There was a time when you paid more for a German automobile because “Made in Germany” actually meant something. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen built an international reputation around engineering, quality, and precision. People willingly paid the premium because Germany was supposed to build the machine better than everyone else. That reputation became one of the foundations of Germany’s entire export economy.
Now Volkswagen Group is recalling 2.86 million Volkswagen and Audi vehicles because a screw in the steering system can corrode and potentially fail, causing a loss of steering. The recall covers Volkswagen Tiguan, Touran, Golf, Golf Variant, and Caddy models produced over an eleven-year period, along with Audi Q3s built between 2017 and 2024. Germany’s KBA says there have been no known injuries or property damage, and Volkswagen says the replacement takes about an hour. Fine. Recalls happen to every manufacturer. But this could hardly come at a worse time because the larger German automobile industry is already fighting for its life.
“Made in Germany” simply does not carry the economic weight it once did. German manufacturers are asking consumers to continue paying a premium while Chinese manufacturers have rapidly closed the gap in quality and, in areas such as batteries, software, electronics, charging, and manufacturing efficiency, have become formidable competitors. Brand loyalty only survives as long as consumers believe they are receiving something superior for the additional money.
The Germans are admitting the problem themselves. Mercedes-Benz said this week that manufacturing automobiles in Germany is NOT internationally competitive, particularly because of labor costs. Mercedes production chief Michael Schiebe warned employees that unless costs come down, the company could eventually close one German assembly plant and one powertrain plant. Volkswagen has already embarked on the largest restructuring in its 89-year history as it battles overcapacity and Chinese competition. It lost its position as China’s best-selling automobile brand to BYD in 2024 and fell behind Geely the following year. Volkswagen is now cutting tens of thousands of jobs and reducing production capacity.
Then there is Porsche, once the crown jewel of Volkswagen. Volkswagen has taken a €6 billion write-down on its Porsche stake after another €2.7 billion impairment the previous year. Porsche has been battered in China and made costly mistakes during the transition to electric vehicles. Its profitability has fallen so dramatically that Volkswagen’s budget Skoda operation has overtaken it on margins. What is the fundamental change? China unexpectedly learned how to manufacture.
For decades, Western companies treated China as a source of cheap labor. They moved manufacturing there, transferred technology, constructed supply chains, trained workers, and taught Chinese companies how Western industry operated. Politicians assured everyone this was globalization and that Europe would simply move toward higher-value industries.
Well, China moved up the value chain too. The European Central Bank now openly admits that China’s industrial rise is pushing European companies out of global markets, particularly in machinery and transportation equipment. Germany is the most exposed of the major European economies because its export profile most closely resembles China’s. The Chinese are no longer merely producing inexpensive toys, textiles, and household goods. They are competing directly in the industries Germany once believed belonged to it.
Automobiles are the perfect example. Chinese brands accounted for about 9% of EU automobile sales during the first half of 2026, according to industry data cited by Reuters, and AlixPartners estimates they could reach 16% of the broader European market by 2030. Meanwhile, foreign manufacturers’ share of China’s own automobile market has collapsed from 64% in 2020 to roughly 32% this year. China first displaced the foreign manufacturers at home. Now it is coming after them abroad.
This is how economic power shifts. It does not happen because somebody holds a press conference announcing that Germany is no longer competitive. Consumers simply stop buying the product.
The European response, naturally, has been tariffs and protectionism. Rather than asking why Chinese manufacturers can increasingly offer competitive vehicles at lower prices, Brussels wants to construct walls around the European market. But tariffs do not make German factories more efficient. They do not lower Germany’s energy or labor costs. They do not produce better batteries, faster software development, or cheaper automobiles. They merely force European consumers to pay more while giving domestic manufacturers additional time before reality arrives.
Germany inflicted much of this upon itself. It abandoned cheap Russian energy without constructing a competitive replacement, pursued an expensive energy transition, buried industry beneath regulation, and simultaneously demanded that its automobile manufacturers spend enormous sums transforming their product lines. Reuters estimates that the post-2022 energy shock added roughly €1,000 to the cost of manufacturing a vehicle in Germany. You cannot continuously raise the cost of production and then act surprised when someone else produces the same product for less.
