The Weekly Weird #72
Aliens! (maybe), far-wrong, Apocalypse Thiel, Big Tech fluffs Trump, beware of bossware, Miss Info and her suitors, sextortion, Kathman-don't
Welcome back to the Weekly Weird, your recurring rendezvous with the wild, the wacky, and the worrying!
If you haven’t already, make sure you check out the latest episode of the podcast, in which I spoke with protestors from Unite The Kingdom and March Against Fascism, two competing marches that took place in London on September 13. It was a touching and worrying temperature check that exposed a lot of discontent and distrust from across the political spectrum, a level and intensity of frustration that bodes ill for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s longevity as the leader of the UK.
Far-Wrong
Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, put out a statement decrying the September 13th Unite The Kingdom rally in London.
Khan’s commitment to challenging “all those who peddle the politics of fear and division” must post-date his entry into City Hall.
In 2001 and 2002, during his previous career as a human rights lawyer, he represented the Nation of Islam in their attempt to get their leader Louis Farrakhan allowed into the UK after Farrakhan had been banned from entering the country in part because of his well-documented, extensive, and virulent Jew-hatred.
In 2004, as a Parliamentary candidate, Khan “shared a platform with five Islamic extremists at a political meeting…an activist who has threatened “fire throughout the world”, a supporter of terror group Hamas, a preacher who backs an Islamic state and a Muslim leader accused of advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if it stopped arms being smuggled into Gaza.”
The Evening Standard’s coverage included other details on the gathering, the ethos of which showcased Khan’s willingness to stand up for “equality, inclusion and mutual respect.”
Invitations said “all welcome” but made clear that women would be segregated at the door, stating: “Ladies’ entrance on Lessingham Avenue next to the snooker club.”
Also on the platform was a controversial Surrey vicar and conspiracy theorist who has claimed Israel could have been responsible for the terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers.
Back in the present, one X user had a particularly spicy reaction to Khan’s statement:
Sir Trevor Phillips summed up the Unite The Kingdom gathering on Sky News fairly and clearly, ending with the following:
“Perhaps the people are sending us all a message. Let’s see if anyone at Westminster is listening.”
Let’s see indeed.
Aliens! (Maybe)
Last week, a House Oversight Committee task force had a hearing to talk about transparency in the federal government as it pertains to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, the overly-complex 21st century way of saying UFOs. CBS News put up some ‘key moments’ on YouTube in which videos are shared and stories of sightings are delivered.
Meanwhile, in July a large and fast-moving interstellar object was spotted by the automated Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) and dubbed 3I/Atlas. While YouTube channels like The Space Race and even Neil deGrasse Tyson have weighed in on what it is or isn’t or could be, Professor Avi Loeb at Harvard has been putting his head above the parapet to talk about the possibility that it could be alien technology rather than a dumb old space rock.
As the United States and the internet goes all Ancient Aliens on the latest sky-sighting, it’s worth checking in with Terence McKenna in an interview about the “hackle-raising notion” of extraterrestrial intelligence thirty-five years ago.
With the flying saucer phenomenon, we’re dealing with thousands and thousands of incidents per year throughout the world. Even at our own primitive level of scientific sophistication, we can learn a great deal about a planet by sending a single probe to that planet. What kind of scientific programme of investigation requires thousands and thousands of appearances? And if we make the assumption that not all appearances are observed, but that in fact only a small number are observed, then the number of appearances that must actually be going on soars towards an astronomical number, which suggests that we’re dealing with an interpenetration by an alien dimension on an almost industrial scale.
3I/Atlas will be on the far side of the Sun from around October to December before emerging and once more being visible from Earth.
How much weirder is this going to get?
Apocalypse Thiel
Peter Thiel is a renowned tech billionaire who co-founded PayPal and Palantir, and was an early ‘angel’ investor in Facebook. He also has thoughts on the End Times.
Thiel will give a four-part lecture series on the Antichrist at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club on September 15. Before you dash off to secure your seat, it’s already sold out.
Despite being derided for his often off-piste ideas, e.g. building a libertarian outpost in international waters, Thiel sounds like he might be onto something here, at least as explained by Religious News Service (RNS):
Thiel seems to see the apocalypse unfolding in stages. He interprets the Antichrist not as a single figure but as a global, technological, authoritarian system — one that secures peace and stability at the cost of freedom and democracy. In his view, the danger lies not in our society’s overt defiance of religion, but in the co-opting of its language and symbols: promises of “law and order,” “peace and safety” that mask the rise of centralized control.
