March 26, 2026

ANYBODY WHO CAN SCREAM OR KEEP REPEATING “I CAN’T BREATHE,” IS BREATHING:

Posted at 8:21 am by Stephen Green

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Here Comes Skynet.

“Our product is used, on occasion, to kill people,” Palantir CEO and cofounder Alex Karp told Axios in 2020, and this year, the company’s artificial intelligence software helps the U.S. military target, sort, locate, and strike Iranian military targets at scale.

“At Palantir we were built to give our warfighters… an unfair advantage,” Karp said at his company’s developer conference last week. “It was, ‘Yeah, we’re going to really F- our enemies.’ And I take great pride in that.”

And he should.

Within a week of President Donald Trump’s GO! order for Operation Epic Fury, the mainstream media was already abuzz with reports of “How Palantir and Anthropic AI helped the US hit 1,000 Iran targets in 24 hours.”

“The platform generated real-time targeting insights and prioritized strike locations,” the Money Control report said, but the reality is so much more impressive than just that.

Much, much more at the link.

Posted at 8:06 am by Stephen Green

NEXT!

Posted at 7:50 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

HMM: China AI labs face growing open-source dilemma.

It also underscores a new reality in Silicon Valley and beyond: startups and more established companies alike are increasingly ​eschewing pricey proprietary models from OpenAI and others for free or low-cost Chinese versions which are rapidly closing the performance gap despite Washington’s export ​curbs and sanctions. Rankings on OpenRouter, a platform that lets developers access and use different models, currently show 7 of the 10 most popular offerings are Chinese; companies from Airbnb (ABNB.O), opens new tab to German industrial giant Siemens (SIEGn.DE), opens new tab have made no secret about using models from the People’s Republic.

Chinese tools, however, now have a target on their ​back. On Monday, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission published a report, opens new tab warning that China’s open-source successes “reflect a more fundamental challenge to U.S. ​AI supremacy”. And last month, OpenAI and Anthropic separately accused Chinese AI labs like DeepSeek of improperly using U.S. models to improve their own; both have ‌called ⁠for tougher restrictions on U.S. tech.

There is a simple reason for Chinese companies to pivot away from open-source: Alibaba, Tencent, and rivals are under increasing pressure to show they can monetise their AI models and applications.

Well, “Dump, dominate, and monetize” has been China’s business model for three decades.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

FROM HOLLY CHISM:  Light Up the Night.

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

“Holly Chism is one of the great, unappreciated authors of our generation. Her work reminds me a lot of Clifford Simak’s.” – Sarah A Hoyt, author of Darkship Thieves

Posted at 7:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

DOMESTIC TERRORISM:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

NOT ANTIWAR, JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE:

Posted at 7:19 am by Stephen Green

THE ENEMY WITHIN:

Posted at 7:08 am by Glenn Reynolds

MUELLER WAS INDEED DIRTY, AS THE WHITEY BULGER AFFAIR INDICATES:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds