined: "DOGE Is Hacking America: The U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history."

The article's authors Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Davi Ottenheimer, the vice president of trust and digital ethics at Inrupt, a data infrastructure company, write:

"This is much more critical than the initial unauthorized access. These new servers have unknown capabilities and configurations, and there’s no evidence that this new code has gone through any rigorous security testing protocols. The AIs being trained are certainly not secure enough for this kind of data. All are ideal targets for any adversary, foreign or domestic, also seeking access to federal data."

In the midst of this national security nightmare, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth decided to halt all US cyber operations against Russia.

Republicans like defense hawk Mike Turner who believe "Russia is still the evil empire" were incredulous:

Asked about temporary halt in planning and cyber operations on Sunday's "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said, "I'm unaware of that. I don't believe — there are too many, I'm certain, considerations there for that to be an accurate statement so blanket." 

Conveniently for Putin, Speaker Mike Johnson had removed Turner from his role as House Intelligence Committee chair a few weeks earlier.

I'm not sure if this was cooked up in any of Musk's secret phone calls with Putin over the last couple of years, but things have lined up perfectly for the Russian leader.

Just at a time when Trump should be focused on hardening our networked infrastructure, he's actually allowed Elon Musk to come in and breach all our systems, install untested software and secretive AI systems—and potential backdoors. Right on cue, he's shut down the American military's ability to pre-empt or mitigate Russian cyberattacks that could target areas such as energy, banking, and election infrastructure.

In other words, everything is now in place if a psychopathic president, in league with power-hungry oligarchs, ever wanted to trigger a national crisis, crash the dollar, declare martial law, and cancel all future elections.

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P.S. This really is the time to get off X once and for all. Please find me on Bluesky and these other places.