This is the part politicians never understand. Consumers are not charities. Someone shopping for a vehicle does not care about preserving the German industrial model. They look at price, quality, technology, reliability, range, features, and financing. If a Chinese manufacturer can provide more technology for €10,000 less, telling that customer about Germany’s glorious manufacturing tradition will not close the sale.
Germany once earned its premium through engineering. The danger now is believing the badge itself entitles manufacturers to that premium forever. The Volkswagen recall is therefore symbolic of a much larger problem. Again, there are no reported injuries and every major manufacturer issues recalls. But Germany can no longer afford repeated blows to the perception that its products justify their higher prices while Chinese competitors are advancing at breathtaking speed. Reputation takes generations to build and remarkably little time to lose once consumers discover alternatives.
Germany’s automobile industry was not simply another business. It was a pillar of the country’s postwar economic model, supporting manufacturers, suppliers, engineers, skilled workers, exporters, and entire communities. If that industry continues losing competitiveness, the damage will spread far beyond Volkswagen dealerships. China did not destroy German manufacturing. Germany helped destroy its own competitive advantage while China spent decades building one.
The words “Made in Germany” once allowed a manufacturer to charge more because the customer assumed German engineering meant something exceptional. That reputation still has value, but it is no longer enough by itself. The Chinese are forcing the Germans to compete again on price, technology, efficiency, and quality rather than living off a reputation built by previous generations. If Germany cannot do that, no tariff from Brussels and no amount of nostalgia will save its automobile industry.
Something is happening in Germany that the politicians pushing Europe toward militarization should pay very close attention to. More than 45,000 students walked out of their classrooms across over 100 cities to protest the country’s new military-service system and the possibility that compulsory service will follow. These are the young people Berlin expects to put in uniform, and they are making something perfectly clear: you can increase the military budget with the stroke of a pen, but finding people willing to fight is an entirely different matter.
Germany suspended compulsory military service in 2011. Now the government is rebuilding the machinery needed to bring it back. All 18-year-old men are required to answer a questionnaire concerning their willingness and fitness to serve, medical examinations are being introduced, and if voluntary recruitment fails to produce enough soldiers, the Bundestag can move toward compulsory service. Chancellor Friedrich Merz wants Germany to possess what he has called the strongest conventional army in Europe, expanding the Bundeswehr from roughly 183,000 active personnel to 260,000 by 2035 with another 200,000 reservists.
But there is one rather important problem. The government needs the young. Politicians sitting safely in Berlin and Brussels can talk endlessly about preparedness, deterrence, defense spending, and security architecture. They can promise NATO another percentage point of GDP and borrow another hundred billion euros for weapons. None of those politicians will be the 18-year-old ordered to put on a uniform. That burden falls upon a generation that grew up being told Europe had moved beyond the wars that destroyed the continent twice in the last century.
Students have already organized repeated nationwide demonstrations against conscription. The youth are increasingly considering conscientious objection, and the new military-service system itself acknowledges the recruitment problem because Germany would not need questionnaires, mandatory examinations, and a mechanism for restoring compulsory service if enough young Germans were voluntarily rushing to join the Bundeswehr.
This is where the entire European rearmament program runs directly into demographics and public opinion. Governments can manufacture weapons. They cannot manufacture an unlimited supply of 18-year-olds. Germany is an aging society already struggling with labor shortages and an enormous demographic burden. The same young worker Berlin needs to support the pension system, pay taxes, staff German industry, and keep the economy functioning is now also expected to become the manpower reserve for Europe’s military buildup.
Older voters can support greater military preparedness without ever facing conscription themselves. Politicians can announce that Russia represents a generational security threat while surrounded by security details and government cars. The teens receiving a military questionnaire see the issue somewhat differently because suddenly the war commitment has their names and addresses attached to it.
Europe is moving toward rearmament while many of the people who would actually have to serve are increasingly asking why they should be compelled to participate. That does not settle the security debate; supporters of the government’s policy argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated why Germany needs a much larger military and that deterrence requires credible manpower as well as weapons. But governments cannot simply assume that younger generations will automatically accept compulsory service because political leaders declare it necessary.
The young Germans marching through the streets understand that distinction perfectly well. Their government wants hundreds of thousands more soldiers while the voluntary system is already struggling to produce them. It does not take a sophisticated computer model to understand where that pressure leads if recruitment targets continue to be missed.
