AI, GEOPOLIFINANCE, AND THE NEW GRIFT
"So what exactly is 'geopolifinance'?", you might be asking yourself. For one thing, it's a word I coined for The Rialto in Richmond, Reconstructed, to denote that interplay of the deep state, its deep politics, deep events, and its financial and geopolitical calculations; it's politics, geopolitics, and finance, all rolled into one comprehensive knot of deep motivations.
As one might have guessed, today's blog is about all of that, but first I have to set the context, and the context is the two big "events" of last week, the first being the sleight-of-hand show that was the President's address to a joint session of Congress (and the ensuing disgusting theater accompanying it), and the second being the blow-up in the oval office during the state visit of the "president" of the "Ukraine", who was visiting to secure more funds to save his "democracy," which hasn't had an election in some time and which may have killed an American journalist (remember Gonzalo Lira?), none of which are very democratic acts. Amid all the broohaha of the President's speech listing the accomplishments of his first few weeks back in office, there was a noticeable lack of mention of his plans for a strategic sovereign wealth fund, and how that plan is in turn linked with crypto-currencies, and in particular, Bitcoin. While I find DOGE's fat-trimming to be commendable and long-overdue - especially after hearing some of the nonsense that has been funded by the goobernment - I still have deep reservations - dare I call them anxieties - about turning over the operation to a man who wants to put brain chips into our heads and wire us up to the internet 24/7. (And while we're at it, why has no one at DOGE ever mentioned the problem of the missing trillions, how to recover them, or find out who should be held accountable for the fact that they are missing? And by the way, what about FASAB 56 regulations? Why are they never mentioned in connection with all this self-evident waste?) Oh, and did I mention Mr. Musk has his own super-computer/AI center outside of Memphis (the one in Tennessee, not Egypt), which he thinks might be "the new god"? It's easy to see why: with his brain chips, the permanently paralyzed, blind, or deaf, might be made to walk, see, or hear, and being hooked up to "the new god", they will also be free from thinking and doing nasty things. A nifty anti-Christ, if you ask me, if one takes the "anti" in its other sense of "in the place of" rather than "against". I don't know about you, but this sounds like the very worst forms of a Stalinesque or Maoist totalitarianism. And speaking of Stalinesque and Maoist totalitarianism...
Normally, in circumstances such as this, I would blog about an article that someone sends me. But in this case, my concerns were tapped by a post on "X" - the "new god's" very own social media platform - by friend and colleague Catherine Austin Fitts. Here's her post:
And just so you don't miss what she said:
The Bitcoin Bailout Grift is on. Will a swap of a pumped Bitcoin for government land be treated as "revenue neutral?" - And of course there are endless possibilities of civil and criminal money fines and seizures against freedom fighters - Trump and Musk are turning out to be the best agents for the Deep State and the billionaires yet - Trump repeats the falsehood that the 21M is a hard limit. Blackrock is subject to securities laws so even they had to admit it was not a hard limit.
Fitts of course is correct, and if you've been following her (or for that matter, my own, or others') warnings about the fabulous fable of "crypto-currencies", you'll recognize the old parlor magic trick: misdirected attention, while a massive swindle is pulled. In this case, the swindle is (1) getting people to believe that blips on a computer screen constitute money; (2) that said blips are "secure" from any sort of central bank or government interference or manipulation and cannot be hacked; and thus are (3) a wonderful way to park wealth, in this case, a government "sovereign wealth fund." But as she points out, all of this could be the opportunity for the ultimate in pump-and-dump schemes and wealth transferences.
How?
Easy: sell off government-owned hard assets like land or buildings (recall Mr. Trump's desire to sell several federal buildings in Swampington and elsewhere) for some of those electronic blips. The "deep geopolifinanciers" (think Blackrock here) get hard assets in exchange for blips in a blockchain ledger. Not for gold, silver, rare earth metals, oil, or anything else.
Just blips.
Oh... and be good boys and girls and approve of all of this nonsense, or your blip-usage per day might be severely restricted or eliminated altogether, just as a reminder of who's really the boss.
The sleight-of-hand and misdirection continued with a lot of warm-and-tender memory creating moments, genuinely laudable people whose suffering and courage deserved attention and recognition.
There was but one very brief brush with the new emerging techno-Stalinism, and that was the reference to "drill, baby, drill." Yes, we need energy, and lots of it, because the simple truth is, that if the country is to win the war for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), and if that A.I. in turn is to be used to run various functions - like mining crypto-currencies, designing new materials, recommending certain policies ("should we use nuclear weapons against Mr. Putin today, or not?") - and doing all the things it has been doing for a few decades now (like algorithmic trading, creating flash crashes, and so on), then we will need lots of energy. So much, in fact, that there is talk of building lots of mini-nuclear power plants all over the country to power this massive system of A.I. and the "currency" and other stuff that it is running. (Think of all those stories about this or that fusion breakthrough, or small thorium-salts fission reactors, the cold-fusion batteries stories of Rossi and others. Think also of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and you might have an inkling of why this may not be such a good idea.)
And in order to run those A.I., we'll need lots of secure access to rare earth minerals to build the components of the hardware that runs the A.I.s.
And so will the other "new great powers" - China, Russia, Brazil, India, Japan. The geopolitical calculus, like it or not, is changing. Many of the old variables in the calculus of "great power status" remain the same: is there a large and well-educated population base? is there a manufacturing and industrial plant capability? is there adequate communications and travel infrastructure? is there strategic depth to the country (i.e., is it large)? Is there a sufficient financial and economic infrastructure to maintain the others? Is there a large military with the latest weaponry and technology, and is it well-trained and supplied? Now we must add to this: does it have its own in house A.I. capability, and can the hardware necessary for that capability be manufactured wholly or almost wholly, in conjunction with its allies, by that power ?
It's that last question that gives away the game, and indeed, the game was given away by the recent announcement by Taiwanese companies that they are opening chip manufacturing facilities in this country. The bottom line: nothing replaces hard assets. Repeat: Nothing.
See you on the flip side...
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