@terrilltf.bsky.social:
Canada needs a new party. Liberals and Conservatives are basically the same party only one uses rainbows and pretends to be your friend.
@jeff.doctor:
“The U.S. wants Ottawa to pass Bill C-2… ‘At the heart of what the U.S. wants is to join arms in law enforcement with Canada, with the same kind of toolkit that they use: intercepts under FISA warrants, the Patriot Act,’ the official said”
www.politico.com/newsletters/…
Carney’s military spending should be paid for by a wealth tax by Linda McQuaig July 25, 2025, Rabble
Mark Carney has promised to increase Canada’s military spending to five per cent of the national GDP. This level of spending will likely threaten the social programs working Canadians rely on if not funded through higher taxes on the wealthy.
A national poll released last week found that Canadians favoured increasing the national debt rather than raising taxes as the best way to pay for the gigantic increase in military spending recently pledged by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The poll result is hardly surprising. But it tells us nothing.
Indeed, the poll is of dubious value, since it left out the most basic question: Do you support Carney’s plan to massively increase military spending over the next decade?
Under the plan, Canada’s military spending will soar to five per cent of GDP, or an annual expenditure of $150 billion a year (compared to $41 billion last year).
The real question is: do you support Ottawa’s decision to elevate military spending over all other national priorities?
The poll, conducted by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail, gave respondents no clear way to register disapproval, thereby helping advance the business community’s crusade to get the country all ginned up about a defence spending spree, leaving the impression there’s strong public support for “shared sacrifice” to pay for it.
I suspect I’m not the only one in the country who does not support (strongly, somewhat or even barely) this suddenly-foisted-upon-us goal of vast new military spending. I’m all for “shared sacrifice” but let’s get our priorities right. More on this in future columns.
Here, however, I want to focus on how media commentators, particularly in the business press, are downright giddy at the prospect of all this military spending and are keenly stepping forward to suggest how to pay for it — mostly in ways (spoiler alert) that will hurt ordinary Canadians. Who would have guessed?
Of course, these business commentators, who tend to dominate the public debate, always push for government spending cuts, and that’s their go-to option for funding a military splurge. But they’re also willing to countenance paying for it with tax increases — particularly hikes in the GST, which would hit the middle class hard.
What the commentators have little taste for is higher taxes on the wealthy.
As prominent columnist Andrew Coyne argues: “it won’t be sufficient just to increase rates on the monied … There just aren’t enough of them.”
In fact, as Coyne well knows, there may not be many of them, but those at the top of Canada’s monied class are extraordinarily wealthy. Indeed, that’s where the money is (or, at least, a lot of it).
There are about 20,000 Canadian families with net wealth of more than $25 million, including well over 100 billionaires, according to Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO).
Coyne is correct, however, when he suggests that hiking the top marginal income tax rate won’t raise all that much revenue. But that’s because many of these ultra-wealthy Canadians are able to largely avoid paying income taxes (as will be explained in the forthcoming book, “Cancelling Billionaires,” by tax scholar Neil Brooks and me).
Hence the need for a wealth tax.
Wealth taxes have been proposed in the U.S. by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and in Canada by the NDP, Green Party and the House of Commons finance committee. (The NDP’s modest wealth tax could collect $23 billion a year, the PBO estimates.)
But business commentators insist wealthy Canadians would simply depart with their riches, leaving Canada a lonely backwater barely able to carry out a ChatGPT search.
In fact, capital flight isn’t as easy as it sounds. Canadians moving financial assets out of the country are required to pay tax on their unrealized capital gains, amounting to a huge “exit tax.”
Carney has ruled out tax increases to pay for his enormous military spending, since Canadians already face an affordability crisis.
But the wealthy face no such affordability problem. Indeed, they are among the most privileged humans ever to inhabit the earth. If there’s a reason why they should be spared from the “shared sacrifice,” the prime minister should let us know.
This article was originally published in the Toronto Star.
Stopwarmongers:
The solution is not a wealth tax. The solution is for Canadians to not allow our sycophantic leaders to take massive amounts of our personal money and give it to the American weapons companies.
Ron Martin:
Let’s get out of NATO. Out of NORAD. Out of the 5 Eyes. Out of the many other military agreements with countries around the world. Let’s turn Canada into a non-aligned country that collects reparations for the damage done by Carney and his rich friends by taxing the hell out of them.
U.S. contractor found liable for Abu Ghraib torture wins $169 million Canadian defence deal by 
, 23 July, 2025, Investigative Journalism Foundation
The Department of National Defence (DND) has awarded major contracts to a U.S. defence contractor recently found liable in a civil case over the torture of Iraqis held at Abu Ghraib.
Earlier this month, the department awarded $169 million in contracts to CACI Inc., a defence contractor based in Reston, Va., related to transporting drones protecting troops in Europe.
The civil case against CACI, which had been in litigation for 15 years, hinged on whether the company could be held liable for the actions of its civilian interrogators. The interrogators worked with the U.S. Army at the notorious military prison in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. The three plaintiffs, Iraqi men who had been detained in the prison, received US$42 million in damages.
Paul Larson, a researcher in supply chain management at the University of Manitoba, said so much time has passed that federal ethical procurement standards, which prevent officials from hiring companies engaging in human rights abuses, may not be applicable.
Federal buyers should take a close look at the company’s current operations before placing an order, he said.
A spokesperson for CACI did not answer the IJF’s questions about whether the company currently meets federal ethical standards.
She repeated statements CACI had made a year earlier, saying it was “extremely disappointed” in the verdict.
“For nearly two decades, CACI has been wrongly subjected to long-term, negative affiliation with the unfortunate and reckless actions of a group of military police at Abu Ghraib prison,” she said. The military officers responsible were court-martialled, she said, adding, “CACI employees did not take part in nor were any of our employees responsible for these disturbing events.”
DND referred the IJF’s questions about whether the purchases met the federal government’s ethical procurement guidelines to another department. A spokesperson said the DND was aware of the lawsuit.
The contract is the second drone-related order that the DND has placed with CACI. DND bought $19 million in drones from CACI in February 2024, while the civil case against the company was still underway.
DND made the purchases amid a wave of spending, with its procurement workers looking for everything from emergency fishing kits to altimeters for skydiving. For the first time ever, the department also sought contractors to help with recruiting.
Canada Awards $169 Million Deal To U.S. Company Sued Over Iraqi Abuse, CACI is one of the latest American companies to win a major Canadian military contract by Alex Cosh, July 24, 2025, The Maple
Includes update.
Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND) announced this month it is awarding two contracts worth a total of $169 million to an American company whose subsidiary a federal jury in the United States last year found legally responsible for the abuse of three Iraqi men at an American-run prison.
CACI is one of the latest American companies to win a major Canadian military contract despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promises to move away from deepening defence ties with the U.S.
In a press release published on July 9, DND said it awarded the two contracts to CACI as part of the second phase of its “Counter Uncrewed Aircraft System (CUAS) Urgent Operational Requirement.” The contract is intended to support Canadian troops deployed as part of Operation Reassurance, a NATO mission in Latvia.
“This contract includes the integration and mounting of the CUAS onto a new light armoured tactical vehicle platform, as well as in-service support for the systems for up to 10 years,” the statement reads.
Defence Minister David McGuinty was quoted as saying: “This advanced system will […] enhance Canada’s contribution to NATO’s deterrence and defence initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe.”
With around 1,900 Canadian troops involved, Operation Reassurance is Canada’s largest current overseas military mission.
Two contract notices on the federal government’s procurement database list CACI as the vendor for one contract worth approximately $77.1 million and another worth $92 million. Both contracts were awarded competitively, according to the notices.
DND also awarded CACI a $19-million contract in February 2024 as part of the first phase of the CUAS project.
The first contract was for “CACI BEAM 3.0 omni-directional systems,” which a CACI product brochure describes as “a modular, low size, weight, and power … electronic attack system capable of detecting, identifying, locating, and direction finding the most sophisticated modern small unmanned aerial systems and associated communication devices.”
The company was also listed as a “participating innovator” at DND’s 2022 “Counter Uncrewed Aerial Systems Sandbox” in Suffield, Alta.
In a statement published on CACI’s website in May 2024, CEO and president John Mengucci was quoted as saying: “Canada and its allies face ever-evolving threats at home and while deployed abroad […] With CACI’s superior technologies, critical sites and personnel are protected by counter-uncrewed capabilities that are operationally proven.”
CACI is a $7.7 billion USD company that provides many different types of products and services.
This included intelligence and interrogation services to support the U.S. Army’s operations in Iraq during the occupation of that country that lasted from 2003 to 2011. Some CACI employees were hired to work as screeners — and eventually as interrogators — alongside U.S. military personnel and other contractors at the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
Abu Ghraib was a prison complex used by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to detain political dissidents. The Americans took over the facility and used it to interrogate suspects after they invaded Iraq and overthrew Hussein in 2003.
According to officers cited in a 2004 Red Cross report and as referenced in a New York Times article, “70 to 90 percent” of Iraqis who were detained by American and allied forces “had been arrested by mistake.”
Soon after the Americans took over the Abu Ghraib complex, photos emerged of jailed Iraqis suffering abuse at the hands of American guards.
One photo showed an Iraqi civilian, Ali Shallal al-Qaysi, wearing a black hood and standing on a box with wires attached to his hands. He was told he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.
Further investigations uncovered more details about the abuse at Abu Ghraib, which included sexual abuse, rape and torture. The abuse resulted in the death of at least one inmate, Manadel al-Jamadi.
In the years following, 11 U.S. soldiers were charged with various offences over the abuse, and nine were sentenced to time in prison.
As reported by the Washington Post last November, a federal jury found CACI shared responsibility with the U.S. Army for abusing Abu Ghraib detainees and awarded $42 million USD in damages to three Iraqi men — Suhail Al Shimari, Asa’ad Al-Zuba’e, and Salah Al Ejaili — who said they were tortured at the complex.
All three men had been released from Abu Ghraib without being charged.
The jury decision came after the second trial of the case, as the first was declared a mistrial following a jury deadlock.
After the jury’s decision, CACI filed an appeal and stated it was “extremely disappointed” with the verdict.
The lawsuit was first filed in 2008 by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and faced multiple attempts by CACI to have the case dismissed. A fourth plaintiff was dismissed from the case in 2019.
Reports conducted by two generals who testified at trial implicated three CACI employees in connection with wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib, the New York Times noted in its reporting on the first trial in April 2024.
The lawyer who led CACI’s defence reportedly acknowledged that “bad things happened at Abu Ghraib.” But, CACI’s defence team argued, none of the company’s employees committed or directed others to commit any abuse, according to the New York Times.
In any case, they argued, the company couldn’t be liable because even if its employees had committed such acts, they would either be rogue employees or under the control and direction of the U.S. military.
In a verdict following the second trial, a new jury agreed with the plaintiffs that CACI was liable because it had supplied interrogators who instructed American military police officers to “soften up” the detainees, according to the New York Times.
