Peloni: The US surveillance state is about to receive a significant upgrade, all in the name of liberty, economy and good governance…
The sub-heading tells the story. It is essentially, a predictable outcome, a conversation we began here several months ago.
...”At the Education Department, the [DOGE] team has turned to artificial intelligence to hunt for potential spending cuts — part of a broader plan to deploy the technology across the federal government.”… (link)
The tone of the Washington Post article is about Musk and DOGE potentially violating privacy rules by extracting data held within the U.S. Dept of Education. However, if you take out the narrative engineering political part, what you are left with is the core issue we have discussed. The tech team approach is to pull the govt data into their AI model and use the modeling to evaluate efficiency.
WASHINGTON DC – […] The DOGE team is using AI software accessed through Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure to pore over every dollar of money the department disburses, from contracts to grants to work trip expenses, one of the people said. Lower-level department staffers were directed by agency leadership to let Musk’s teams access the sensitive financial data, the person said.
The use of AI inside the Education Department, which has not previously been reported, shows how Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which includes former employees from his tech empire, is tapping the favorite tool of Silicon Valley as part of its mission to drastically slash the size and functions of the federal government. {READ MORE}
I’m sure there is some value in this process. In fact, I am certain that utilization of enhanced algorithmic AI software to streamline government data systems does hold merit. However, that’s not the big picture issue that concerns CTH. {GO DEEP}
Time is short, so rather than continue repeating the previous background, let me cut to the chase.
Everything we see unfolding, from the Tech Bro alignment with Trump, to the network of influence after the election, to the selection and advisement of specific individuals to join the administration, all the way to the first-round expose’ of USAID, should be looked upon with a background forecast.
(1) gaining access to govt data was the goal; (2) monetizing the system with proprietary AI contracts (vis-a-vis Palantir) is the benefit; (3) however, a national security justified surveillance state is going to be the outcome.
As people are shocked at the USAID spending scandal unfolding, I would posit the USAID silo was chosen first for DOGE exploration specifically because the subsequent outrage would gain the highest amount of public support for the pending solution. It’s the pending solution to the crisis that we should be very focused on.
The USAID/CIA bad stuff was well known, just not to the larger public. DOGE provided the receipts, which engages the larger public.
? THE CRISIS, USAID: – “You don’t think that every Chair and committee person on the foreign relations and foreign affairs committees, on both the left and right side of all of this didn’t know about USAID? You actually believe the govt oversight committees were unaware of what USAID was doing?
C’mon… There’s a reason we kept saying it’s worse than anyone could fathom.
Will we see frog marches and arrests of everyone from Samantha Power to Jim Jordan to Bill and Hillary to every recipient of the Bush funeral envelopes?
Absent that kind of public accountability, they will just reconstitute into a system that will come from the outrage reaction of the American people.
That’s the baseline behind the DC apoplexy. The entire system and every participant within it are corrupt, enabling, willfully blind, financial beneficiaries of the grift… all of it.
And they pulled off the 2020 election steal, railroaded Trump, dragged him into the lawfare machine, tried to kill him…. BECAUSE the alternative was WHAT WE ARE NOW WITNESSING.”
? THE SOLUTION – “The Govt, writ large, is now in crisis. You know what comes next…. the govt solution.
A pattern repeats. However, this time STOP.
Just STOP, before listening to their solution.
Their solution will never be about US, it will always be about THEM; what’s in their best interests. That’s their focus, not us, them.
Failing to STOP after the crisis in the past always ended up with acceptance of their solution. Now we take off our shoes at the airport, go through body scans, accept pat-downs, wear masks, accept sketchy vaccines, click yes on 5,000-word terms of service for privacy statements we never read, and generally accept the all-encompassing surveillance state; none of which is grounded upon liberty or freedom. It’s all based on their control.
Yes, the Govt is in crisis, and just as sure as you are reading this, the administrators within the IC already have the solution ready to roll.”
? RESULT – “We will use advanced technology and non-partisan AI programming, to make the government more efficient and ensure this level of corruption and wasteful spending never happens again.”
Every dollar will be tracked, monitored and oversight will be transparent and available for everyone to see. Just ignore the part where the same efficiency system is monitoring your real ID, connecting your personage to the new govt and private sector interfaces, and click “I agree” on your next federal tax filing. Trust us Comrade citizen, the new technologically advanced DODGE approved govt system cares about responsible stewardship and you. Swear.”
The process starts by downloading government data to an AI enhanced database for review and filtration.
On Christmas Day last year, CTH predicted exactly this scenario {SEE HERE}; only we took it forward to its logical conclusion. You know, the part no one thinks about until the weapon is created.
Then, less than a month later, as soon as he is confirmed, Director John Ratcliffe says the CIA and Intelligence Community will work with Silicon Valley tech teams to develop best in class AI systems, using references from prior nuclear weapon development, “The Manhattan Project.”
Then, suddenly, as if on cue, this pops up:
JUST IN – OpenAI launches “ChatGPT Gov” for U.S. government agencies, allowing the agencies to feed “non-public, sensitive information” into the AI models in “secure environments” — CNBC
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 28, 2025
Good Stuff – […] Trump created DOGE through a day one executive order with a stated mission to cut government waste. Musk and his aides have assumed control of federal IT infrastructure as his team swiftly blitzes through departments and agencies. Trump, with Musk’s guidance, this week gutted the United States Agency for International Development and merged it into the State Department. The president has signaled he might try to eliminate the Department of Education by executive order next.