Europe’s politicians can approve all the defense budgets they want, but they cannot legislate enthusiasm for war. They cannot lecture an entire generation into surrendering years of its life, and they certainly cannot assume that young people will quietly accept being drafted because bureaucrats have decided Europe needs a larger army. The students filling Germany’s streets are delivering a message that Berlin would be foolish to ignore: before governments start planning their next armies and their next wars, perhaps they should ask the generation expected to fight them whether they intend to go.
For years, Washington proclaimed that sanctions would shut down Iranian oil exports. They never did. Iran adapted because markets ALWAYS adapt. Tehran assembled a shadow fleet, tankers switched off transponders, cargoes changed identities, oil moved ship to ship, and payments bypassed Western banking channels while China continued buying the crude. Even during Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign in 2019 and 2020, Iranian oil continued passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Washington could sanction the paperwork, banks, insurance companies, and ships, but somebody still wanted the oil. The blockade has changed everything because you cannot hide geography.
Reuters reports that Iran went roughly seven weeks without meaningful crude exports passing through Hormuz. Iranian crude and condensate loadings collapsed from roughly 2 MILLION barrels per day in March to 740,000 in July and merely 220,000 to 255,000 barrels per day in August. This is the fundamental difference between sanctions and a blockade. Sanctions tell someone they cannot conduct a transaction, so markets find another currency, bank, company, flag, or jurisdiction. A blockade says the tanker cannot leave. You can rename the vessel twelve times and create twenty shell corporations, but eventually that ship still has to sail through the water.
Iran’s shadow fleet solved the sanctions problem because sanctions are fundamentally bureaucratic. It cannot solve Hormuz because geography is physical. Vortexa identified 27 sanctioned tankers sitting off Sri Lanka in ballast because they could not return to Iran to reload. Meanwhile, Iranian crude has been accumulating on the other side. Iran has the oil. China wants the oil. Yet the transaction cannot be completed because the physical connection between buyer and seller has been severed.
China had been Iran’s escape valve. When Europe stopped purchasing Iranian crude and Western financial institutions refused to process transactions, Chinese refiners simply bought discounted Iranian barrels. Iran received foreign currency, China received cheap energy, and Washington discovered that it could make the trade inconvenient without eliminating it. Now even that system is breaking down. Iranian crude stored afloat fell from around 135 million barrels to 107 million barrels during August as accessible inventories were drained while oil accumulated behind the blockade.
This is far more serious than another round of sanctions. Sanctions are economic warfare through banking regulations. A blockade is economic warfare enforced by military power. Iran depends upon oil revenue for foreign currency, and that lifeline is being severed while its domestic economy is already collapsing. GDP contracted 10.1% in the first quarter, while the oil and gas sector plunged more than 26%. Remove the dollars and yuan coming into the country while production is falling and Tehran faces declining reserves, additional pressure on the rial, and still more inflation.
Iran is attempting to redirect commerce over LAND, but the economics are absurd. Before the war, more than 80% of Iran’s roughly 180 million tonnes of annual two-way trade moved by sea from its southern coast. The Financial Times reports that trade is increasingly being pushed toward Turkey and neighboring countries, with Iranian imports through the Gürbulak crossing reportedly surging 250%. But you cannot replace a supertanker with trucks. Thousands of trucks mean bottlenecks, customs delays, fuel expenses, labor costs, and a fraction of the capacity available through maritime trade.
The blockade could also damage Iran long after the immediate crisis passes. Oil cannot be pumped indefinitely when storage tanks and tankers are full. Production eventually has to be reduced, and shutting aging fields creates additional costs and technical problems when production is restarted. Iran therefore risks losing not merely today’s oil sale but future productive capacity.
Washington has discovered the limitation of sanctions: they require other people to cooperate. China did not care that Washington wanted Iranian oil removed from the market. Traders made fortunes circumventing restrictions, and every new sanction produced another method of avoiding the previous one. A blockade does not require the buyer to cooperate, which is precisely why it works. But that is also what makes it infinitely more dangerous.
China loses access to discounted crude, Iranian production declines, global supply tightens, tankers are rerouted, insurance premiums rise, and commerce is forced onto inefficient routes. The blockade may be economically effective, but effectiveness and strategic wisdom are not necessarily the same thing. Once warships physically determine who may participate in international commerce, we have moved beyond conventional sanctions and into the militarization of trade itself.
