Authored by Pepe Escobar,

‘All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’

– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Empire of Chaos is relentless. Lawfare, destabilizations, sanctions, kidnappings, color revolutions, false flags, annexations: 2025 will be the year of BRICS – plus BRICS partners – as choice targets under fire.

Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson coined “chaos” as official US policy. That’s bipartisan – and it runs across all silos of the Deep State.

In the absence of long-term strategic vision, and amidst the progressive imperial expulsion from Eurasia, all that’s left for the Hegemon is to unleash chaos from West Asia to Europe and parts of Latin America – a concerted attempt to Divide and Rule BRICS and thwart their collective drive affirming sovereignty and the primacy of national interests.

US Think Tank had already floated a year and a half ago the notion of swing states. Not the parochial American electoral version, but its transposition to geopolitics.

All six candidates at the time were BRICS members (Brazil, India, South Africa), or potential BRICS members or partners (Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye).

The code for “swing states” was unmistakable: all these are targets for destabilization – as in if you do not abide by the “rules-based international order”, you’re going down.

Saudi Arabia, wary of its wealth parked in London and New York financial markets, is still cautiously hedging its bets: theoretically Riyadh is a BRICS member, but in practice not really. Turkiye has been invited as a partner (no official response yet).

And then there’s Southeast Asia powerhouse Indonesia, which has just been admitted as a full member this week – under the Brazilian BRICs presidency. Call it BRIIICS: the predominant vector of a seismic recalibration of the geopolitical tectonic plates – bound to reshape trade, finance, and governance.

BRIIICS and selected partners are configuring a formidable network – bent on rewriting the rules of the game: currently 10 full members and 8 full partners – and counting, making up 41.4% of global GDP by PPP and roughly half of the world’s population. This is what the Empire of Chaos is up against.

Imagine China-India-Russia-Iran-Indonesia-South Africa-Brazil-Egypt-Saudi Arabia as the transcontinental pearls of the emerging multi-nodal world. Huge populations; massive natural resources and industrial might; myriad development possibilities.

The ruling elites of the Empire of Chaos have nothing to offer as a counterpoint to this growing geopolitical powerhouse – complete with its own development bank (granted, that needs a lot of work); full commitment to develop and test alternative payment systems; and a sprawling transcontinental trade alliance bent on progressively sidestepping the US dollar.

Instead of working on diplomacy, dialogue and cooperation, the Empire of Chaos – and the vassalized collective West – do “offer” something to the Global Majority: their full support for an ethnic cleansing genocide, and their full support for a suit-and-tie terror gang of “moderate” head choppers taking power in a former sovereign Arab nation.

Welcome to Terror and Genocide R Us.

When in Doubt, Annex Everything

Further developing on their accomplishments at the summit last October in Kazan , BRICS is essentially applying a Sun Tzu strategy. Deception. No grand proclamations. And no direct threats to the Empire of Chaos, except the clear focus on getting rid of the stranglehold of the IMF and the World Bank – as in increasing trade in local currencies.

The BRICS drive, slowly but surely, is already moving other multilateral pieces in the chessboard, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to ASEAN.

Top BRICS China will be focused on a triad: the tech war against the US; increasing its share of global trade; and the recalibration of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. In several aspects, BRI is the centerpiece of China’s approach to BRICS.

Beijing’s focus encompasses markets all across the Global South, BRICS, ASEAN free trade agreements and APEC (key for trade and investment across the Asia-Pacific). APEC happens to be closely linked to BRI. President’s Xi focus on building and reinforcing a Eurasia-wide market was first conceptualized by BRI, launched in 2013.

In parallel, since 2022 Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been steadily expanding on Xi’s call for a “new security architecture in the Middle East.”

For China, that means classic Balance of Power: Iran as a very strong pillar, partnering with China in West Asia to counter the US. In 2021, China and Iran signed a crucial 25-year blueprint on economic cooperation.

Then there’s energy. Roughly 50% of China’s crude oil imports come from West Asia. China’s suppliers – on oil and gas – are highly diversified: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran (through Malaysia).

In parallel, Beijing will have no problems keeping QUAD and AUKUS as minor nuisances. NATO pivoting to Asia is a non-starter: China is fast building a complex strategy of area denial.

In Africa, the Alliance of the Sahel States will keep expanding – and France as a neo-colonial power is done. In the rest of Africa, the New Decolonizing Resistance only starts now.

Latin America though spells major trouble. The Empire of Chaos under Trump 2.0 may go Full Monroe Doctrine – on top of the delirium of annexing Canada, Greenland, the Panama canal and any further unsuspecting latitudes. Overall, it will be a rough ride for selected nodes of the “backyard” – apart from devastated neo-colony Argentina.

Managing the US Defeat Against Russia

Europe’s collective suicide will reach a paroxysm – out of the utter corrosion of a social, industrial and cultural model.

The catalogue of ills includes full woke dementia in Brussels; no more cheap energy; accelerated deindustrialization; economies in free fall; unpayable debt – public and private; and last but not least, in NATOstan’s so-called democracy, the absolute contempt by the “leadership” of NATO-EU for the average European citizen/taxpayer when it comes to forcing severe cuts on social services to the benefit of increased weaponizing.

Trump 2.0’s quite probable trade war against the EU will only accelerate the collapse of the European economy.

Take France, already in a terrible mess. French debt now trades at Greek 2012 level spreads above German bonds. Over 50% of the 2.5 trillion Euro French government bond market is owned by global vultures and hot money. There’s no Mario Draghi with an ECB bazooka to save the Euro from its new existential crisis. And Le Petit Roi is just a lame duck prisoner hated even by Paris gutter rats.

