@amirattaran.bsky.social:
You can maybe even surpass a human mind in silicon, but it never will have a human mindset. Case in point.
ChatGPT allegedly advised Florida State shooter when and where to strike. The AI chatbot also told the man accused of killing two people in 2025 what ammunition to use, the state attorney general said, announcing a criminal probe.
Unless ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and the rest of them hang out in a playground, get drunk as teenagers, and walk the hard path of seducing one another, they’re incapable of thinking like humans. Social learning is irreplaceable.
Death by A.I. by Ken Klippenstein, April 22, 2026
The U.S. military’s secretive Special Operations Command plans to establish its first-ever center for AI-driven missions like targeted assassinations.
Autonomous warfare is all the rage at the Pentagon, where computers and artificial intelligence process intelligence data, select targets and then transmit kill orders to a waiting robot, or a “loitering” missile or airplane.
AI is not intelligent, it’s stupid and stolen, it makes endless mistakes. Humans in the Pentagon aren’t much smarter or more reliable, under Idiot Trump and his band of idiots, it’s got no intelligence.
The new “Special Operations Autonomous Warfare Center” is referenced in the $1.5 trillion Department of War budget request to Congress this week.Humans are the most demented species on earth, spending trillions of dollars to commit mass murder and ego fodder games in space, while billions of humans have insufficient safe food, water, health care, shelter and education, and wild species are wiped out
Special Operations Forces refers to commando units like Navy SEAL Team, Army Green Berets, Marine “Raiders” and others who support “unconventional” warfare, and since 9/11, targeted killing. SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force of the Army are two of the most infamous of the secret units, and have been central to capture and decapitation operations like those in Venezuela and Iran.
One can say a lot of things about the rapid and chaotic adoption of artificial intelligence in the American military. But in this context, the term “autonomous warfare” is a euphemism for automated killing. (Autonomous intrinsically means acting independently, governing internally, or operating without external control.)
An unusually frank description of the role AI will play in the future comes from former Joint Special Operations Command chief Gen. Stanley McChrystal (ret.), who compared AI to “infant Hercules,” invoking the Greek god’s own role as a killer even in infancy.
McChrystal says:
“And like the infant Hercules who strangled two snakes sent by Hera to kill him in his crib, AI will grow to be strong — and a part of almost everything we do going forward.”
What McChrystal doesn’t mention is what happened when Hercules grew up. He spent his life carrying out killings on the orders of Eurystheus — a weak, cowardly king who hid in a jar and never had to understand anything. sounds like Trump
Hercules’s overwhelming power substituted for strategy. In the most famous of his myths, Hercules fought the Hydra, a monster that grew two heads for every one he cut off. He was strong enough to keep swinging, but sheer power alone only multiplied the problem. He had to change his approach entirely to win. It’s a useful parable for a military that has spent two decades perfecting decapitation strikes only to watch the threats multiply.
Welcome to the era of CombatGPT. The Pentagon has since 2022 used AI in quarterly exercises for “target detection” involving personnel from all six military service branches. The computers pull together the ocean of information pieces that are collected every day — every minute — and extract the most important, according to the AI program, aggregating and geolocating the blips and dots into a potential target.Did they use AI to mass murder innocents at the girls’ school in Iran? The innocent fishermen in their boats?
During the most recent Iran War, Middle East commander Adm. Brad Cooper felt it necessary to give assurances that the use of AI still includes a “human-in-the-loop” to make decisions.Not reassuring in the least, especially not since Trump’s first term where he and his team of killers lied about SARSCoV2 and refused to implement appropriate public health protections (the virus can damage brain, even in asymptomatic cases), but mainly because the Pentagon is kill happy. “Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot, and when to shoot,” he said. That statement, of course, contradicts the very idea of “autonomous.”And, means little because Americans are addicted to mass murder of innocents, and since when do American authorities told the truth while stealing oil from other nations?
Cooper’s assurance echoes a long line of similar promises. The Air Force said the same thing about drones before the unmanned kill chain was compressed to the point where the “decision” became a rubber stamp. The pattern is consistent: a new capability is introduced with human-in-the-loop safeguards, the speed and scale of operations make those safeguards a bottleneck, and the bottleneck becomes the “Agree to terms” button on your computer most people click without thinking.
(Note that the FY 2027 budget request also zeroes out funding for Pentagon work in civilian harm “mitigation,” eliminating the element that might also be able to “autonomously” warn of direct civilian casualties and damage.)
The budget document doesn’t say what the Autonomous Warfare Center’s initial budget will be, but it doesn’t need to be large. The infrastructure already exists. Two decades of decapitation strikes have produced the targeting architecture, the intelligence pipelines, the kill chains. What AI does is remove the last friction — the human time spent correlating down to attacking a target.
Much of what the Special Operations Autonomous Warfare Center will be working with is already there. Both in Ukraine and in Iran, the military sees its challenge as dealing with “swarms” of low-cost enemy weapons, from one-way attack drones to relatively rudimentary ballistic missiles.
The Miami-based Southern Command, which is responsible for the shooting part of the drug war, has also established its own autonomous command to automate the tracking and killing of drug shipments where the speedboats and mini-submarines serve as the low-cost targets. Nobody in Congress has so far asked about the creation of “autonomous” killing commands. The budget line item will likely pass without a hearing, buried in a special operations (and mostly classified) budget that receives less oversight than virtually any other part of the Pentagon. By the time the public learns what the Autonomous Warfare Center actually does, it will have been doing it for years.
McChrystal is right that AI will be “a part of almost everything we do going forward.” What he left out — what the myth he invoked actually teaches — is that the strongest weapon in the world is only as good as the mind wielding it. Hercules eventually learned that.
Will the Pentagon?
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— Edited by William M. Arkin
Pete Hegseth’s Iran war messaging echoes sermons from his extremist church, US defense secretary’s openly Christian nationalist church continues to have growing influence in the White House by Jason Wilson, 26 Apr 2026, The Guardian
On 17 April, at a briefing on the Iran war, secretary of defense Pete Hegsethanother Trump massive ego’d super idiot told reporters he had been “sitting in church with my family” the previous Sunday while the minister preached from Mark 3.
Hegseth then recast a passage about the Pharisees watching Jesus “so that they might accuse him” as a description of the US press corps, which has long been a target of his ire. “Our press is just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth said. He accused “the legacy Trump-hating press” of a “politically motivated animus” that blinded it to “the brilliance of our American warriors”.Hey, Petey, it’s not just the press that hates Nazi kid rapist Trump, it’s the world.
The sermon Hegseth described as attending bears similarities to one delivered only days earlier at Christ Kirk DC, a Washington branch of the openly Christian nationalist Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the denomination to which Hegseth belongs.
The 12 April sermon, titled “The Fellowship of Grievance”, also exhorted worshippers to embrace a “biblically informed hatred”.
That sermon, other Christ Kirk DC sermons, and episodes of podcasts produced inside the CREC network show pastors who have preached to Hegseth’s congregation, and the most senior figures in the denomination, advancing a theocratic program that would restrict the vote, criminalise LGBTQ+ expression and apply biblical law through the courts.Fucking monstrous lunatics. The bible is a book of hate-filled tales written by misogynistic bigoted ignorant men, likely drunk, controlled and “edited” by the kid raping misogynistic catholic church. Nature is naturally queer; humans are also naturally queer, FFS. Using the bible to justify raping kids and mass slaughtering innocents (human or other species) is evil.
Asked in an email whether CREC had shaped Hegseth’s worldview, CREC founder and pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Douglas Wilson wrote: “You would need to ask him that. But his worldview is broadly the same as ours.” Asked if he was a Christian nationalist, Wilson wrote: “Yes, that would be a fair description.”