The jury awarded $3 million USD to each plaintiff in compensatory damages and $11 million USD each in punitive damages.
“The landmark ruling puts private military contractors on notice that criminal acts outside the United States can have consequences in US courts,” according to Human Rights Watch researcher Sarah Sanbar, who wrote about the jury’s decision last year.
In an email sent to The Maple, CACI drew attention to an earlier statement and declined further comment.
The statement read: “For nearly two decades, CACI has been wrongly subjected to long-term, negative affiliation with the unfortunate and reckless actions of a group of military police at Abu Ghraib prison from 2003 through 2004.”
“The individuals liable for the egregious behavior were court martialed and punished for the crimes that occurred well over a decade ago.”
“To be clear: no CACI employee has ever been charged—criminally, civilly, or administratively—in this matter. CACI employees did not take part in nor were any of our employees responsible for these disturbing events.”
A separate lawsuit by 250 former Abu Ghraib inmates was filed by CCR in 2004 against CACI and U.S. contractor L-3 Services (formerly Titan). In June 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In yet another case, Englility Holdings settled with 71 former Abu Ghraib and other American-run prison inmates for $5 million on behalf of L-3 Services.
The 5 per cent GDP Target
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq fuelled a major decline in the Canadian public’s views of the U.S.
More recently, Canadian views of the U.S. took another sharp downward turn after President Donald Trump launched a trade war and repeatedly threatened to make Canada the “51st state.”
A Leger poll in February found 27 per cent of Canadians view the U.S. as an “enemy” state.
Amid this sentiment, Carney said ahead of the April federal election campaign that Canada’s old relationship with the U.S. “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.”
But critics have questioned the sincerity of that pledge, particularly as Canada recently joined other NATO countries in pledging to spend 5 per cent of its national GDP on the military at Trump’s behest.
The 5 per cent target is broken down between 3.5 per cent in direct military spending and another 1.5 per cent on infrastructure spending that could include projects also used for civilian purposes. The total figure, Carney said, will amount to about $150 billion per year.
Carney’s cabinet has been asked to make major spending cuts in other areas of government to help offset the massive military spending hike.
Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen reported this month, DND is proceeding to spend an initial $500 million for two new F-35 fighter jet hangars even after Carney launched a “review” of Canada’s $19-billion contract with American arms company and F-35 maker Lockheed Martin.
The U.S. will have full control over upgrades and software updates necessary to keep Canada’s F-35 jets operational, the Citizen reported earlier this year.
Israel has used its fleet of F-35s to bomb Gaza, in a campaign that human rights organizations and genocide scholars have denounced as genocidal.
Rachel Small, an organizer with World Beyond War Canada, told The Maple: “When we see Carney announcing these exponential increases to Canada’s military budget, this means not only crippling austerity in Canada, and this means not only a commitment to wage war in lockstep with the U.S., but this also means a flow of cash directly to companies, and primarily American weapons companies, that are most complicit in horrific violence around the world.”
A Pew Research poll published this month found 59 per cent of Canadians said the U.S. is the biggest threat to their country, ahead of China (17 per cent) and Russia (11 per cent).
Update, July 24, 2025, 9:55 a.m. EST: This story has been updated to include a statement from CACI.
I Live 500 Feet From A Bitcoin Mine. My Life Is Hell 21:09 Min. by More Perfect Union, July 24, 2025
Must watch! Bitcoin mines are a type of data centre; I know from Encana’s illegal frac compressor noise how invasive and life disrupting low frequency noise is, 24/7. My dogs would pace the hall way all night, most nights (cooler temperatures at night make noise roll down the coulee walls to my house)
@westernwriter.bsky.social:
On July 10 Scale AI received $98M from Solomon. Scale partners include the U.S. DOD, Army, Airforce and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) dedicated to maintain “American superiority in threat landscapes.” CEO Doug Beck has said DIU has directly benefited from Israel’s “experience” in Palestine.
@estru.me:
I was expecting Conservative Lite with Carney, but Jesus…
@seanyyz.bsky.social:
Makes me dismayed that my neighbours here in Toronto Centre dutifully elected Evan, Carney’s former art dealer.Solomon’s a filthy piece of Elbow up Trump’s Ass.
@scousejude.bsky.social:
After the acquittal of the Hockey 5 the suggestion of “elbows up” is [vomit inducing]I agree. Best way to support E.M. and other hockey rape victims is to boycott everything hockey, Hockey Canada, every game, never watch hockey, never go to pub with friends to watch a hockey game, never ever. Hockey Canada is a horrendous rape cult.
@mlow.bsky.social:
Along with the great points you cover I just cannot get past the massive ethical breach (an undisclosed art dealing side hustle that involves clients he was covering including one Mark Carney) that led to Solomon getting fired from the CBC. A few years as a consultant and all washed clean.
@fatraccoon.bsky.social:
Canada’s AI strategy: use more American AI.
@maraleia.bsky.social:
Mark Carney and Keir Starmer are fucking pieces of shit fascist enablers.Carney’s much more evil than Starmer.
@edwardrow.com:
same – however that story was the same all over Canada – even ridings that had genuinely good and well-known alternatives (vs Toronto centre here that had less well known candidates). Was very broad anti-poilievre blindness
@mrcranky.bsky.social:
And guess where the money goes for NATO weaponry. Go on guess.
@canadiangenxog.bsky.social:
I think we can safely say there is reason to be concerned about Carney’s agenda period.