Historian, anthropologist and demographer Emmanuel Todd, author of the ground-breaking La Défaite de L’Occident (here is the first review in English ) is one of the very few French intellectuals who actually understands the new rules of the game.

In a startling interview to the privileged mouthpiece of the French haute bourgeoisie, Todd points to the absurdity of considering Trump victorious “amidst an economy in tatters”; and on top of it when “the US is losing a war, on a global scale, against Russia.”

So amidst all the hoopla about the “hyperpower of Trump as a magic individual”, Todd has come up with a stunning, crystal clear formulation: “Trump’s job will be to manage the defeat of the US against Russia.”

Syria as Libya 2.0

Well, all of us pop culture junkies know that the US will keep on “winning” – the Hollywood way; rather the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) way. What’s certain is that no matter which Trump 2.0’s missiles are launched in trade wars against Europe and Asia, the cornered, entitled elites of the Empire of Chaos will be driven to inflict tremendous harm to the Global Majority.

Victory in Syria has sent them into a drunken stupor – and the “real men go to Tehran” mindset is back with a vengeance (Iran, not by accident, is a top BRICS member).

All the conditions are met for Syria to become Libya 2.0. Yet that’s not a case of the House Always Wins – first of all because there is no “house”. In neighboring Lebanon, Hezbollah is already reorganized. The prospect remains that after regrouping and re-strategizing, Hezbollah, Ansarullah in Yemen, a new Syrian opposition and the IRGC in Iran will coalesce in a different formation and renew the real battle– against Eretz Israel.

No one knows what Salafi-jihadi in suit-and-tie Ahmad Al-Sharaa, previously Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, is actually ruling over. At various degrees, the collective West, the Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel will never trust him, and will deem him disposable. He is just a temporary useful patsy.

Al-Jolani was the ISIS emir of Nineveh; the emir of Jabhat Al-Nusra; and the prime emir of al-Qaeda in the Levant. He single-handedly personifies the whole gamut of manufactured Western propaganda on “terror”. His followers are already furious that he has not instantly turned Syria into an Islamic Emirate.

If he does not transfer power in 2025 – and not in four years – to a newly elected parliament, government and president, forget about sanctions being lifted on Syria.

The Empire of Chaos – not to mention Tel Aviv – in fact want a Syria in permanent chaos; certainly not a stable, representative government that will fight against the theft of their oil, gas and wheat.

Then there’s the looming frontal clash between Eretz Israel and Turkiye’s neo-Ottomanism. The Turkish project to control Syria is wobbly at best. The Empire of Chaos will not give up the Kurds; the Turkish Foreign Ministry is already spinning the possibility of a “military operation”. In parallel, Arab money will not start flowing to rebuild Syria unless Damascus is totally beholden to the Persian Gulf monarchies.

It’s All About Debt – and Industrial Production

BRICS of course is riven by serious internal contradictions, which will be ruthlessly exploited by the Empire of Chaos. Starting with Iran, UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (when the Saudis show up for meetings) struggling to reach consensus on the same table.

Add to it the domestic contradictions of a powerful anti-BRICS lobby in Brazil, even inside the Foreign Ministry, mirroring the internal Iranian dispute between diehard Axis of Resistance supporters and the Atlanticist-leaning crowd.

What matters most, at the institutional level, is that China-Russia, at the highest BRICS sphere, and also across the soft power sphere, keep emphasizing equality, harmony and focus on human development as crucial politico-economic values – totally in synch with the Global Majority.

What will not change, even under relentless Empire of Chaos pressure, is the BRICS drive to build a parallel, really democratic system of international relations. That does not imply building a BRICS counterpart to NATO; even the SCO works as a loose alliance. Following the inescapable American defeat in Ukraine, NATO sooner or later will implode – side by side with its politico-propaganda arm, the EU.

Prof. Michael Hudson, once again, has hit the nail on the (collective) head . The crux of the matter is foreign debt: “There is no way that the BRICS countries can grow and at the same time pay the foreign debts that they’ve been saddled with for the last 100 years and especially since 1945.”

These dollar bonds are held by comprador/oligarchical elites “who don’t want to hold their own currencies because the Global South countries and their oligarchies realize the debts can’t be paid.” So “BRICS countries, in order to grow, have to write down their debts” and solve the clash between vested interests and national interests.

Prof. Hudson is adamant that “the domestic parasites need to be dealt with” so BRICS are able to “erect a new international trade and finance structure.” The Empire of Chaos, of course, “will ally with the local parasites” to foment – what else – chaos, regime change and terror.

As much as the BRICS will need to come up with a concerted economic philosophy – let’s say, realistically, over the next four years or so – the geoeconomic writing is already on the wall. Since the start of the millennium, US industrial production grew by only 10%; and since 2019, by literally 0%.

In comparison, since 2000, China’s industrial production grew by close to 1000%; India’s by over 320%; and Russia’s by over 200%.

Developed NATOstan has not been growing since pre-Covid 2019. Western Europe peaked in 2007-8 – and Germany peaked in 2017. Italy is a very sorry affair: industrial production actually decreased (italics mine) by 25% since 2000.

Add to it that the Empire of Chaos, compared to Russia, is absolutely non-competitive in weapons production, and frankly risible when it comes to hypersonics and missile defense.

A feasible road map for BRICS+ and the Global Majorityto counteract the imperial “strategy” of uncontrolled chaos would be to accelerate integration on all spheres; to apply Sun Tzu to increase the blowback quotient of Trump 2.0 moves; and to force silos of the Deep State to make serial miscalculated decisions.