Iran survived sanctions because markets found another path around Washington. The blockade is working because that path has now been physically blocked. That is a far more powerful weapon, but it also represents another escalation from financial warfare toward actual war. Markets can circumvent politicians, banks, regulations, and sanctions. They cannot circumvent geography.
QUESTION: I believe you once said that 2032 would be the half-cycle of 4300 years from the Persian conquest of the city of Ur, which prompted Abraham to migrate to Canaan, and that 8600 years ago was the time of Noah and the great flood. Do I remember that correctly?
Ellis
ANSWER: As far as the cycles are concerned, around 6500BC corresponds to th full cycle of 8600 years back from 2032. The story of the Great Flood exists in many cultures in the West as well as in Asia. The Hindu tradition features the story of Manu, who is warned by a fish (often an avatar of Vishnu) to build a boat and survive a great deluge, similar to other flood narratives. I would suspect that it was not simply rain for 40 days and nights.
For such a major event some have argued perhaps there was a meteor that his the earth. They do know that it has been hypothesized that an impact event created the Burckle Crater in the Indian Ocean. However, its proposed date is disputed with some claiming it was round 2800BC. It would logically assumed that a meteor impacting in the ocean would cause a massive tidal wave that could be a sudden flood type scenario.
A specific archaeological claim from the 1920s, by Sir Leonard Woolley who excavated a thick layer of river silt at the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia, which he dated to around 6500 years ago (roughly 4500 BC), and famously declared it evidence of Noah’s flood . What we do know is that the Egyptian inscription on the Merneptah Stele (c. 1207 BC) contains the earliest known reference to “Israel.” It mentions Israel as a people already living in Canaan, which some argue supports an earlier Exodus. This Egyptian victory monument provides the crucial textual anchor. Pharaoh Merneptah boasts: “Israel is laid waste, its seed is no more.” This single line tells us there was a group called “Israel” that already existed in Canaan. That takes us back about 3200 years.
Mesopotamia is called the “Cradle of Civilization” because it is one of the earliest places on Earth where humans transitioned from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled, complex urban societies. Located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in modern-day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey), it saw the emergence of many “firsts” that laid the foundation for later civilizations. It gave rise to some of the world’s earliest known cities, including Uruk, Ur, and Eridu. By around 4000–3500 BC, Uruk had grown into a massive urban center with thousands of inhabitants, monumental architecture, and specialized labor—features that define a civilization. It is the City of Ur from which Abraham migrated and became the father of the Jews and Arabs.
The Persian Gulf did not form in a single earthquake, but through a slow geological process driven by plate tectonics and sea-level changes. From a cyclical perspective, the last glacial maximum occurred around 18,000 years ago. Global sea level is believed to have been about 130 meters lower than it is today. Over the next 12,000 years, most of the ice melted off Canada and Scandinavia, causing sea level to rise and flooding the rims of all the dry lands. Some attributed this to the legendary Noah’s Flood. However, this may have been loosely connected, but that is far from certain.
Geologists agree that the Persian Gulf was formed by the collision of the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates, a process that has been ongoing for millions of years. For roughly 40 million years, the Arabian Plate has slowly rotated and moved northward, colliding with the Eurasian Plate. This collision crumpled the edge of the Eurasian Plate, creating the Zagros Mountains in Iran.
As the Arabian Plate pushed into the Eurasian Plate, the crust in the region was depressed and warped, creating a shallow, flooded basin. This basin is the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is essentially a tectonic depression, not a rift valley formed by a single earthquake.
Sea-level rise after the last Ice Age drove the basin’s final flooding. About 11,000 to 14,000 years ago, melting ice sheets caused global sea levels to rise significantly. This allowed water from the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman to flow over the low-lying land and fill the basin, creating the modern Persian Gulf.
While the Persian Gulf’s formation is a geological fact, the idea that it is linked to Noah’s Flood comes from a scientific hypothesis that some researchers have proposed, not a proven connection. Some researchers have argued that the source of ancient flood stories. An ancient Babylonian map depicts Babylonia as being surrounded and submerged by the waters of the Persian Gulf, which some scholars have connected to the flood stories. Additionally, a geological study found evidence of a massive storm or flood in the Persian Gulf around 6,800 years ago, and some suggest it might correspond to the story of Noah, though this remains a hypothesis.