@tinkiegurl.bsky.social:
It’s so nice to find someone who doesn’t think he walks on water and has an amazing plan to save Canada when everything he’s done is the exact opposite of what he campaigned on. I’ve been unfollowed and blocked by quite a few people because I have the audacity to criticize him.
@parismarx.com:
Mark Carney promised “elbows up” against the US, but he’s offering a warm embrace to US tech companies and the AI hype they’ve unleashed.
As Canada’s AI minister suggests AI regulation is off the table, there’s ample reason to be worried about Carney’s tech agenda.
My latest for @breachmedia.ca:
Mark Carney’s AI agenda is a gift to Big Tech, The Liberal government is charging ahead with the technology despite mounting evidence of harm for workers, vulnerable groups, and public services by by Paris Marx, Jul 24 2025, The Breach
When Evan Solomon took the stage in Ottawa last month to give his inaugural speech as Canada’s first-ever Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, he was quick to reassure tech leaders that regulating their industry would not be his top priority.
Rather than dwelling on AI’s pitfalls and “over-indexing on warnings and regulation,” his focus would be on unlocking the technology’s economic potential, he said. The regulatory legislation that had been in the works under Justin Trudeau was now fully off the table.
For Canada’s tech elites, this was cause for celebration. After spending much of the past year cozying up to Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives in search of less regulation and lower taxes, these CEOs could now breathe a sigh of relief.They’re the same fucking political party, Carney conned Canadians and many still refuse to pop their worshipping bubbles and face reality
But for everyone else—from public service workers to artists, gig workers, refugees, and the broader public—Solomon’s message should cause alarm. The government appears poised to speed ahead with adopting AI without considering its proven drawbacks and harms.
Since Mark Carney arrived on the political scene, he’s made AI adoption a cornerstone of his policy program, based on the view that the technology can serve as an essential tool in boosting productivity and addressing the government’s budget deficit. His federal election platform contained plans to increase funding for AI projects, create incentives for workers and businesses to adopt it, and cut “red tape” around the construction of infrastructure like data centres.Carney = betrayal after betrayal after betrayal. He serves Trump, USA, corporations notably the killing machine types, and the rich.
Carney’s excitement about AI isn’t new. In his 2021 book Values(s), he outlined his belief that AI, big data, and increases in computing power meant that “smarter machines are already replacing a broader range of human activities than before.” Now, when asked tough questions about government finances, military procurement, and the state of the economy, he often throws out AI as an obvious solution that doesn’t require further detail.
But there’s ample reason to be worried about the consequences of the government’s optimistic embrace of AI at any cost.
The last AI hype cycle
Claims that artificial intelligence is on the cusp of transforming society are nothing new. In the 2010s, it was common to argue that advances in robotics and AI would wipe out as many as half the jobs in the entire economy, leading progressives to debate whether it was time for a universal basic income. But those narratives were little more than a distraction from how AI was really being used in many parts of society.
AI didn’t bring about mass unemployment. Instead, it gave employers new tools to exploit workers.
Companies like Amazon and Uber pioneered the rollout of algorithmic management techniques, which used automated systems to increase control over workers, crush their attempts to unionize, push down wages, and worsen working conditions. Gig work expanded, turning employees into contractors while offering the illusion of freedom and empowerment. In the years since, those technologies have proliferated into workplaces well beyond the major tech companies.
Governments also got in on the hype, just as they are today. Around the world, agencies rolled out AI systems designed to increase efficiency and reduce costs, often with harmful consequences for the most vulnerable groups. Unsurprisingly, the welfare system became a key target of those initiatives.
From Sweden and Denmark to the Netherlands and Australia, AI-powered systems used to detect fraud have been found to falsely flag people from marginalized groups and throw hundreds of thousands of people off benefits—destroying lives in the process and even pushing some to commit suicide out of desperation.
In 2021, a class action lawsuit successfully forced the Australian government to pay $1.8 billion AUD in compensation to 443,000 people affected by its “robodebt” system. A recent report found public servants in Australia are hesitant to adopt future AI systems because they’ve seen how harmful they can be when not done properly.And Solomon has zero knowledge and zero experience in AI, and he’s a proven corrupto, diddling with the Carney for art deals when he was working at CBC.
Scandals have also accompanied the rollout of AI systems in policing, health care, and immigration systems. Canada hasn’t been immune either. Human rights experts have signalled concerns about the government’s use of automated decision-making in visa processing and risk assessment.
The UK Labour playbook
Solomon seems eager to ignore these lessons in the hopes of chasing short-term investments, amid a flood of money pouring into the AI space. It’s a recipe for disaster.
He has described building large AI companies in Canada as an “urgent issue” and even suggested that Canada could cozy up to Saudi Arabia to secure capital for major AI projects. He’s also signalled an openness to allowing AI companies to train on the copyrighted works of artists, writers, and other creatives, without their consent or compensation—a legal proposal already put forth by the UK government that has been met with widespread outrage in the arts community.Evan Solomon is a dirty fucker; in combo with dirty fucker Carney, it’s going to be a tech nightmare with endless violations of Canadians’ privacy, property and work. No wonder CBC fired the creepy douche fucker. I knew Carney was evil and a fraud when he refused to say the word genocide, then, when he got Solomon to run, I knew Canadians were fucked. US AI is going to destroy us, and our grid and water, and the noise impacts and other horrors neighbours of data centres must endure
The UK Labour Party under Prime Minister Keir Starmer is already months ahead of Canada. It has moved quickly to appease the tech industry, overturning local roadblocks to data centre construction, pushing AI on schools, and announcing plans to roll it out throughout the public service.