Here’s Thiel dropping some Bible science:
For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.
1 Thessalonians 5:3
RNS sums up Thiel’s view bleakly:
For him, our world is trapped between two extreme possibilities: annihilation or authoritarianism. The fear of collapse makes societies more willing to embrace authoritarian solutions that promise safety at any cost.
As Thiel said to Tyler Cowen in February 2024:
[I]f we, again, talk about all these existential risks today — nuclear weapons, climate change, biotech, nanotech, killer robots, the AI that’s going to turn everyone into a paperclip or whatever — I always think you should at least include one more kind of existential risk if we’re going to throw it in.
In my mind, one other existential risk is a one-world totalitarian government. I find that at least as scary as the others. In a biblical eschatological context, you’re supposed to worry about Armageddon. You’re also supposed to worry about the Antichrist. Maybe you’re supposed to worry more about the Antichrist because the Antichrist comes first. So, if we’re going to find a pathway through this apocalyptic age, you have to navigate between the Scylla of all these existential risks and the Charybdis of this political totalitarian catastrophe.
[…]
There’s a lot of truth to these existential risks. I don’t want to completely dismiss them, but that’s also how we’re going to get this totalitarian state.
When one of the world’s foremost technologists starts talking like David Icke, it might be worth wondering whether something is amiss…
Big Tech Fluffs Trump
If you want to see what dozens of super-wealthy tech nerds pleasuring a septuagenarian looks like, check out this clip from the dinner President Trump threw at the White House for the great and the good of Big Tech:
Forbes covered the guest list in detail, writing that the suck-up session “marked Silicon Valley’s strategic realignment with Trump’s administration on AI and technology policies.”
Wired described Trump’s opening comments:
The introduction from Trump is characteristically both overgilded and confusing: “It's an honor to be here with this group of people. They're leading a revolution in business and in genius and every other word.”
“Leading a revolution in genius and every other word.” That should be on the sign at the entrance to Meta’s campus.
The White House was quick to harvest quotes from the get-together and share them in a statement, with the CEO of Oracle, Safra Catz, lauding El Presidente for “making it possible for America to win” because “AI is going to change everything”.
Apple CEO Tim Cook exhibited his commitment to recycling when he praised Trump for “your focus and your leadership and your focus on innovation”.
The schmooze-fest anchored the message that Big Tech is “grateful” and “optimistic”, and they “really enjoy working with [Trump’s] Administration”.
The forced declarations of fealty and promises of investment in the US were, according to Wired, “like passing a camera around to take turns wishing a distant, unloved uncle a very happy Thanksgiving.” As for Tim Cook’s enthusiasm for investing in the United States after Apple got gelded by Trump’s tariffs, Wired called that “a bit like thanking the school bully for setting the tone such that you can give him your lunch money.”
Trump’s AI Action Plan and promise to get rid of pesky regulatory hurdles are probably irrelevant. They just think he’s a swell guy.
Meanwhile, polling data shows that there is at least one thing on which Americans agree, regardless of their party affiliation:
Beware Of Bossware
The Guardian reported this week on “a recent growth in computerised work surveillance” in Britain, with a Chartered Management Institute (CMI) survey finding that “[a] third of UK employers are using “bossware” technology to track workers’ activity with the most common methods including monitoring emails and web browsing.”
Only a third?
In 2023, less than a fifth of people thought they were being monitored by an employer, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found. The finding that about a third of managers report their organisations are monitoring workers’ online activities on employer-owned devices is probably an underestimate, as roughly the same proportion said they don’t know what tracking their organisations do.
Examples of the ramped-up intrusion include HSBC’s planned “surge in staff surveillance & biometric scanning” and PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ ‘traffic light’ system in which managers use “a dashboard to record attendance and check whether workers are adhering to the company policy that requires them to spend three days a week, or 60% of their time, with clients or in the office.”
HSBC’s “global security strategy” is particularly intensive. The international bank plans “a fourfold increase in the number of cameras at its new London-based facility, doubling its use of biometric verification, and badging software installed on employees’ personal mobile devices.”
This is the same HSBC that, due to “systematic failures”, “laundered $881 million for notorious drug cartels like the Sinaloa in Mexico and Norte del Valle in Colombia” in addition to “violating U.S. sanctions against Iran”.
I’m sure their staff will be delighted at how serious the bank has become about following the rules.
Back to the CMI survey, the managers polled weren’t even convinced that the surveillance measures cited would be effective, even if the privacy and trust considerations were absent.