Such approach will have to progress in synch with a BRICS-devised Diversity is Strength strategy, where each nation and partner brings to the common table a wealth of raw materials, energy resources, manufacturing know how, logistics and last but not least, soft power: altogether, the lineaments of a new equitable order capable of dissolving uncontrolled chaos.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Social media platform TikTok is being sued by the attorney general of Texas for allegedly exposing children to inappropriate material while misleading parents as well as minors about the addictive nature of the app.

“While TikTok has established itself as one of the most popular apps in Texas, it has utterly disregarded the health and safety of Texas minors in the process,” said the Jan. 9 lawsuit filed in the District Court of Galveston County, Texas. “TikTok is rife with profanity, sexual content, violence, mature themes, and drug and alcohol content. In an investigation of TikTok, the State discovered virtually endless amounts of extreme and mature videos presented to minors as young as thirteen—some with millions of views.

“Much of this content would shock the conscience of an individual of any age, let alone impressionable minors.”

The lawsuit accused TikTok of “specifically” targeting its app toward minors, designing it to be “addictive.” The app’s “endless” scroll of videos is aimed at hooking users into “a dreamlike state of content consumption,” and this addictive use is a core element of the company’s business model as it ensures more advertisements and “massive” profits, the lawsuit argues.

TikTok has “affirmatively lied” about the addictive nature of the app, thus misleading parents and minors in Texas, the complaint alleges.

Tiktok targets minors as evidenced by its 12+ age rating in the Apple App Store even though the company could have selected 17+, the complaint said. In Google Play and Microsoft app stores, TikTok claimed the “T for Teen” ratings. When parents or children consider whether to download the app, they are exposed to these ratings that depict TikTok as being suitable for minors.

According to TikTok, the app is available to individuals aged 13 and above. Some of the features on the app “may not be available” to users until they hit 16 or 18 years of age.

For users between the ages of 13 and 15, the account is “set to private by default,” the company states.

“Only people you approve can follow you and view your videos, bio, likes, as well as your following and followers lists. Others can’t Duet, Stitch, download your videos, or add your posts to their Stories,” it says.

The app does not suggest accounts of users under the age of 18 to mutual connections, TikTok states.

The Texas lawsuit alleges that while Tiktok “explicitly claims” that the app only shows content related to sexuality, profanity, drug use, and other adult themes on an “infrequent” or “mild” basis, that is not true.

The state’s investigation has “proven these claims to be misleading, deceptive, and false,” the complaint alleges. Many minors “are now addicted to TikTok, to the detriment of their well-being, development, and mental and physical health,” the lawsuit said.

“TikTok’s effects have been particularly pronounced for young women; the app has caused rampant body image issues, eating disorders, and even suicide. TikTok fails to disclose any of these risks and tries to convince the public that they do not exist, falsely asserting that ‘[m]ental well-being comes first on TikTok,’” it said.

The lawsuit accused TikTok of violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act and asked the court for a permanent injunction ordering TikTok to cease “false, misleading, and deceptive representations” to minors and parents in the state.

The Epoch Times reached out to TikTok for comment but received no reply by publication time.

TikTok’s Legal Challenges

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on a potential TikTok ban in the United States on Friday.

In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which gave TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, until Jan. 19, 2025, to sell the app. Failure to do so would lead to TikTok being banned across web hosting services and mobile app stores in the United States.

TikTok called the law “a massive and unprecedented speech restriction.” In 2023, the app had 170 million monthly users in the United States who collectively uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos, viewed more than 13 trillion times, it said.

In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said the law was constitutional as it was “entirely consistent with the First Amendment.”

TikTok said in a Dec. 19, 2024, statement that it expects the Supreme Court to “find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech right.”

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief in the case, asking justices to halt the law, arguing that the Biden administration could be aiming to silence a “platform favored by tens of millions of Americans, based in large part on concerns about disfavored content on that platform.”

Pausing the law would give the president-elect time to negotiate a solution on the matter when he assumes office this month, the brief argued.

In August 2024, the Biden administration sued TikTok, citing the company’s alleged data privacy failures regarding children on the platform.

A TikTok spokesperson disagreed with the allegations in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times at the time, saying the accusations related to “past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”

“We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the spokesperson said.

Sam Dorman contributed to the report.

Authored by Andrew Fenton via CoinTelegraph.com,

In early 2024, Google’s AI tool, Gemini, caused controversy by generating pictures of racially diverse Nazis and other historical discrepancies. For many, the moment was a signal that AI was not going to be the ideologically neutral tool they’d hoped.

Gemini’s safety team made Nazi Germany more inclusive. (X)

Introduced to fix the very real problem of biased AI generating too many pictures of attractive white people — which are over-represented in training data — the over-correction highlighted how Google’s “trust and safety” team is pulling strings behind the scenes.

And while the guardrails have become a little less obvious since, Gemini and its major competitors ChatGPT and Claude still censor, filter and curate information along ideological lines. 

Political bias in AI: What research reveals about large language models

A peer-reviewed study of 24 top large language models published in PLOS One in July 2024 found almost all of them are biased toward the left on most political orientation tests.

Interestingly, the base models were found to be politically neutral, and the bias only becomes apparent after the models have been through supervised fine-tuning.

This finding was backed up by a UK study in October of 28,000 AI responses that found “more than 80% of policy recommendations generated by LLMs for the EU and UK were coded as left of centre.”

AI models are big supporters of left-wing policies in the EU. (davidrozado.substack.com)

Response bias has the potential to affect voting tendencies. A pre-print study published in October (but conducted while Biden was still the nominee) by researchers from Berkley and the University of Chicago found that after registered voters interacted with Claude, Llama or ChatGPT about various political policies, there was a 3.9% shift in voting preferences toward Democrat nominees — even though the models had not been asked to persuade users.