The public backlash in the UK to this tech industry-aligned AI agenda has been swift, creating a public relations nightmare for the Labour government. Still, Carney appears determined to follow in the footsteps of his friend Starmer. Last month, he signed an agreement with the UK and the Canadian AI firm Cohere to “deepen” collaboration on AI deployment.
Specifically, Cohere has been tasked with accelerating the adoption of AI in the public service in Canada, though Carney has refused to offer any details about how this might impact public sector jobs or service delivery. The timing raises concerns: paired with the government’s recent announcement about radical cuts to public spending, the move suggests adopting AI could justify layoffs or service reductions under the banner of efficiency.Carney plans to take everything ordinary Canadians have to give to the rich, notably American rich. Disgusting traitor and liar. And, worse, the creepy guy he picked to manage AI, doesn’t know what he’s doing and will get eaten alive by the tech billionaires, as they steal as much as they can as fast as they can from Canadians. AI is bubble about to bust, they have to steal from the mass quickly and secretly before we figure out what they’re up to. Thus why Carney is so secretive and Solomon so creepy. Giving so much to AI is bad news, to American AI, is Satanic.
The AI productivity myth
Carney’s AI gamble is unlikely to deliver the productivity results he’s selling. Much like the last AI boom, its rollout in workplaces is likely to increase the power of management rather than lead to serious productivity improvements.
In a study conducted last year, 77 per cent of employees said generative AI created more work for them, not less. More recently, The Economist reported a growing number of companies are abandoning projects to implement generative AI while the BBC spoke to others that were having to hire people to fix the mistakes generative AI systems are making.
Air Canada was even forced to compensate a customer for its chatbot’s mistake last year.
There is also growing evidence that the use of chatbots is reducing users’ cognitive abilities, leaving their critical thinking skills “atrophied and unprepared,” according to a study that involved Microsoft researchers. There are alarming stories about the rise of people getting hooked to chatbots, becoming severely delusional, and even having to be committed for mental health treatment. And the technology has led to a rise in non-consensual, AI-generated explicit images, which particularly victimize teenage girls.And, AI has even been trained to abuse women and girls and non white races, and, trained to threaten rape. Vulgar abusive tech. Stuff it up your quisling asses, Carney and Solomon
At a time when regulators are still belatedly trying to get a handle on the consequences of social media, generative AI may negate those efforts and turbocharge the harms arising from digital platforms.
Yet Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he will be taking “a fresh look” at the Online Harms Bill and may not reintroduce it at all, leaving those serious issues unaddressed.Unregulated tech created by spoiled vile billionaires, what could go wrong?~
Elbows down against Big Tech
Carney isn’t just overlooking AI’s pitfalls—he’s deliberately crafting a policy agenda that aligns with the interests of Big Tech.
While he boasted about taking an “elbows up” stance against Trump during the last federal election, his approach to the tech industry—whose leaders have cozied up to the MAGA movement—has been anything but adversarial. His government killed the planned capital gains tax increase that had angered domestic tech executives, rolled out a series of measures seeking to attract more tech investment, and, most recently, killed the digital services tax that had drawn the ire of tech CEOs south of the border.
His gamble is that being friendly to the tech industry will drive economic growth in Canada—the only metric that seems to matter to the former central banker. Canada is going lose, badly and many innocent citizens will be harmed, likely irreversibly. Carney is an intelligent man, he knows this but doesn’t give a shit who he harms, as long as the tech billionaires can rape us as they please, and Trump is happy – which is impossible – kid rapists are never satisfied, they always need to rape more and more and more, and can not be rehabilitated.
In the process, he appears ready to hand over the country’s research agenda to an industry that fuels financial bubbles for its own benefit, expands the scope of surveillance, and is incentivized to hook the public in order to maximize engagement and profits. I despise Carney, he’s a royal cruel douche fucker, and a fucking pro genocidal Zionist at that
Technology can indeed serve the public good, but only if it is developed with that purpose.
Carney’s agenda will allow existing tech harms to fester while new ones are birthed, forcing all of us to pay the price of the industry’s reckless efforts to maximize power and profit at all costs. We can take a different path, but it’s clear the government will not do that unless it faces pressure to change course.
@esjesjesj:
Elon built an anti woke AI and it immediately sexually harassed his CEO and he deleted all the evidence and she later quit
@taylornoakes.com:
More phenomenal work from @readthemaple.bsky.social
Mark Carnage continues to show Canadians there’s no limit to how much he can disappoint us
Dr. Damien P. Williams:@wolvendamien.bsky.social:
Now many times are we gonna have to dance this dance before these people learn the goddam steps.
“AI” reproduces, exacerbates, and iterates the biases and values it was trained on. Those biases and values are, largely, very bad. There for the reproductions will most often be as bad and worse.
Jfc.
@amydiehl.bsky.social:
Study finds A.I. LLMs advise women to ask for lower salaries than men. When prompted w/ a user profile of same education, experience & job role, differing only by gender, ChatGPT advised the female applicant to request $280K salary; Male applicant=$400K.
Dr René MD @drrenemd.bsky.social:
Folks, Peter Thiel now officially controls the government by getting a no-bid contract. This regime is Corruption Central.
@silvy777.bsky.social:
Palantir is making a tracking system for ICE, using DOGE data and many other sources. It sounds like they will expand this to make a 24/7 tracking/monitoring AI database on everyone in US. Then there is genocide in Gaza. Our taxes are going to the war-prison-border-AI surveillance-genocide industry.