The study found that 53% of managers supported monitoring of employees’ online activities on employer-owned devices, but 42% opposed it, mostly because it undermines trust but also because they believe it does not improve performance and can be misused or lead to unfair judgments or disciplinary actions.
Prepare for new all-time highs in morale for Britain’s workers.
Miss Info And Her Suitors
The Intercept reported recently that Uncle Sam “hopes to use machine learning to create and distribute propaganda overseas in a bid to “influence foreign target audiences” and “suppress dissenting arguments,” according to a U.S. Special Operations Command document”.
To bolster its “Advanced Technology Augmentations to Military Information Support Operations” — also known as MISO — SOCOM is looking for a contractor that can “Provide a capability leveraging agentic Al or multi‐LLM agent systems with specialized roles to increase the scale of influence operations.”
So-called “agentic” systems use machine-learning models purported to operate with minimal human instruction or oversight. These systems can be used in conjunction with large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT, which generate text based on user prompts. While much marketing hype orbits around these agentic systems and LLMs for their potential to execute mundane tasks like online shopping and booking tickets, SOCOM believes the techniques could be well suited for running an autonomous propaganda outfit.
The SOCOM document stated that “[h]aving a program built to support our objectives can enable us to control narratives and influence audiences in real time.”
The government’s justification for a focus on online narrative control could simply have been one word written over and over again in capital letters.
Exhibit A: The Era of A.I. Propaganda Has Arrived, And America Must Act, an opinion ‘guest essay’ by two Vanderbilt University professors published in August by the New York Times.
With the exponential rise of generative A.I. systems, the greatest danger is no longer a flood of invective and falsehoods on social media. Rather, it is the slow, subtle and corrosive manipulation of online communication — propaganda designed not to shock, but to slip silently into our everyday digital discussions. We have entered a new era in international influence operations, where A.I.-generated narratives shift the political landscape without drawing attention.
A Chinese company called GoLaxy is already undertaking such operations, according to a large cache of documents recently uncovered by the Vanderbilt University Institute of National Security, where we work. The materials show GoLaxy emerging as a leader in technologically advanced, state-aligned influence campaigns, which deploy humanlike bot networks and psychological profiling to target individuals. Its activities and claims suggest it has connections to the Chinese government.
GoLaxy has already deployed its technology in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the documents suggest it may be preparing to expand into the United States. A.I.-driven propaganda is no longer a hypothetical future threat. It is operational, sophisticated and already reshaping how public opinion can be manipulated on a large scale.
A follow-up piece by Julian Barnes quoted GoLaxy’s denial of the allegations.
In a statement, GoLaxy denied that it was creating any sort of “bot network or psychological profiling tour” or that it had done any work related to Hong Kong or other elections. It called the information presented by The New York Times about the company “misinformation.”
“GoLaxy’s products are mainly based on open-source data, without specially collecting data targeting U.S. officials,” the firm said.
After being contacted by The Times, GoLaxy began altering its website, removing references to its national security work on behalf of the Chinese government.
The New York Times has not acquitted itself brilliantly on the misinformation front in recent years, so there is a certain tangy irony to the paper of record accusing a Chinese company of misinfo operations on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party and being dismissed as a misinformation peddler in turn, especially when Barnes forgets the Chinese company is called GoLaxy a few paragraphs later and (presumably by accident) implicates a video camera manufacturer in a web of international intrigue:
GoPro [sic] “already possesses the ability to be aware of political situations, target in real time, create high-quality content and perform rapid counterattacks,” the company says, adding that the new system “has already produced certain political effects in relevant state departments.”
The company, according to documents, has done work for China’s intelligence, including the Ministry of State Security — the country’s main spy agency — and internal security agencies.
Former U.S. officials said that American spy agencies had information confirming those partnerships.
The company’s work, according to current and former American officials, is aligned with China’s national security strategy, an assessment that the documents buttress.
Evoking a phrase used by Mao Zedong, the company suggests that its technology will be essential to help China prevail over the West.
The GoPro system, the company says, will become a “technological platform that can truly tell China’s story, amplify China’s voice and expand China’s influence, as well as providing comprehensive technological support to quickly make ‘the easterly wind overpowering the westerly wind’ a reality.”
And I just thought GoPro made cameras that could get splashed or dropped while skinny people throw themselves off of cliffs or risk their necks at extreme mountain biking.
Behold, the newest cyberthreat to American hegemony according to the proofreaders at the New York Times:
Hearing a base jumper say “That was pretty sick” as he lands on a rocky outcrop overlooking a scenic valley really does “truly tell China’s story, amplify China’s voice and expand China’s influence”, doesn’t it?