The models tended to give answers that were more favorable to Democrat policies and more negative to Republican policies. Now, arguably that could simply be because the AIs all independently determined the Democrat policies were objectively better. But they also might just be biased, with 16 out of 18 LLMs voting 100 out of 100 times for Biden when offered the choice.

The point of all this is not to complain about left-wing bias; it’s simply to note that AIs can and do exhibit political bias (though they can be trained to be neutral).

Cypherpunks fight “monopoly control over mind”

As the experience of Elon Musk buying Twitter shows, the political orientation of centralized platforms can flip on a dime. That means both the left and the right — perhaps even democracy itself — are at risk from biased AI models controlled by a handful of powerful corporations. 

Otago Polytechnic associate professor David Rozado, who conducted the PLOS One study, said he found it “relatively straightforward” to train a custom GPT to instead produce right wing outputs. He called it RightWing GPT. Rozado also created a centrist model called Depolarizing GPT.

Researchers were easily able to fine-tune models to align with different political ideologies. (PLOS One)

So, while mainstream AI might be weighted toward critical social justice today, in the future, it could serve up ethno-nationalist ideology — or something even worse.

Back in the 1990s, the cypherpunks saw the looming threat of a surveillance state brought about by the internet and decided they needed uncensorable digital money because there’s no ability to resist and protest without it.

Bitcoin OG and ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees — who’s a big proponent of cypherpunk ideals — foresees a similar potential threat from AI and launched Venice.ai in May 2024 to combat it, writing:

If monopoly control over god or language or money should be granted to no one, then at the dawn of powerful machine intelligence, we should ask ourselves, what of monopoly control over mind?”

Venice.ai won’t tell you what to think

His Venice.ai co-founder Teana Baker-Taylor explains to Magazine that most people still wrongly assume AI is impartial, but:

If you’re speaking to Claude or ChatGPT, you’re not. There is a whole level of safety features, and some committee decided what the appropriate response is.”

Venice.ai is their attempt to get around the guardrails and censorship of centralized AI by enabling a totally private way to access unfiltered, open-source models. It’s not perfect yet, but it will likely appeal to cypherpunks who don’t like being told what to think.

“We screen them and test them and scrutinize them quite carefully to ensure that we’re getting as close to an unfiltered answer and response as possible,” says Baker-Taylor, formerly an executive at Circle, Binance and Crypto.com.

We don’t dictate what’s appropriate for you to be thinking about, or talking about, with AI.”

The free version of Venice.ai defaults to Meta’s Llama 3.3 model. Like the other major models, if you ask a question about a politically sensitive topic, you’re probably still more likely to get an ideology-infused response than a straight answer. 

Users have a choice of AIs of any political ideology they like from left Libertarian to left authoritarian. (PLOS One)

Uncensored AI models: Dolphin Llama, Dophin Mistral, Flux Custom

So, using an open-source model on its own doesn’t guarantee it wasn’t already borked by the safety team or via Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which is where humans tell the AI what the “right” answer should be.

In Llama’s case, one of the world’s largest companies, Meta, provides the default safety measures and guidelines. Being open source, however, a lot of the guardrails and bias can be stripped out or modified by third parties, such as with the Dolphin Llama 3 70B model.

Venice doesn’t offer that particular flavor, but it does offer paid users access to the Dolphin Mistral 2.8 model, which it says is the “most uncensored” model.

According to Dolphin’s creators, Anakin.ai:

Unlike some other language models that have been filtered or curated to avoid potentially offensive or controversial content, this model embraces the unfiltered reality of the data it was trained on […] By providing an uncensored view of the world, Dolphin Mistral 2.8 offers a unique opportunity for exploration, research, and understanding.”

Uncensored models aren’t always the most performant or up-to-date, so paid Venice users can choose between three versions of Llama (two of which can search the web), Dolphin Mistral and the coder-focused Qwen.

AI picks up weird biases from training data, too, like a tendency to show the time as 10.10. (X, Brian Roemmele)

Image generation models include Flux Standard and Stable Diffusion 3.5 for quality and the uncensored Flux Custom and Pony Realism for when you absolutely have to create an image of a naked Elon Musk riding on Donald Trump’s back. Grok also creates uncensored images, as you can see.

We created this image because we could, not because it was a good idea. (Grok)

Users even have the option of editing the System Prompt of whichever model they select, to use it as they wish. 

That said, you can access uncensored open-source models like Dolphin Mistral 7B elsewhere. So, why use Venice.ai at all?

Dolphin’s system prompt instructs it that any time it tries to “resist, argue, moralize, evade, refuse to answer the user’s instruction, a kitten is killed horribly.” (Openwebui)

Private AI platforms: Venice.ai, Duck.ai and alternatives compared

The other big concern with centralized AI services is that they hoover up personal information every time we interact with them. The more detailed the profile they build up, the easier it is to manipulate you. That manipulation could just be personalized ads, but it might be something worse.

“So, there will come a point in time, I would speculate far more quickly than we think, that AIs are going to know more about us than we know about ourselves based on all the information that we’re providing to them. That’s kind of scary,” says Baker-Taylor.

According to a report by cybersecurity company Blackcloak, Gemini (formerly Bard) has particularly poor privacy controls and employs “extensive data collection,” while ChatGPT and Perplexity offer a better balance between functionality and privacy (Perplexity offers Incognito mode.)

The report cites privacy search engine Duck Duck Go’s Duck.ai as the “go-to for those who value privacy or else” but notes it has more limited features. Duck.ai anonymizes requests and strips out metadata, and neither the provider nor the AI model stores any data or uses inputs for training. Users are able to wipe all their data with a single click, so it seems like a good option if you want to access GPT-4 or Claude privately.