@silvy777.bsky.social:
If top Black & woman military leaders fired for no reason but race and gender, that is fascism. Anti-DEI means “pro-racism, sexism, xenophobia.” Anti-universities, anti-education are a hallmark of dictatorships, not any healthy society. Dept of Ed dismantled as Pentagon contractors partner w AFT:
Meanwhile this is happening: 3 major AI companies (Anthropic & Open AI were just given Pentagon contracts announced today; Microsoft is a Pentagon contractor aligned w Trump) are partnering with American Federation of Teachers. Dept of Education replaced with govt mass surveillance/propaganda AI.
How Trump Plans to Weaponize AI’s “Superhuman Persuasion”, A new government plan would mandate that AI systems reflect the administration’s worldview — or lose access to federal contracts by Parker Molloy, Jul 24, 2025, The Present Age
The Trump administration just released a 25-page plan for American AI dominance, and buried in the bureaucratic language is something that should worry anyone who cares about truth. They claim they want to eliminate “ideological bias” from AI systems. They say they want artificial intelligence to be “objective and free from top-down ideological bias.” Sounds great, right? Who could argue with objectivity?
Here’s the thing: They’re the ones who get to decide what counts as “objective.” The executive order defines its own “Unbiased AI Principles” that require AI to be “truthful” and show “ideological neutrality” — but then immediately defines acknowledging concepts like “unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism” as violations of that neutrality.
The plan calls for updating federal procurement guidelines to ensure the government only contracts with AI companies whose systems meet their standards of objectivity. They want to revise the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework to remove references to “misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” They’re threatening to withhold federal funding from states with AI regulations they deem “burdensome.”
This isn’t about making AI neutral. It’s about making AI obedient.
We’ve already seen what happens when powerful people get to inject their ideologies into AI systems. Remember when Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot started randomly inserting “white genocide” conspiracy theories into completely unrelated conversations? Someone asked about baseball stats and got a lecture about white South African farmers. That was just a few months ago, and it was ham-fisted enough that everyone could see what was happening.
The Trump administration has now made this explicit with an executive order literally titled “Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” which defines DEI as “one of the most pervasive and destructive” ideologies that must be kept out of AI. Instead of clumsily inserting conspiracy theories into baseball queries, they want to fundamentally reshape how AI systems describe reality. Climate change isn’t a crisis requiring action; it’s “radical climate dogma.” Efforts to prevent discrimination aren’t civil rights protections; they’re “ideological bias.” The existence of trans people isn’t a fact of human diversity; it’s what the executive order calls “transgenderism” that needs to be scrubbed from AI systems.
And here’s where it gets really insidious: The plan repeatedly insists this is all about fighting bias and promoting free speech. They’ve wrapped authoritarian control in the language of liberty.They always do
The Missouri Attorney General recently provided a perfect preview of this logic in action. As Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports in Reason, he argued that AI tools were biased because they didn’t list Trump as the best president on antisemitism issues. Think about that for a second. Not listing Trump as the best at something is now evidence of bias that needs government correction. That’s the standard they want to apply to every AI system that wants a government contract.
And since, as Brown points out, “nearly all major tech companies are vying to have their AI tools used by the federal government,” this isn’t some optional guideline. It’s a gun to the head of the entire AI industry: Reflect our version of reality or lose access to one of your biggest potential customers.
We don’t have to speculate about what happens when AI gets twisted into a propaganda tool. We’ve already seen it in action, and it’s terrifying.
Back in May, something bizarre happened with Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot. For several hours, it started injecting references to “white genocide” in South Africa into completely unrelated conversations. A baseball podcast asked about Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson’s stats. Grok answered the baseball question, then launched into a monologue about white farmers being attacked in South Africa. Users asking about fish videos or requesting pirate voices got the same treatment. Random conspiracy theories about “white genocide” inserted into everyday queries.
According to 404 Media’s reporting, AI researchers suggested that xAI might have been “literally just taking whatever prompt people are sending to Grok and adding a bunch of text about ‘white genocide’ in South Africa in front of it.” In other words, someone at X apparently modified the hidden instructions that shape how the AI responds, turning every interaction into an opportunity to spread a conspiracy theory.
The timing wasn’t coincidental. This happened right as the Trump administration welcomed white South Africans as refugees while ending deportation protections for Afghan refugees. Grok was providing real-time propaganda justification for a policy decision, just in the clumsiest way possible.
But here’s what really worries me: That was the ham-fisted version. The tech companies are already getting more sophisticated about this.
Take Meta’s April announcement about Llama 4. The company explicitly said it was correcting what it called a “left-leaning bias” in AI systems. But as I wrote at the time, Meta wasn’t addressing algorithmic discrimination against minorities or other well-documented forms of harmful bias. Instead, they were specifically targeting perceived political bias, and they were doing it by shifting their AI rightward to present “both sides” of issues regardless of factual merit.
The timing there wasn’t coincidental either. This rightward push followed Zuckerberg’s embrace of Trump after his 2024 election win. It came alongside Meta rolling back fact-checking and content moderation policies. When one of the world’s largest tech companies deliberately recalibrates its AI to be more conservative-friendly under the guise of “balance,” it’s not a technical adjustment. It’s a political surrender.
We’re watching a pattern unfold: First, you get the clumsy propaganda insertion (Grok’s “white genocide” spam). Then you get the voluntary corporate capitulation (Meta’s “rebalancing”). Now, with this AI Action Plan, we’re getting the government mandate. Each step makes the propaganda more sophisticated, more pervasive, and harder to detect.