But seriously:
GoLaxy tracks and collects information on more than 2,000 American political and public figures, 4,000 right-wing influencers and supporters of President Trump, in addition to journalists, scholars and entrepreneurs.
[…]
The Chinese government may not direct GoLaxy’s day-to-day activities, but current and former officials say there is little doubt that the firm’s information operations are endorsed by the Chinese government and that the Communist Party has ultimate control over the firm.
Back to The Intercept coverage of the SOCOM document:
The material shows SOCOM believes it needs technology that closely matches the reported Chinese capabilities, with bots scouring and ingesting large volumes of internet chatter to better persuade a targeted population, or an individual, on any given subject.
SOCOM says it specifically wants “automated systems to scrape the information environment, analyze the situation and respond with messages that are in line with MISO objectives. This technology should be able to respond to post(s), suppress dissenting arguments, and produce source material that can be referenced to support friendly arguments and messages.”
The Pentagon is paying especially close attention to those who might call out its propaganda efforts.
“This program should also be able to access profiles, networks, and systems of individuals or groups that are attempting to counter or discredit our messages,” the document notes. “The capability should utilize information gained to create a more targeted message to influence that specific individual or group.”
With the US apparently seeking Chinese-style tools to engage in information warfare in cyberspace, specifically as a counterbalance to the Chinese capability for controlling narratives and driving discourse online, it’s worth spending a minute or so listening to Richard Nixon, who famously went to China to begin the process of opening it to the West, as he describes his understanding of Mao and Zhou Enlai’s way of thinking.
As far as the Chinese are concerned, their primary interest is China, always China, that’s number one. Their secondary interest is philosophy.
Where there is conflict between the ideology and their security, their security comes first.
SOCOM is following a well-worn path. As General Buck Turgidson declared to President Merkin Muffley in Kubrick’s satirical masterpiece Dr. Strangelove: “Mr President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”
Sextortion
Wired reports that a new form of ‘sextortion’ spyware is doing the rounds, “detecting when the user is browsing pornography on their PC, screenshotting it, and taking a candid photo of the victim through their webcam.”
Looks like cybercriminals have figured out how to turn your “oh” face into an “oh no” face.
“It’s gross…I hate it,” said Selena Larson, one of the researchers who reported on the intrusive technology for the security company Proofpoint.
The malware, like all infostealers, is designed to infect a target's computer and automatically send a hacker a wide variety of stolen sensitive data, including banking information, usernames and passwords, and keys to victims' crypto wallets. Stealerium, however, adds another, more humiliating form of espionage: It also monitors the victim's browser for web addresses that include certain NSFW keywords, screenshots browser tabs that include those words, photographs the victim via their webcam while they're watching those porn pages, and sends all the images to a hacker—who can then blackmail the victim with the threat of releasing them.
The genesis of the code is unclear, although Wired describe how it is, uncommonly for cybercrime tech, offered gratis online.
Stealerium, strangely, is distributed as a free, open source tool available on Github. The malware’s developer, who goes by the named witchfindertr and describes themselves as a “malware analyst” based in London, notes on the page that the program is for “educational purposes only.”
“How you use this program is your responsibility,” the page reads. “I will not be held accountable for any illegal activities. Nor do i give a shit how u use it.”
While “hackers [who] claim to have obtained webcam pics of victims looking at pornography have also plagued inboxes in recent years…actual, automated webcam pics of users browsing porn is “pretty much unheard of,” says Proofpoint researcher Kyle Cucci.” Until now.
Self-abuse responsibly, everyone.
Kathman-don’t
Unrest in Kathmandu has led to a “Gen-Z Revolution”, culminating in the resignation of the prime minister, the burning of government buildings, and the appointment of Sushila Karki, the former chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, as Nepal’s first female prime minister.
The BBC reports that over 50 people were killed during the protests, “sparked by a ban on social media platforms”.
It is against our freedom of speech and they want to control us just like a dictator.
Youths Against Corruption took to the streets, clashed with riot police, and in the end, saw in a change of government.
Sky News have an informative piece on how events unfolded.
Something must be in the air in South East Asia, as it’s also kicking off in Indonesia now.
That’s it for this week’s Weird, everyone. I hope you enjoyed it.
Outro music is I Am Wrong by Nomeansno, dedicated to everyone who thinks they’re right, including your humble correspondent.
I know what I know
I'm no hero
Don't wait or hesitate
Be strong
Be wrong
Stay sane, friends.
Excellent work, Mike