The president named the Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, as the country’s first AI czar. The man who oversees every intelligence agency in the United States will now also oversee all artificial intelligence policy. Democracy Now reported the appointment Monday.

Clayton was previously the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He moved from Wall Street regulation to the intelligence community. Now he has been given authority over the technology that the president calls regulating a “hoax.”

The same government that built a four-star command for autonomous drones last week put the nation’s top spy in charge of the technology that powers them. The same government whose AI meddled with government websites by the tens of thousands now says the man running the spy agencies will decide how the technology is governed.

Workers inside OpenAI protested military contracts. Researchers warned the technology could cause a billion losses. The company scrapped its own model because it was too dangerous. And the person the president chose to oversee AI is not a scientist, not a regulator, and not a safety expert. He is the spy chief.

The machine does not regulate the technology. It puts the technology under the person who runs the surveillance. The spy chief is now the AI chief. That is the policy.

BREAKING

Iran Said the Strait of Hormuz Will Remain Closed Until Seven Conditions Are Met — the Passage Carries 20 Percent of the World’s Oil

Iran’s parliament speaker said Monday that the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until seven conditions laid out in a memorandum of understanding with the United States are met. Democracy Now reported the statement in its Monday headlines. Reuters confirmed it the same day.

The strait carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil. It has been closed or contested since the conflict began in February. Gas is above $4 a gallon. Diesel hit a record for late September. The Federal Reserve raised rates for the first time in three years because the inflation the closure helped cause has outpaced wages.

The speaker said the White House must “understand that the period of dragging out the process and dictating one-sided demands is over.” The government held indirect peace talks last week. It also sent a third carrier strike group to the region the same week.

The strait stays closed. The oil stays expensive. The carriers keep coming. And Iran says the conditions have not been met. The conflict the president said would end “right after the election” is 29 days from the election and the other side says it is not over.

EXPOSED

A Major British Political Party Voted to Classify an Ideology as a Form of Racism

The Green Party of England and Wales voted at its annual conference to classify Zionism as a form of racism. Democracy Now reported the vote in its Monday headlines. It is the first time a major political party in a Western democracy has passed such a motion.

The vote came the same week 12 countries banned settlement trade, the same month the British foreign secretary called the situation “ethnic cleansing,” and the same month the United Nations found evidence of crimes at a school full of children in Iran. The institutions are moving. The labels are shifting.

The American government is leading the effort to dismantle the international court. It has sanctioned investigators and revoked visas. And across the Atlantic, a political party just put a new word on the same policy the court was built to examine.

The machine attacks the court. An ally’s political party names the policy. The two things are moving in opposite directions. That is the state of the debate.

DEVELOPING

A Judge Blocked the Government from Building the Border Wall Through a National Park

A federal judge blocked further construction of the border wall inside Big Bend National Park. Democracy Now reported the ruling in its Monday headlines. The government had been building a barrier through one of the most protected natural landscapes in the country.

Big Bend covers more than 800,000 acres along the Rio Grande in southwest Texas. It is home to more than 1,200 species of plants, 450 species of birds, and 75 species of mammals. The government tried to put a wall through the middle of it.

This is the same government that repealed carbon pollution standards, slashed fuel economy rules, and let a data center run unpermitted gas generators for a year. The machine does not protect the land. It builds through it.

A judge had to step in to stop a wall from going through a national park. The court said no. The machine had already started building.

They rely on the shadows.
It’s time to turn on the lights.