Hegseth’s cabinet tenure continues to underscore the growing influence of CREC inside the US military and the Trump administration, including through his portrayals of the Iran war.
‘There are things that God hates, and it’s right for us to share that hatred’That’s a mighty lie.
The preacher at the 12 April service was Dr Benjamin Merkle. He is the president of CREC-aligned New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, a senior fellow of theology there, a teaching elder at Christ Church Moscow, the CREC’s flagship congregation, and the son-in-law of Wilson, the denomination’s co-founder.All creepy hate-filled fucks
Christ Kirk DC has met since July 2025 in a Pennsylvania Avenue building owned by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a Trump-aligned non-profit which means it steals money for Trump and familywhich, as previously reported in the Guardian, acquired the real estate to support activities including influencing Republican staffers and targeting government employees. The congregation uses a rotating roster of CREC preachers.
In the sermon, Merkle cast the Pharisees as having “gathered around simply so that in this moment they can find something prosecutable against Jesus, because of the hatred that they have in their heart”.I know of no christian nationalist not filled with greed, stupidity, cruelty, racism, bigotry, misogyny
Merkle told the Guardian in a phone call that he had not listened to Hegseth’s press conference or seen any reporting on it.
“I wasn’t making a political observation, I was making a human observation,” Merkle said of his comments on the Pharisees. He added: “Secretary Hegseth’s application to that situation could very well be a very appropriate application of the principle that I was fleshing out.”Fuck, christian nationalists are demented in their cruelty to others, just like Trump (who is no christian)
Despite speculating on Hegseth’s adaptation of the sermon, Merkle refused to confirm or deny Hegseth’s attendance at the service. When asked in an email to confirm his attendance, Merkle answered: “Sorry, I don’t want to be weird. But I don’t think I will do that.”well, you are fucking weird, your aggrandizing ego and hatred make you so.
Similarly, the Pentagon would neither confirm nor deny Hegseth’s attendance. Asked to do so in an email, Hegseth’s assistant press secretary, Riley Podleski, wrote: “We have nothing further to provide”.
In the sermon, Merkle also said that the previous day he had been at a conference where “someone was lamenting how unified the left seems to be in their attacks on the right” while “the conservative right is very disjointed”. “When they all hate the same thing,” Merkle said, “it forms a temporary unity, a fellowship of the grievance.”
Asked about these remarks, Merkle said: “My point is that when you have a strong opposition from multiple different places to one particular figure mass murdering kid rapist and his pedo protectorsor one particular movement or people, then you can find groups that would never have gotten along before suddenly kind of bond together. And I do think we see that in our current political situation. I think that’s one appropriate application of it.”
After spending 40 minutes contrasting the unity of the Christian church with the “grievance” unity of its opponents, Merkle told his congregation: “It’s also not true that those who love God are only united by our loves. We’re also united by the things that we hate. We share a hatred of evil. There are things that God hatesthings that hate-filled racist misogynistic bigoted tiny brained humans fabricated, FFS, and it’s right for us to share that hatred.” Christians, he said, are defined “not just by love” but by “biblically informed hatred”.Ridiculous. Those hatreds of gay and trans people, and women, are not biblically form, they are human formed. The stupidity and cruelty of those using religion to mass murder, rape, and steal is astounding.
Asked about the phrase, Merkle said: “I dislike how, particularly more liberal branches of Christianity, we start to define godliness as love – but love disembodied, love in its most general state.
“You’re supposed to hate what is evil, detest what is evil,so, I need to hate Hegseth, Trump, and myself” Merkle said. “But evil is defined by God’s myword.”