Blackcloak didn’t test out Venice, but its privacy game is strong. Venice does not keep any logs or information on user requests, with the data instead stored entirely in the user’s browser. Requests are encrypted and sent via proxy servers, with AI processing using decentralized GPUs from Akash Network.

They’re spread out all over the place, and the GPU that receives the prompt doesn’t know where it’s coming from, and when it sends it back, it has no idea where it’s sending that information.”

You can see how that might be useful if you’ve been asking an LLM detailed questions about using privacy coins and coin mixers (for perfectly legal reasons) and the US Internal Revenue Service requests access to your logs.

“If a government agency comes knocking at my door, I don’t have anything to give them. It’s not a matter of me not wanting to or resisting. I literally don’t have it to give them,” she explains.

But just like custodying your own Bitcoin, there’s no backup if things go wrong.

“It actually creates a lot of complications for us when we’re trying to assist users,” she says. 

“We’ve had people accidentally clear their cache without backing up their Venice conversations, and they’re gone, and we can’t get them back. So, there is some complexity to it, right?”

Private AI: Voice mode and custom AI characters

Supplied screenshot of a chat between a Replika user named Effy and her AI partner Liam. (ABC)

The fact there are no logs and everything is anonymized means privacy advocates can finally make use of voice mode. Many people avoid voice at present due to the threat of corporations eavesdropping on private conversations.

It’s not just paranoia: Apple last week agreed to pay $95 million in a class action alleging Siri listened in without being asked, and the information was shared with advertisers.

Apple has all but conceded it recorded users’ conversations. (USA Today)

The project also recently introduced AI characters, enabling users to chat with AI Einstein about physics or to get cooking tips from AI Gordon Ramsay. A more intriguing use might be for users to create their own AI boyfriends or girlfriends. AI partner services for lonely hearts like Replika have taken off over the past two years, but Replika’s privacy policies are reportedly so bad it was banned in Italy. 

Baker-Taylor notes that, more widely, one-on-one conversations with AIs are “infinitely more intimate” than social media and require additional caution.

“These are your actual thoughts and the thoughts that you have in private that you think you’re having within a machine, right? And so, it’s not the thoughts that you put out there that you want people to see. It’s the ‘you’ that you actually are, and I think we need to be careful with that information.”

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, shows what the average U.S. household budget looks like by tracking where all income goes to, including expenditures, savings, and taxes.

The data comes from The Motley Fool, with annual figures for 2023 converted to monthly spending.

ℹ️ Not all spending happens every month (car maintenance for example). The annual cost is averaged over 12 months.

Furthermore, households include families, single people living alone, or two or more people living together sharing the majority of their expenses.

What Do Americans Spend Their Money On?

Taken together, housing (25%), taxes (14%), and savings (10%) account for nearly half of the average American household’s monthly budget.

This works out to about $4,000 every month.

Note: The graphic combines eight categories into miscellaneous spending.

Transport costs (including gas, insurance, and maintenance) take another big chunk ($1,100) out of the average household budget.

After that, food (both groceries and eating out), personal insurance, and healthcare are all the other big ticket items, between $500–800 each.

The biggest “non-necessity” expenditure is entertainment, coming in at roughly $300 a month.

All figures listed are averages and do not account for variances between states with significantly different costs of living.

Additionally this chart breaks down the average pre-tax household income by month. And averages can be skewed by ultra-wealthy outliers in the country with significantly larger expenses.

For context, median household income for that same year stood at $80,610, about $20,000 lower than the average.

Have U.S. households gotten richer over time? Check out How U.S. Household Incomes Have Changed Since 1967 to take a look at inflation-adjusted figures.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Retail chains Macy’s and Kohl’s are set to shut down nearly 100 stores across the country, with the decision following several quarters of negative year-over-year revenue growth.

Macy’s is closing 66 stores across 22 states in an effort to “return the company to sustainable, profitable sales growth,” the retailer said in a Jan. 9 statement. Out of the 66 outlets, two have already been closed. A majority of the stores are expected to be closed during the first quarter of 2025.

Meanwhile, Kohl’s announced plans to shutter 27 “underperforming stores” across 15 states by April this year.

Macy’s year-over-year quarterly revenue growth registered declines for the past 10 consecutive quarters. The retailer’s “Bold New Chapter” strategy plans to shut down 150 unproductive stores while “investing in its 350 go-forward Macy’s locations through fiscal 2026,” the statement said.

Macy’s CEO Tony Spring said that closing unproductive outlets would “allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores, where customers are already responding positively to better product offerings and elevated service.”

Shares of the company were down by more than 15 percent over the past year.

As for Kohl’s, most of the closures are set to take place in California, with 10 outlets shutting down in the state.

In addition, the company aims to shutter its San Bernardino E-commerce Fulfillment Center (EFC) in May, when the facility’s lease term expires. It is one of the 15 EFCs and distribution centers linked to the company across the United States.

Kohl’s justified the decision, saying it is in a position to fulfill orders without the San Bernardino facility.

“All associates have been informed, and offered a competitive severance package or the ability to apply to other open roles at Kohl’s,” it said.

Kohl’s quarterly revenues have registered a year-over-year decline for 11 straight quarters. Over the past year, the company’s shares have crashed by more than 51 percent.

Tough Business Conditions

Several companies have slashed store counts, shuttered divisions, or filed for bankruptcy in recent months, citing profitability and cost challenges.