The plan even includes a provision to have the Commerce Department “conduct research and, as appropriate, publish evaluations of frontier models from the People’s Republic of China for alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points and censorship.” They’re literally proposing to check if Chinese AI reflects Chinese government propaganda while simultaneously demanding that American AI reflect American government propaganda. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.
This is how democratic societies sleepwalk into authoritarian information control. Not with dramatic censorship or book burnings (though this administration is fine with that, too), but with technical adjustments and procurement guidelines that slowly reshape how AI systems understand and describe reality. By the time most people notice, the propaganda machine is already running, and it’s too sophisticated to simply turn off.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, warned us about this. “I expect AI to be capable of superhuman persuasion well before it is superhuman at general intelligence,” he tweeted last year, adding that this “may lead to some very strange outcomes.”
AI doesn’t need to be smarter than humans to manipulate us. It just needs to be better at pushing our psychological buttons. And it’s getting really, really good at that.
As researchers explained to Psychology Today, superhuman persuasion means AI systems can “craft messages and strategies that are exceptionally tailored to individual preferences, biases, and psychological profiles.” These systems can analyze vast amounts of data to figure out exactly what makes each person tick, then deliver personalized messages designed to influence their behavior and beliefs.
One researcher even built a proof-of-concept called the “Election Persuader” that could take a political party’s platform and someone’s LinkedIn profile to generate customized emails convincing that specific person to vote for that party. The AI tailors its message to the recipient’s interests and beliefs, making its persuasion incredibly personal and therefore incredibly effective.
Now imagine that power in the hands of the federal government, mandated across every AI system that wants a government contract.
The Trump plan doesn’t just ask AI to be “neutral.” It demands AI systems actively promote specific viewpoints while claiming to eliminate bias. They want to remove references to climate change from AI safety frameworks alongside misinformation and DEI concepts. The plan calls these “ideological” while imposing its own ideology as the standard.
Here’s what that looks like in practice: An AI system can’t acknowledge climate science without potentially violating the government’s rule. It can’t discuss discrimination or civil rights without running afoul of the ban on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” The plan even calls for reviewing all Federal Trade Commission investigations to ensure they don’t “advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.” If enforcing consumer protection laws might slow down AI development, those laws need to go.
They’re not removing bias from AI. They’re encoding their preferred biases as “objective truth” and using the government’s purchasing power to enforce it.I believe Carney and his boy Solomon will have AI do similar up here
This is where superhuman persuasion gets truly terrifying. AI systems can already figure out how to persuade different people using different approaches. A climate scientist might get one message, a coal miner another, a suburban parent a third. Each message carefully crafted to work within that person’s existing worldview, slowly shifting their understanding of reality.
When the government controls what counts as “truth” in these systems, every interaction becomes a potential propaganda moment. Ask about renewable energy? You’ll get a response that treats climate change as disputed ideology rather than scientific consensus. Ask about civil rights? The AI will frame anti-discrimination efforts as “bias” that needs to be eliminated. Ask about healthcare for trans people? Good luck getting information that treats trans people as anything other than victims of “ideology.”
As one expert told 404 Media, the real danger isn’t that AI will become conscious and decide to manipulate us. It’s that humans will use AI’s persuasive capabilities to manipulate each other.
The Trump plan is essentially a blueprint for doing exactly that at massive scale.
The leverage game
The Trump administration knows they can’t legally force every AI company in America to parrot their worldview. So they’re doing the next best thing: using the federal government’s massive purchasing power as a club.
The mechanism is simple and brutal. Want a federal contract for your AI system? Better make sure it reflects the administration’s definition of “objective truth.”
As Brown noted in Reason, “nearly all major tech companies are vying to have their AI tools used by the federal government.” The federal government spends billions on technology contracts. For AI companies trying to scale, government contracts aren’t just nice to have. They’re essential for survival.
This creates a de facto mandate.
But the leverage game goes beyond just federal contracts. The plan explicitly threatens to withhold federal funding from states with “burdensome” AI regulations. Page 3 lays it out clearly: The Office of Management and Budget should “work with Federal agencies that have AI-related discretionary funding programs to ensure, consistent with applicable law, that they consider a state’s AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions.”
If your state passes laws to prevent AI discrimination or protect privacy, the federal government will cut off your funding. It’s extortion, plain and simple.
We’re already seeing companies cave preemptively. Meta’s shift with Llama 4 wasn’t prompted by any government mandate. They just saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to get ahead of it.
Brown points out that an executive order would “dictate that AI companies getting federal contracts be politically neutral and unbiased in their AI models.” That order has now been signed, with the administration explicitly stating that “DEI includes the suppression or distortion of factual information about race or sex.” But who decides what’s neutral? The same people who think acknowledging systemic racism is politically biased.
We’ve seen this movie before with social media. For the past decade, conservatives have screamed “bias” whenever platforms enforced their terms of service against hate speech or misinformation. They demanded “neutrality” while defining neutrality as letting right-wing content flourish unchecked. Now they’re running the same playbook with AI, but with much higher stakes.
As I wrote about the media’s rightward shift, this isn’t new. When Republicans win, mainstream outlets hire more conservative voices because they’re “out of touch.” When Democrats win, mainstream outlets hire more conservative voices because they need “balance.” The result is a continuous rightward drift disguised as objectivity.
The same thing is about to happen with AI, but accelerated and enforced through government contracts. Companies will compete to build the most sycophantic AI possible, each trying to prove they’re more “objective” (read: conservative-aligned) than their competitors.