Asked whether believers were to hate abstract evil or the people who do evil, Merkle said: “It’s a classic evangelical trope to say we hate the sin and not the sinner. But the problem is, in the end, God throws sinners into hell.but again, that’s made up by man. There is no proof god exists, and no proof she or he or it throws sinners anywhere. god is a fantasy, which helps some humans endure the horrors of life among our hideously raping, nasty, destructive, murdering, small-minded hatefilled species So I don’t know that it’s right to draw that distinction as if I can just hate this thing that was done but not the person that did it.”Of course you say that, you and those you brainwash are addicted to hate. You live not by god’s word, but by your own hatred.
Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, has studied the CREC for decades. She told the Guardian: “The CREC motto ‘All of Christ for All of Life’ refers to their view that there is no area of life that is not governed by God’s law. This version of Christianity allows for no realm in which there can be neutrality: not church and state, not religion and the courts, not education or the military.”
She added: “Not only do they want the US to be a Christian nation, but they also want all nations to be Christian nations.”And, like Project 2025’s addiction to cruelty and power, why they turn me off. No one has the right to tell me what to believe or worship, especially not pedophiles.
Merkle’s father-in-law, Wilson, is a co-founder of Christ Church Moscow, CREC and New Saint Andrews, and one of the most prominent Christian nationalist leaders in the US. Wilson and his church teach that civil authorities should enforce Old Testament law, and that both homosexuality and abortion warrant death penalties under that law.Ya, using an ancient book of make believe, likely written by drunk angry ignorant raping men as excuse to kill innocent people for just being themselves. The cruelty of religion is infinite, and it’s long past time to criminalize it, or at least, criminalize forcing those it on others who do not believe in god, or jesus, or the bible as the word of god, and do not want to live ruled by cruel fairy tales. The bible is the word of men in all their ignorant drunkenness, edited and controlled by the kid raping thieving mass murdering catholic church.
Zuleta cartoon of the last supper.And, look at that – none of them are white!
Wilson told the New York Times in October that he looks forward to a future in which “there aren’t any Pride parades and there aren’t any drag queen story hours”.I look forward to a future where reality, caring and compassion and empathy rules the world, not hate-filled abusive raping religions created by man-made hate-filled controlling fairy tales.
Asked if his sermon connected to CREC demands for abortion to be outlawed and severely punished, Merkle said: “I would absolutely make that connection. I mean, I hate abortion.Ah ha~! There is it. The man admits that HE hates abortion, not god. I bet because he can’t control what happens to his sperm after it leaves his body, so he wants to control the bodies of women and girls where his sperm might be forced into. Sperm with an agenda! What a fucking douche. And I bet he hates abortion because it gives women and girls a tiny bit of power over their own bodies in a species which largely hates them. And, I bet he just wants there to be more kids for the religious to rape and murder.
“And I really reject the claim that it’s this private, personal decision. It’s the execution of a childIt is not any execution or murder of a child. FFS. What a blood thirsty misogynistic fucker. Why isn’t Merkle calling out Trump for his reported murder of a baby after birth to a girl he raped, and how many others we don’t know about?, and I think it’s grotesque that our culture accepts it, and I want to see that eradicated,” Merkle said. “I think it’d be a great blessing to our nation to see the widespread murder of our children eliminated.”But mass murdering already born Muslim children is fine?
Asked if LGBTQ+ people merited biblically informed hatred, Merkle said: “I think God is clear that he made a woman to go with a man and a man to go with a woman, and that’s what a marriage is.”Liar! He says, “I think” which means it’s HIS interpretation, and bigoted religious people (most often men) before him that dictate only man-woman sex/marriage. Yet, priests and other religious authorities prefer raping boys. So WTF?
He added: “I think that the acceptance of homosexuality not only has done great evil to America, but I think it does great evil to those that are practising it. I think it does great harm to them, and I think they’re greatly blessed to be delivered from it.”Read a real book, you nasty douche. There has been same sex love for centuries before America was created.
On abortion and homosexuality, Merkle said: “If we were to hate what is evil, I think those two things are evil. So I think that’s a pretty simple syllogism.”Those that have had abortion and or love same sex are no where as evil as religious men such as Hegseth, Wilson, and you yourself, Mr. Merkle, propagandizing the masses with tall tales of hate to justify mass murdering others to steal their oil and gas, and protecting vile rapist and pedophile Trump.