“They’re putting a shot across the administrative state’s bow,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said last week of the mass federal buyout plan on his “War Room” podcast. “That’s DOGE signaling to you that they’ve got a plan of how to take the personnel down.”
[…] Federal employees who want to remain in the federal workforce were told in the “Fork in the Road” email they must return to in-person work, embrace new “performance standards” and be “reliable, loyal and trustworthy” in their work. The email also warned that most federal departments and agencies will be “downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force.”
On Tuesday, the buyout offer was extended to nearly all employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Some federal employees said they were alarmed at the short timeframe they were given to make their decisions.
“I have invested way too much time and energy and interest into my career to just say, ‘hell with it’ and leave when I only have, like, five to 10 years left before I retire,” one federal worker said. “I’m not taking the resigning bait. So, I guess I’ll essentially just ride down with the ship if they decide to get rid of us,” the worker added, though he acknowledged some less experienced colleagues might take the buyout. (more)
The streamlining and downsizing of government through the use of AI systems is a good thing, perhaps a very good thing. However, watch out for deployment into the DHS apparatus because that will give rise to the newly expanded Surveillance State.
Peaceniks don’t build bombs; and those who genuinely believe in liberty do not build nor support domestic surveillance networks that can be weaponized depending on who is in power.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GjTuxSlW4AAt57c?format=png&name=small
Don’t let Elon fool you — he’s still on duty! 🙂
I had not even noticed that it is “Sundance”who wrote this article, not Peloni, as Ihad for some reason assumed. Although Peloni agrees with “Sundance’s” views I had already remarked on earlier occasions on “Sundance’s: extraordinary obsession with his privacy and desire to hide from public view, Whoever he is, he is someone with a great deal he wants to hide about his past.
U.S. government surveillance of American citizens is nothing new. During the American civil war, practically every known Confederate sympathizer in the Union state was placed under surveillance. Mny were imprisoned without charge, at least for brief periods. Those who published pro-Confederate newspapers were dealt with very severely. One was even deported to Canada although he had never been a resident of Canada.
During World ONe, President Woodrow Wilson instituted a massive system of surveillance of anyone suspected of opposing U.S.involvement on the Allied side of the war, or of being a German sympathizer, or even had been born in Germany. Many suspected German sympathizers, as well as leftists who opposed the war on political grounds, were arrested . Many were charged with a slew of criminal offenses that had been passed into law by Congress. The Supreme Court declared most of them unconstituional by the Supreme Court after the war.
After the war, there was a massive campaign to identify anarchists, communists and other leftists by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (Later renmaed the Federal Burieau of Investigation). THousands of people were placed under surveillance. Many were deported to Russia and other foreign countries.
During the 1930s, surveillance radical leftists continued. The travelling “heist mobs: led by people like Bonnie and Clyde, and all of their known relatives and friends, were now added to the list of people being surveilled. During World War II, both Communist and Nazi sympathizers were placed under surveillance. Some were interned without trial. During the Cold War, nearly everyone known to or suspected of being a Communist was placed under surveillance. Later, when a “national conference of mafiosi was held in the upstate New York village of Appalechin, New York, attended by several thousand mobsters from all over the country. the FBI could no longer deny the existence of the Mob. Thousands of additional individuals, and all their relatives and associates, were added to the “Feds” surveillance list.
I could go on with this for ever, but all of you must get the point. Big Brother is watching you. And he has been for years.
I agree with DOGE’s approach to fighting government waste and corruption. and on this point I disagree with Peloni. The U.S. governments’ government’s “surveillance state” has exited for many years, perhaps many generations. DOGE’s using AI tools to identify corrupt government activities and corrupt officials is unlikely to make it any worse than it already. As it is, not only the Federal government but hundreds if not thousands of private corporations are placing us unders urveilance every minute of the day.
Thanks Peloni, I gottit!!!
I’m no expert on AI, but I have been around in the computer world. As far as AI is concerned I see it as a faster means of accessing data which is already around. Nothing new is created by AI, which is why I see the name as being highly misleading; and to call it “super intelligence” is nothing short of disgusting.
So it is indeed an upgrade, but in a quantitative sense, not in a qualitative sense.
This may sound incredibly simplistic, but my “motto” is “Don’t feed the beast!”
@keelie
Sundance is many things, but he is in all fairness no Democrat.
Regarding the old vs new surveilance states, the distinction is the use of AI to exploit the data, and as I noted above, this distinction is a massive upgrade to any surveillance being pursued. And the fact that Gabbard as DNI has done an about face on the use of FISA 702s, there will be no gatekeeper to keep the intelligence community from doing as they wish.
“national security justified surveillance state ”
The author keeps on about the above. I know we’re all supposed to be too stupid to understand what this means, but right now the idea is to rectify/balance what’s obviously going on within the government. I have a problem extapolating from this goal to creating an overall “surveillance state”… like the surveillance state set up by Obama and Biden, wherein churchgoers and other various innocents were arrested, tried and sent to jail; the trials themselves being corrupt shams.
This author seems to be just another “Democrat” with an axe to grind.