Other scholars argue that the biblical Flood was a regional event in Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), not a global flood. The Persian Gulf basin, which once connected the Tigris and Euphrates rivers before sea levels rose, is one proposed location for the “Eden” described in Genesis. There are even surviving depictions of the Great Flood with bodies and fish.
In ancient Mesopotamian stories, the city of Dilmun was the blessed, pure land where the flood survivor was taken to live forever. In the Sumerian flood story, the hero (known as Ziusudra) is granted eternal life by the gods and settled in a distant, sacred place. The text explicitly names this location as it is the Garden of Eden.
This story of Noah even appears on a Roman coin struck by Septimius Severus (193-211AD) long before Christianity became really a growing religion in Rome. The story is illustrated and even the name Noah appears on the Roman coin. This tends to verify that the story was well known outside of the Bible. The location there is called Noah’s National Park.
Here is a later Roman Emperor, Philip I (244-249AD), with another coin issued om Phrygia from the area where the story of Noah’s arc landed. The story has also been recorded in that region of Turkey on ancient Roman Coins. This has long raised independent evidence for the “story” of Noah external from the Bible, which the academics seem to go out of their way to discredit as history. The depiction of Noah on Roman coins struck in Phrygia come from the very area where Noah’s Ark was supposed to have rested. This demonstrates that this story comes from the very place where Noah’s Ark came to rest.
Alexander the Great cut the Gordian Knot at Gordium, which was the ancient capital of Phrygia, located in what is now central Turkey. The prophecy held that whoever loosened the knot would rule Asia, which Alexander went on to do. Historically, this was an important area.
The Persian Gulf is about 35 miles wide (56 km) at its narrowest, in the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf is very shallow, with a maximum depth of 90 meters (295 feet) and an average depth of 50 meters (164 feet). The Persian Gulf was fertile dry land before the flood, which obviously contains very old cultures which may be older than anything known on dry land today. We do know that the Gulf has receded from where it once stood in ancient times following the flooding.
The legend of Dilmun (Telmun) is fascinating. It comes from Sumerian writings. This was an ancient Semitic-speaking city that is mentioned from the 3rd millennium BC onwards. Based on the records that have survived, Dilmun was located in the Persian Gulf. It was on a trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. Dilmun was a major trading center which controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. Dilmun was mentioned by the Mesopotamians as a trade partner and the major source of copper.
There are two official letters from Dilmun dated about 1370 BC that were recovered from Nippur, during the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. There was some administrative relationship between Dilmun and Babylon at that time. There is also an early inscription that mentions Dilmun and speaks of the tribute that they brought to Ur-Nanshe, the first king of the first dynasty of Lagash, which was an ancient city located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Lagash (modern Al-Hiba) was one of the oldest cities of the Ancient Near East. The surviving inscriptions say:
“The ships of Dilmun from foreign lands, brought him (Ur-Nanshe) wood as a tribute.”
Kassite dynasty conquered and controlled Babylon between 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC. After their collapse, the only mention of Dilmun comes from Assyrian inscriptions dated around 1150 BC which proclaimed the Assyrian king to be king of Dilmun as well.
Dilmun was a civilization that was quite an old civilization, yet because it appears to have been submerged in the Persian Gulf, it is much less famous than the four cradles of the civilization of the Old World, i.e. Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, and the Yellow River Civilization.
In literature, Dilmun occupies an important place in the mythology of Mesopotamia since it is in the second half of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Additionally, Dilmun is also mentioned in the myth of Enki and Ninhursag / Ninhursaja. In this story, Dilmun is presented as a sort of earthly paradise – the Garden of Eden where survivors of the Great Flood started over.
Archaeology has confirmed that Dilmun was a real, thriving civilization centered on modern-day Bahrain and parts of the eastern Arabian coast. It was a prosperous Bronze Age trading hub, famous for its sweet-water springs, date palms, and its role as a commercial entrepôt between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.
The Mesopotamians idealized Dilmun in their mythology as a pure, holy land—a virtual Garden of Eden where sickness and death did not exist. This literary image was likely inspired by the real island’s abundant fresh water and lush vegetation, which would have seemed miraculous to travelers from arid Mesopotamia.
Categories:Middle EastReligion
For the past week the collective lamestream media have been going through fits of apoplexy following President Trump denying White House access to three propaganda outfits, CNN, MSNow and Politico. Whenever Washington DC media are criticized or dismissed, they react in outrage due to their delusions of grandeur, a genuine belief in their own importance.