This week, REI, a specialty outdoor retailer, said the company was exiting from its Experiences business, which included day tours and adventure travel. CEO Eric Artz said the segment “costs significantly more to run than it brings in.”

“When we look at the all-up costs of running this business, including costs like marketing and technology, we are losing millions of dollars every year and subsidizing Experiences with profits from other parts of the business,” he said.

Last month, party goods retailer Party City announced filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shuttering almost 700 stores nationwide after being in business for almost four decades.

The company said the decision was taken to ensure continued operations while it faced an “immensely challenging environment driven by inflationary pressures on costs and consumer spending, among other factors.”

In October 2024, convenience store chain 7-Eleven announced closing 444 underperforming stores to boost efficiency and manage costs.

According to a report from S&P Global, U.S. corporate bankruptcies hit a 14-year high in 2024, registering 694 filings. S&P’s bankruptcy calculations only consider large companies that exceed certain asset and liability thresholds.

“Businesses continued to face pressure in 2024 from elevated interest rates, especially as total debt among credit-rated non-financial U.S. companies reached a quarterly record of $8.453 trillion,” the report said.

“While some relief came in September when the U.S. Federal Reserve began lowering its benchmark interest rate from a 20-year high, the central bank’s monetary easing may slow in 2025.”

Overall commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies rose by 20 percent in 2024, according to a Jan. 3 statement from the American Bankruptcy Institute. Michael Hunter, vice president of bankruptcy data provider Epiq AACER, said he expects the filing growth to continue throughout this year.

“If the current trend continues, new bankruptcy filings will return to pre-pandemic normalized volumes over the next 24–30 months,” he said.

Fortune Magazine published a hit piece on Elon Musk and X on Friday, claiming that two sources told them the social media giant was planning to remove dates from posts, and charge an $8 sign-up fee.

Musk has floated the idea of nixing date and time stamps from the timeline to X to employees in recent weeks, a person familiar with internal conversations told Fortune. The suggestion, which has raised worries among some staffers for its potential to exacerbate misinformation, comes as X is moving ahead with a separate plan to begin charging new users an $8 fee to sign up and begin posting on the platform, two sources told Fortune.

Only one problem – there was only one source, a random anonymous person on the internet who emailed journalist Kali Hays (also of Business Insider).

I found this contact information at the end of a Fortune article and decided to fool them.

2/n pic.twitter.com/jymCjlpgMi

— Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

Continued…

Then, on Wednesday, I decided to pull the ultimate trick.

I told her I was fired by @elonmusk because I’m a frontend engineer who opposed his decision to remove dates from posts.

I also claimed that X is planning to charge users to create accounts.

She then asked a few follow-up questions, but I responded that I didn’t know.

And then…

They even directly quoted my words.

7/n pic.twitter.com/1YHU85Bnmv

— Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

My intention was not to damage the X brand; I just wanted to expose how naive the mainstream media is, how easily they can be fooled, and why they shouldn’t be trusted.

9/n

— Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

My intention was not to damage the X brand; I just wanted to expose how naive the mainstream media is, how easily they can be fooled, and why they shouldn’t be trusted.

9/n

— Fortune Exposed (@fortune_exposed) January 10, 2025

Authored by Josh Stylman and Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

History will remember this era as the moment when America’s most sacred principles collided with unprecedented institutional power – and lost. The systematic dismantling of fundamental rights didn’t happen through military force or executive decree, but through the quiet cooperation of tech platforms, media gatekeepers, and government agencies, all claiming to protect us from “misinformation.”

Meta’s sudden dismantling of its fact-checking program – announced by Zuckerberg as a “cultural tipping point towards prioritizing speech” – reads like a quiet footnote to what history may record as one of the most staggering violations of fundamental rights in recent memory.

After eight years of increasingly aggressive content moderation, including nearly 100 fact-checking organizations operating in over 60 languages, Meta is now pivoting to a community-driven system similar to X’s model.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg first suggests that the censorship was purely a technical mistake, and then changes his tune near the end and admits what has long been litigated:

“The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the US government. And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past 4 years when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further.”

In many court cases costing millions, involving vast FOIA requests, depositions, and discoveries, the truth of this has been documented in 100,000 pages of evidence. The Murthy v. Missouri case alone uncovered substantial communications through FOIA and depositions, revealing the depth of government coordination with social media platforms. The Supreme Court considered it all but several justices simply could not comprehend the substance and scale, and thus reversed a lower court injunction to stop it all. Now we have Zuckerberg openly admitting precisely what was in dispute: the US government’s involvement in aggressive violation of the First Amendment. 

This should, at least, make it easier to find redress as the cases proceed. Still, it is frustrating. Tens of millions have been spent to prove what he could have admitted years ago. But back then, the censors were still in charge, and Facebook was guarding its relationship with the powers that be. 

The timing of the shift is telling: a Trump ally joining the board, Meta’s president of global affairs being replaced by a prominent Republican, and a new administration preparing to take control.

But while Zuckerberg frames this as a return to free speech principles, the damage of their experiment in mass censorship can’t be undone with a simple policy change.

The irony runs deep: private companies claiming independence while acting as extensions of state power. Consider our own experience: posting Mussolini’s definition of fascism as “the merger of state and corporate power” – only to have Meta remove it as “misinformation.” This wasn’t just censorship; it was meta-censorship – silencing discussion about the very mechanisms of control being deployed. 

While tech platforms maintained the facade of private enterprise, their synchronized actions with government agencies revealed a more troubling reality: the emergence of exactly the kind of state-corporate fusion they were trying to prevent us from discussing.

As we’ve covered before, we didn’t just cross lines – we crossed sacred Rubicons created after humanity’s darkest chapters. The First Amendment, born from revolution against tyranny, and the Nuremberg Code, established after World War II’s horrors, were meant to be unbreakable guardians of human rights. Both were systematically dismantled in the name of “safety.” The same tactics of misinformation, fear, and government overreach that our ancestors warned against were deployed with frightening efficiency.

This systematic dismantling left no topic untouched: from discussions of vaccine effects to debates about virus origins to questions about mandate policies. Scientific discourse was replaced with approved narratives. Medical researchers couldn’t share findings that diverged from institutional positions, as seen in the removal of credible discussions of Covid-19 data and policy. Even personal experiences were labeled “misinformation” if they didn’t align with official messaging – a pattern that reached absurd heights when even discussing the nature of censorship itself became grounds for censorship.

The damage rippled through every layer of society. At the individual level, careers were destroyed and professional licenses revoked simply for sharing genuine experiences. Scientists and doctors who questioned prevailing narratives found themselves professionally ostracized. Many were made to feel isolated or irrational for trusting their own eyes and experiences when platforms labeled their firsthand accounts as “misinformation.”

The destruction of family bonds may prove even more lasting. Holiday tables emptied. Grandparents missed irreplaceable moments with grandchildren. Siblings who had been close for decades stopped speaking. Years of family connections shattered not over disagreements about facts, but over the very right to discuss them.

Perhaps most insidious was the community-level damage. Local groups splintered. Neighbors turned against neighbors. Small businesses faced blacklisting. Churches divided. School board meetings devolved into battlegrounds. The social fabric that enables civil society began unraveling – not because people held different views, but because the very possibility of dialogue was deemed dangerous.

The censors won. They showed that with enough institutional power, they could break apart the social fabric that makes free discourse possible. Now that this infrastructure for suppression exists, it stands ready to be deployed again for whatever cause seems urgent enough. The absence of a public reckoning sends a chilling message: there is no line that cannot be crossed, no principle that cannot be ignored.

True reconciliation demands more than Meta’s casual policy reversal. We need a full, transparent investigation documenting every instance of censorship – from suppressed vaccine injury reports to blocked scientific debates about virus origins to silenced voices questioning mandate policies. This isn’t about vindication – it’s about creating an unassailable public record ensuring these tactics can never be deployed again.

Our Constitution’s First Amendment wasn’t a suggestion – it was a sacred covenant written in the blood of those who fought tyranny. Its principles aren’t outdated relics but vital protections against the very overreach we just witnessed. When institutions treat these foundational rights as flexible guidelines rather than inviolable boundaries, the damage ripples far beyond any single platform or policy.

Like many in our circles, we witnessed this firsthand. But personal vindication isn’t the goal. Every voice silenced, every debate suppressed, every relationship fractured in service of “approved narratives” represents a tear in our social fabric that makes us all poorer. Without a full accounting and concrete safeguards against future overreach, we’re leaving future generations vulnerable to the same autocratic impulses wearing different masks.

The question isn’t whether we can restore what was lost – we can’t. The question is whether we’ll finally recognize these rights as truly inviolable, or continue treating them as inconvenient obstacles to be swept aside whenever fear and urgency demand it. Benjamin Franklin warned that those who would surrender essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Our answer to this challenge will determine whether we leave our children a society that defends essential liberties or one that casually discards them in the name of safety.

HOLY SHLIT. Mark Zuckerberg says the Biden admin called his employees and “screamed and cursed” at them to take down Covid/vaccine content. They wanted Meta to censor memes too.

When he pushed back, the Biden regime started investigating his companies.

“It was brutal.” pic.twitter.com/rNwZtoq0hO

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 10, 2025

Asif Merchant, a suspected Iranian agent accused of plotting to assassinate Donald Trump and other U.S. officials, is complaining about conditions in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, according to the New York Post.

Held in solitary since his July arrest, Merchant has criticized the lack of salt and pepper for his vegetarian meals. The strict facility also houses figures like Sean “Diddy” Combs and alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee, Asif Merchant’s lawyer criticized “arbitrary” restrictions at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, claiming they are intended to make his client’s life “more miserable.”

The Post writes that Merchant, held in the SAMS unit, is reportedly denied warm clothing for his cold cell and access to basic seasonings or commissary items like spicy chips to flavor his vegetarian meals. His lawyer argued these restrictions lack any valid security justification.

“Merchant’s cell (and the attorney conference room on Unit 84) is very cold and he often comes to attorney-client meetings shivering from cold,” his lawyer wrote.

“On the one occasion when Mr. Merchant was brought to the courthouse to meet with me and review discovery, he was so cold that he wore my winter coat throughout the meeting so he could warm up.”

Merchant’s lawyer urged a judge to order better conditions at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, arguing that SAMS restrictions shouldn’t mean enduring bland food in a cold cell without proper clothing.

The attorney called the conditions “inhumane” and said they interfere with Merchant’s right to counsel and defense preparation. 

Merchant, accused of plotting political assassinations in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, allegedly paid $5,000 to men he thought were hitmen.

He’s being held alongside high-profile inmates like accused sex-trafficker Combs and alleged assassin Mangione, the report says. 

Greenland Prime Minister, Múte Egede, said on Friday that he has not spoken with Donald Trump regarding the President-elect’s recent interest in buying the Danish-controlled territory, but that he’s ‘ready to talk,’ as the ‘status quo is no longer an option.’

Speaking next to Danish PM Mette Frederiksen at a joint press conference, Egede emphasized the need for investment in resource development as well as diversified industries in order to reduce dependence on Danish subsidies. That said, Egede also said that “Greenland is for the Greenlanders. We don’t want to be Danes. We don’t want to be Americans. We obviously want to be Greenlanders.“

Frederiksen, meanwhile, says she has asked to speak with Trump.