‘I hope that God kills him’
At key moments in his cabinet tenure, Hegseth has given CREC pastors a platform in services that have put Christian nationalism at the centre of the US military.which is the main reason USA is crumbling, with most of the world horrified by it.
Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s pastor in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, presided over the first worship service in a monthly series Hegseth initiated at the Pentagon in May 2025. Potteiger returned on 21 January 2026 for the first service after the US operation thatillegally kidnapped (murdering many innocents – in typical arrogant anti-Christian ways, to do so captured deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
In a 4 March blog post, Wilson announced that Potteiger had “accepted a call and will be coming to serve as an on-site pastor” of Christ Kirk DC starting in July.
Potteiger has been described in reporting as Hegseth’s spiritual adviser. Asked if that was accurate, he told the Guardian in an email: “I’d simply say he’s been one of many parishioners at church that I’ve had the privilege of ministering to.”
Potteiger drew media attention in March after appearing on the Reformation Red Pill podcast with its host Joshua Haymes. Discussing Texas Democratic senate candidate James Talarico, Haymes said: “I hope that God kills him.” Potteiger responded: “We want him crucified with Christ.”
Asked about the exchange, Potteiger said: “Being ‘crucified with Christ’ is a quote from the apostle Paul in Galatians 2:20 talking about conversion. Mr Talarico claims to be a Christian but teaches contrary to Christ. Far from wishing him harm, I wish for him to have a true experience of salvation.”I wouldn’t go anywhere near anti christian Potteiger or his hate-filled kkklan that enable and or encourage actual murder of innocents in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, etc.
On 17 February, 11 days before the US joined Israel in the first attacks on Iran, Wilson presided over a Pentagon worship service. “God can do what he likes,” Wilson told the assembled personnel, “and as we should know by now, what he likes to do is to take the most unlikely materials and do something glorious with it.”
Hegseth’s own public rhetoric has increasingly drawn on the vocabulary of Christian nationalism.
On 5 March, at a counter-cartel conference, Hegseth told Central and South American leaders that with the US they were “western nations with distinct characteristics” and “Christian nations under God”. On 19 March, he asked the American people to pray for US troops “on bended knee” and “in the name of Jesus Christ”. On 25 March, he read from Psalm 18 – “I thrust them through, so that they were not able to rise; they fell under my feet” – and prayed that God would “break the teeth” of US enemies. On 16 April, he offered a garbled passage of Ezekiel filtered via Pulp Fiction.
The Guardian previously reported that Hegseth said on Haymes’ podcast in 2024 that moving his family to a CREC church had brought him “a whole view of the world that has changed the way we think, too”.
In response to questions about his relationship with CREC, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement: “The Secretary is a proud member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. Another creepy fucker I wouldn’t go anywhere near.The Secretary very much appreciates many of Mr Wilson’s writings and teachings.”
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said: “Hegseth has aligned himself with some of the most extreme Christian nationalists in the country. Their anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs and extremist views about women should give anyone pause, as well as his ‘biblical’ attacks on journalists, especially when Hegseth is sharing them with our soldiers and blasting away at the separation of church and state.
“But even more worrisome is his infusion of his Christian beliefs as the basis for our war in Iran,” Beirich added. “Our national security should not be based on fanatical holy war fantasies, but that is what Hegseth, and by extension Trump, have wrought.”
Refer also to:
2026: New report by Just Peace Advocates shows over $526 Billion USD invested in genocide complicit companies by more than 100 Canadian financial institutions including pensions (e.g. Alberta’s notorious AIMCo chaired by Steve Harper), banks, and insurance companies. David Kattenburg with Green Planet Monitor speaks with Becca Steckle about Canada bankrolling Israel’s apartheid and genocide of Palestinians and others.