Martha Raddatz from ABC takes aim at Attorney General Todd Blanche over the issue, then pivots to the second most important issue of the day for the stenographers – the AI doom narrative. Video and Transcript Below:
[Transcipt] – MARTHA RADDATZ – Good morning, and thank you so much for joining us this morning. Let’s get right to this. There was no TV pool coverage of the president’s trip to Tennessee this weekend. It was supposed to be CNN. They said they were banned from Air Force One.
What is the justification for denying access?
TODD BLANCHE, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, the president hasn’t denied access. That’s not the right way to describe it. This is — what the president has said is that he is sick and tired of certain media outlets just refusing to report accurate news, and so — look, it is a — it is a privilege — it is a privilege to be in the White House for anybody.
And that — and the president — the president knows that it’s the people’s house, and what you saw play out over the past week was really not just not — even after the judge — even after the White House let the reporters back in, they still refuse to use pool coverage. They still refuse to, on their own, make a decision to start covering the president again with the video.
But a lot of people saw the president. The president was not hidden from the American people at the — at the football game in Tennessee yesterday. And really, the unfortunate and sad thing here is that after years and years and years of one-sided media coverage of the president from certain outlets, the president finally said it’s not fair to the American people that this is happening and did something about it.
There’s still obviously litigation going on, but the important thing, Martha, is to know that that being in the White House is a privilege. It’s not a — it’s not a right.
RADDATZ: Understood and understood that on Air Force One, but CNN was denied access to Air Force One, and you are saying it is because of the way they report. Has nothing to do with national security.
BLANCHE: I’m not saying — no. I’m not — I wasn’t talking about Air Force One. It’s when you say denied access to Air Force One, the White House routinely decides who can go on Air Force One. This wasn’t a one-time denial of CNN. There’s all kinds of times when certain reporters are not flying or are flying —
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: CNN was the pool that day. CNN was the pool that day. They were denied entry to Air Force One.
BLANCHE: I understand that, but the — it’s not unusual, and as a matter of fact, it’s common every time the president travels that he and his team decide which reporters get to travel with the president. And so, what you have now is you have — you have certain news outlets upset and frustrated at what happened last week, and so that they’re refusing to use pool coverage.
The president has every right to decide who gets to fly on his plane, and it is national security, especially on Air Force One, and especially at the White House. And so, it’s not just — it’s not just the fact that they refuse to report anything accurately.
By the way, that is what is a national security problem. When you have completely misinformation, complete misinformation coming out of the White House, that affects our relationship with our foreign partners, that affects our relationship with our foreign enemies. And so this is — this is just not about the fact that they’re refusing to report accurate news. It’s all about the information that the American people have a right to hear coming out of our – what should be respected media outlets.
RADDATZ: You clearly think you had a strong case, but the temporary restraining order was granted. The judge was skeptical of the argument the department made in court filings to defend this ban on the grounds of national security.
He wrote, “For one thing, nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns. Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was banning plaintiffs from the White House. Instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of plaintiffs’ reporting.”
The president said nothing about national security when he announced this ban, and clearly, you are very interested in the fact of what the press says and how they say it.
BLANCHE: Well, I’m not going to get into what the judge says. That litigation is ongoing, but our position has been clear from the beginning. What they say is exactly the issue when it comes to national security. I mean, anybody — there’s not, there can’t be a disagreement. If there’s —
RADDATZ: Give us an example. If there’s — I mean, there was one example where the press had reported something that White House officials said —
(CROSSTALK)
BLANCHE: When CNN — I’m sorry, wait, give you an example of when CNN doesn’t report accurately? You cannot be asking me that. They don’t even disagree. There’s not even a real dispute that the information coming out of CNN and some of these other networks is wholly and completely almost — almost 100 percent —
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: The judge — the judge decided this was not based on national security. So what do you think?
BLANCHE: The judge issued a temporary — the judge issued a temporary order. It’s not final. The litigation is ongoing, and I’m not going to talk about the specifics of what the judge said. That wouldn’t be right.
What I’m talking about is the government’s position and what the Department of Justice said in court, which is the same thing that President Trump has said repeatedly, which is at some point, at some point, the complete misinformation and the inaccuracy and the one-sided news out of certain organizations does become a national security issue, and it’s not right for the people of the United States have to put up.