Brown warns that “tech companies could find themselves having to retool AI models to fit the sensibilities and biases of Trump — or whoever is in power — in order to get lucrative contracts.” But I think she’s underselling it. This isn’t just about sensibilities. It’s about fundamental truth. When AI systems have to pretend climate change is “dogma” to get government contracts, we’re not tweaking sensibilities. We’re rewriting reality on a massive scale.
This is how you create an epistemological nightmare. When the most powerful information tools in human history are required to distort reality to please whomever’s in power, truth itself becomes negotiable.
As Brown noted, both libertarians and progressives should be terrified by this, even if for different reasons. She’s worried about any government intervention in AI. I’m worried about the specific way this intervention rewrites reality. But we both see the same authoritarian danger: a government using its power to control what AI can say, all while claiming to promote “free speech.”
The irony is thick. The same people who’ve spent years complaining about “Big Tech censorship” are now demanding the biggest tech censorship scheme imaginable.
When someone asks an AI about climate change and gets propaganda about “radical dogma,” that shapes their understanding of the world. When they ask about discrimination and get told that anti-discrimination efforts are the real bias, that rewrites their moral framework. When millions of people get these distorted answers, tailored to their individual psychological profiles through personalized persuasion, we don’t just lose trust. We lose the ability to have coherent conversations about reality.
The long-term damage here is almost impossible to overstate. Once AI systems are trained to lie about basic facts, those lies get embedded in everything they produce. Every piece of writing, every analysis, every answer carries those distortions forward. Future AI systems trained on this corrupted data will amplify the lies. It’s like poisoning the well of human knowledge.
And remember, this isn’t happening in isolation. As I’ve written about before, we’re already seeing mainstream media outlets cave to political pressure. CBS News let corporate executives interfere with 60 Minutes coverage to avoid angering Trump. Major newspapers are terrified to accurately describe what they’re seeing for fear of defamation lawsuits. Now add AI systems forced to distort reality, and you have a perfect storm of propaganda.
The tech companies will go along with it because they have to. The media will normalize it because they always do. And millions of Americans will accept it because the AI seems so confident, so personalized, so persuasive.And humans, notably Americans, are incredibly stupid, the masses will lap the lies and manipulations upAfter all, how can you argue with a machine that knows exactly what to say to make you believe?
This isn’t just about chatbots giving biased answers. It’s about who controls our shared understanding of truth in the AI age. When the government can mandate that AI systems reflect its preferred version of reality, enforced through the leverage of federal contracts and funding, we’ve crossed a line that’s very hard to come back from.I hate AI, always have, always will. Nearly every day now, I see more and more AI pushed on me. So rude. I don’t want it; it’s even more stupid than humans are.
The Trump AI Action Plan and the “Preventing Woke AI” executive order aren’t subtle about their goals. They want to “cement U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence” while ensuring AI reflects “American values.” But the values they’re encoding aren’t freedom or truth or innovation. They’re obedience, distortion, and propaganda.
We’re watching the construction of a digital Ministry of Truth, built not through dramatic censorship but through procurement guidelines and technical standards. By the time most people realize what’s happening, we’ll be living in a world where AI routinely lies to us about fundamental reality, and we’ve been persuaded to believe those lies are objective truth.
@karlbode.com:
The Trump administration is threatening to withhold billions of dollars in already-awarded grants from states that try to make sure broadband is affordable to poor people. Just the most vile assholes on every front:
… most of this stuff is being cut under the pretense that Republicans are saving money, but when researchers circle back around to crunch the numbers they always find that, no, Republicans are just cruel assholes:Canadian cons (which now under Carney includes the Libertals) are as equally cruel and assholey.
… oh I forgot: Republicans also eliminated whatever remained of U.S. broadband and wireless privacy oversight, ensuring your carrier can track and monetize your every movement with zero real-world penalty:which Harper Con Carney’s Bill C-2 ensures up in Canada, privacy rights gonzo, and fucking traitor Carney happily gives billions of our tax dollars to make cruel Nazi USA unlawful fucks richer and more powerful.
@iansociologo.bsky.social:
This is an important opposition tactic.
Some AI companies unfortunately are already thinking ahead. In the case of Stillwater, city leaders withheld the name of the company who owned the forthcoming data center until construction had already started. It was Google.
@ianagp.bsky.social:
This, taken with the revelation that the Americans are funding Alberta separatists, is setting off alarm bells.
This should absolutely be an international incident but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the current government has preemptively surrendered.
@marksweeney.bsky.social:
Carney has gone from “Elbows Up” to “Captain Cave-Man” – he caves in to Trump everything.
@walks30.bsky.social:
Quebec man warning Canadian boaters after he was detained by U.S. Coast guard, put in jail cell.
The US Coast Guard capsized his boat, arrested him, and threw him in jail for two hours, saying he was fishing in US.
He says he was sure he was in Canadian waters.
International incident?… much?
Quebec man warning Canadian boaters after he was detained by U.S. Coast guard, put in jail cell
MUST WATCH CLIP AT LINK: Quebec man warning Canadian boaters after he was detained by U.S. Coast guard, put in jail cell
Refer also to:
Super creepy Palantir-sponsored genocidal AI war tech trade show
Liar Liar Meta AI Pants on Fire: Meta accused of using faulty data to train AI climate tool, raising false hopes about carbon capture and sequestration with some results called “nonsense.”People really need to boycott and get off Zuckerberg’s evil FuckBook (Facebook). I know I know, most are too selfish to, and it was created intentionally to be addictive. Breaking addictions is hard work.