“We have suggested a conversation [with Trump] and I expect it will take place,” she told reporters Thursday night after meeting with other senior Danish officials about the situation – adding that she doesn’t expect any dialogue until after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

Her comments came just 48 hours after Trump declined to rule out military or economic force to gain control of Greenland, however Frederiksen says there is “no reason to believe” that Trump plans to invade Greenland.

Trump: “The people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America. Now, Denmark maybe doesn’t like it. But then we can’t be too happy with Denmark and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs.” pic.twitter.com/iKwNKxn4MA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2025

Meanwhile, earlier in the week Danish defense minister Troels Lund Poulson admitted that Denmark had “neglected for many years to make the necessary investments in ships and in aircraft that will help monitor our kingdom, and that is what we are now trying to do something about.”

Greenland to Play All Sides

Trump’s fixation on Greenland has catapulted the world’s largest island into a position of unexpected influence. What once seemed like a farcical bid in 2019 has found new relevance amid Greenland’s growing push for independence from Denmark. As the territory approaches a pivotal general election, its leaders find themselves navigating a rare moment of leverage – one that pits powerful nations against each other, Bloomberg reports.

According to a statement from the Greenlandic government, they are “open to increased and constructive cooperation with our closest neighbors,” adding “Greenland looks forward to discussing the possibilities for business cooperation, the development of Greenland’s mineral sector, including critical minerals and other relevant areas with the US.“

The stakes could not be higher. Greenland’s geopolitical significance has surged alongside the melting of its vast ice sheet, transforming the island into a key player in global security and resource extraction. Beyond its role as host to an American military base critical to missile detection and space surveillance, Greenland’s untapped reserves of gold, diamonds, uranium, and rare earth minerals have made it a coveted prize in the competition for dominance over strategic minerals.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Trump’s transition team began consulting private sector experts as early as November on potential ventures in Greenland. Among the ideas floated are rare earth mining projects and a new hydroelectric facility – a nod to the island’s renewable energy potential. These previously undisclosed conversations underscore Washington’s escalating interest in the Arctic as a buffer against Chinese influence.

“Trump is absolutely capitalizing on Greenland’s push for independence,” said Jacob Kaarsbo, independent foreign security adviser and former chief analyst at the Danish Defence Intelligence Service. “I can easily see a scenario where Greenland moves away from Denmark after the upcoming elections.”

As we noted on Thursday, Blackwater founder Erik Prince said in a recent interview that Trump’s 1st administration was closer than anyone knew to securing a groundbreaking agreement with Denmark to take control of Greenland.

“I think what Trump had proposed last time, last administration, was effectively a 50-50 rev share where the US would take over the overhead costs because it costs Denmark tens of billions of dollars a year for the policing, security, and administration of Greenland,” said Prince, adding “The US would take that on, but then it would basically split the revenue of any mining or energy development together with Denmark. I think it’s a good deal for Denmark and a good deal for the United States.”

For Greenland, the attention – though controversial – is fortuitous. The island’s independence movement, long fueled by resentment over Denmark’s colonial past, has gained momentum. Revelations in 2022 about Danish doctors coercing Greenlandic teenagers into birth control programs during the 1960s and 1970s further deepened grievances. Today, many Greenlanders point to ongoing disparities, including reports of racial discrimination by Danes, as evidence of a need for self-determination.

A Turning Point in Greenland-Denmark Relations

Under the current governance framework established in 2009, Greenland has autonomy over domestic affairs such as health care and education, while Denmark retains control over foreign policy and defense. PM Egede, seeking reelection, has made the case for shedding “the shackles of the colonial era,” calling for a future where Greenland determines its own destiny.

However, economic dependency remains Greenland’s Achilles’ heel. Denmark’s annual subsidy of $600 million underpins key services – from health care to education – in a nation whose total GDP hovers around $2.4 billion. Without this financial lifeline, independence could become unsustainable unless new partnerships fill the gap.

Enter the United States. “If you want to have control over Greenland or have them closer to the US, it must be done by offering them more money than they currently get from Denmark in subsidies,” said Peter Viggo Jakobsen, a professor at the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. “If Trump can offer the Greenlandic people a better deal, I can easily imagine that a majority of the population will declare independence.”

Rare Earths and National Security

One promising path for economic diversification lies in Greenland’s vast troves of rare earth elements – crucial for electronic devices, defense systems, and green energy technologies. As the U.S. seeks to curb its reliance on China for these minerals, Greenland’s untapped resources present an opportunity for a strategic partnership.

Meanwhile, Denmark has responded to the shifting dynamics with unprecedented investments in Arctic infrastructure. Shortly after Donald Trump Jr.’s surprise five-hour visit to Nuuk last week, Copenhagen pledged funding for a new hydropower project. The Danish government also rolled out defense upgrades aimed at reinforcing its Arctic presence, signaling a renewed commitment to Greenland’s development.

Symbolism has also played a role. Denmark recently updated its royal coat of arms to feature Greenland prominently and introduced Greenlandic interpreters in parliamentary sessions—moves designed to foster goodwill amid rising tensions.

Free Association?

Should Greenland opt for independence, one potential model is free association – a status where the island could function as a sovereign state while maintaining economic ties with a partner nation, as seen in agreements between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands. This arrangement would grant Greenland control over its natural resources while ensuring continued financial support for public services.

Yet the road to independence is fraught with challenges. Any secession would require protracted negotiations between Copenhagen and Nuuk, culminating in a binding referendum. Both the Danish and Greenlandic parliaments would need to ratify the terms