RADDATZ: So, are you saying you’re going to screen people before they get on — on a flight coming —
(CROSSTALK)
BLANCHE: I did not say that. No, no, I did not say that.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: But you said the president gets to decide —
BLANCHE: You don’t get to put words into my mouth.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: I’m not.
BLANCHE: That’s not the way it works.
RADDATZ: The president —
BLANCHE: Yes, you just said, are you saying? I didn’t say that.
RADDATZ: Fine. You have a right to defend yourself there. But are you saying —
BLANCHE: I’m not defending myself.
RADDATZ: — that in the future —
BLANCHE: You said I said something that I didn’t say.
RADDATZ: That’s fine. That’s fine. We can go on. What do you think the job of the press is? What does the First Amendment mean to you?
BLANCHE: To repair it. Well, what does it mean to me? What it means to me is not the issue. But what the law says, what the free press can do is they are free to report whatever they want. OK? Of course, they can. But when it comes to the White House, it is the people’s house. It is a privilege and not a right to be there.
And what every American should expect is that when they are told something on any network or when they read something on the paper, that it even has a whiff of impartiality. That it even has a whiff of accuracy about what’s actually happening, and if that’s not happening, then there’s nothing — it is absolutely the president’s duty to make sure that the American people are hearing accurate news.
It doesn’t have to be good for the president. It doesn’t have to be everything’s positive about what’s happening in the administration.
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: But you heard what the president said.
BLANCHE: It has to be very accurate.
RADDATZ: They want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration. That’s the president saying —
BLANCHE: The president has said —
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: Not talking about impartiality.
BLANCHE: OK. You just picked out seven words the president said. The president talks about his concerns with a lot of these mainstream media outlets. There’s hours and hours and hours of quotes and statements about that. So for you to pick out seven words and say, “Oh, that’s what the president means, that’s extraordinarily disingenuous. OK?
RADDATZ: I think we could —
(CROSSTALK)
BLANCHE: Everybody knows exactly what the president’s (ph) concern is.
RADDATZ: — we could give other examples. Mr. Attorney General, what will be the criteria to get on the
White House grounds, in your view, or Air Force One, the Oval Office?
BLANCHE: That is not — that is most certainly not my decision. So I’m not going to even begin to try to justify that question with an answer. But what I can tell you is what the president has said and what we have argued in court remains true. What we expect and it is for the protection — for the protection of our country, so that when foreign leaders, when foreign governments, when citizens that are around the world hear what’s happening in the administration, that it happens to be accurate.
It doesn’t have to be positive. It doesn’t have to be something that just makes Republicans look good. But it has to be fair and balanced, and that’s what the president expects.
RADDATZ: OK, and the judge found that not to be true with the national security. I’d like to move on to A.I., and also note as well that you let the Chinese press into the White House, and President Xi on Marine One. But I want to move on to A.I. The New York Times reported Friday —
BLANCHE: When you say you let the White House, I didn’t let the president —
RADDATZ: The president let.
BLANCHE: I did not let the Chinese journalists in. OK.
RADDATZ: The White House.
BLANCHE: All right. You got the last word. I hope we feel better now.
RADDATZ: No, no.
BLANCHE: The whole point is — the whole, the whole. I mean, you know, it’s not — this isn’t about whether the Chinese journalists got into the White House for the day when their president was here visiting. This is about a much bigger issue than that. You know that, and so do the American people.
RADDATZ: OK, let’s move on to A.I. The New York Times reported Friday that OpenAI agents, quote, “went rogue and meddled with government websites over the summer without the A.I. lab’s awareness.” OpenAI confirmed that. Can you tell us anything about what happened and what your concerns are?
BLANCHE: Well, there’s — when you say what my concerns are, I don’t — I don’t —
RADDATZ: That specifically.
BLANCHE: I don’t have any concerns about the New York Times article, but look, of course, this is extraordinarily changing technology every single day. It is so important and vital to our national security interests and to the success of this country that the United States lead in this space. And so what President Trump has said and what we expect to do every single day is make sure that we’re — that we have a forum in this country to be the leader in this technology.
Now, does that mean along the way there’s going to be concerns? There’s going to be adjustments that have to be made? Of course. And by the way, the leaders of A.I., the same ones that apparently felt OK talking to the New York Times, they have tools already. If they need to curb that and they need to bring that in and adjust the technology, they can do that.
But in the meantime, the answer is not to just try to — all of a sudden try to regulate this in a way that will make us second or third place in the world as far as being the leaders in this space.
RADDATZ: So, just finally, you said we are — the president said at the U.N., we’re going to watch it closely through the Department of Justice. You talked about this a little bit, but what does that mean?
BLANCHE: Well, what it means is that we have a ton of laws, criminal laws, civil laws, that are already in place and on the books that allow us to charge individuals, to charge companies in the right circumstances when there’s crimes committed. And so the answer isn’t always more laws, more laws, more laws. We have — and by the way, we’ve charged — we’ve charged dozens and dozens of individuals who have committed crimes using A.I.
It’s not — it’s not a new — a new thing just because all of a sudden the media decided that A.I. was getting out of control. That’s something that’s happened for the past several years, even as A.I. was just getting started.
So, when there are crimes committed, we have a lot of tools already in — and the Federal Title XVIII gives us a lot of — a lot of ways to go after criminals and bad actors in the A.I. space and other spaces. So, when the president talks about the fact that the Department of Justice and the FBI and HSI, they can go and arrest them, bad actors in this space, that’s what he means. And it’s true. And that’s what we’re doing.
RADDATZ: OK. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time, sir.
BLANCHE: Of course. Thank you very much, Martha.
[END Transcript]
I think most CTH readers understand my position on AI in general and the LLM (large language model) scouring of data specifically.
I do not like AI in language, research or writing when it is used to replace the human brain because eventually people will stop learning.
QUESTION: When AI moves from reading to writing the books, what exactly are you learning?
I recently read a great comment on the X platform about the issue:
“ChatGPT has now a big problem.
Researchers at Oxford and Cambridge exposed a massive threat to large language models.”
They call it “model collapse.”
Internet ecosystem is rapidly changing, and generative AI will soon contribute much of the text found online. This forces us to consider what happens to future iterations like gpt-n when they are trained on data scraped from the web that was already generated by an llm.
According to the research, indiscriminately using model-generated content in training causes “irreversible defects” in the resulting ai. the model loses the “tails of the original content distribution.” in other words, it begins to forget the creative, fringe, and unique nuances of actual human writing, collapsing into a repetitive echo chamber.
This isn’t just a chatgpt issue.. the researchers built theoretical intuition showing this collapse is ubiquitous across learned generative models, occurring in large language models as well as in variational autoencoders and gaussian mixture models.
Tech companies rely on scraping the internet for large-scale data to build smarter models. However, the paper warns that if we want to sustain the benefits of training on web data, model collapse must be taken seriously.
Ultimate takeaway? data collected from genuine human interactions is going to become increasingly valuable in a web filled with ai content.” {source}
This might be a problem that some AI research lab just recognized, studied and quantified. However, I can assure you I’ve been thinking about this specific issue for a long, long time.
Even when I set up the parameters for this rebuilt website following our deplatforming in 2020, I was constantly thinking about how critical information becomes when these AI systems begin expanding their “trust and safety” mission, and start defining the truth. Everyone needs to be really careful with AI on the issues of gathering information.
I know I mess up my words a lot, spell things incorrectly, and struggle at times to make my thoughts presentable in written format. However, I can guarantee you these are always my words, my thoughts, my effort to explain stuff and provide raw information. I do not like the idea of AI used under the guise of ‘efficiency’ or ‘enhancement’ when it comes to information and writing about research.
Even if we are the last ones out here in the “tails of the original content distribution” you can always guarantee it’s a human here at CTH with all the flaws of original content they don’t like to see shared.
“No. No, you won’t”
Posted in1st Amendment, AG Todd Blanche, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Tech, Dept Of Justice, Internet
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
De Oppresso Liber
A group of Americans united by our commitment to Freedom, Constitutional Governance, and Civic Duty.
Share the truth at whatever cost.
De Oppresso Liber
Uncensored updates on world events, economics, the environment and medicine
De Oppresso Liber
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Australia's Front Line | Since 2011
See what War is like and how it affects our Warriors
Nwo News, End Time, Deep State, World News, No Fake News
De Oppresso Liber
Politics | Talk | Opinion - Contact Info: stellasplace@wowway.com
Exposition and Encouragement
The Physician Wellness Movement and Illegitimate Authority: The Need for Revolt and Reconstruction
Real Estate Lending
