Was Anthropic’s Claude Used In AI Kill-Chain During Maduro Venezuela Raid
Anthropic’s AI tool, Claude, was reportedly used during the Delta Force raid to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
As one X user joked about what U.S. officials might have prompted the chatbot: “Claude, tell me where to find Maduro so we can capture him with no casualties.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that Claude is “the first AI model developer to be used in classified operations by the Department of Defense.”
Anthropic’s model was reportedly used by Palantir Technologies in the daring Delta Force raid to capture Maduro, which allegedly included bombing multiple high-value sites in Caracas last month.
An Anthropic spokesman told the outlet that, for any specific operation, the DoD must comply with its policies. Notably, the use of Claude to facilitate violence, develop weapons, or conduct surveillance is prohibited.
“We cannot comment on whether Claude, or any other AI model, was used for any specific operation, classified or otherwise,” the spokesman said.
He added, “Any use of Claude—whether in the private sector or across government—is required to comply with our Usage Policies, which govern how Claude can be deployed. We work closely with our partners to ensure compliance.”
That was easy.
The Pentagon used Claude to help plan the Maduro raid in Venezuela!?
I need to know what prompt they used to get Claude to violate international law.
Anthropic’s concerns about how the DoW uses Claude have prompted government officials to consider canceling its nearly $200 million contract, the WSJ previously reported.
The problem with U.S. Big Tech is that many of these firms have signed “peace pacts” to prevent their products from becoming dual-use technologies; in other words, ending up on modern battlefields.
However, the rest of the world did not get the memo. AI, drones, and robotics are already being weaponized, and this is evident in real time on the front lines in Eastern Europe.
A Green Party councillor in the UK has sparked outrage by announcing plans to take her young grandchildren to deliver handmade Valentine’s Day cards to adult male asylum seekers at a migrant camp.
This comes amid widespread local opposition to the government’s decision to house hundreds of illegal migrants in a former military base, and fresh revelations about horrific crimes committed by similar arrivals.
Anne Cross, an East Sussex County councillor, made the announcement at a heated public meeting, claiming it would help “dispel fear” by encouraging people to “hear the stories” of the migrants. “There is nothing like getting to know people and hearing their stories in order to dispel fear,” she said. “My grandchildren and I painted some Valentine’s Cards at the weekend which we are going to be presenting to the men at Crowborough as a welcome.”
A British Green Party politician is calling on British kids to send Valentine’s Day cards to the illegal migrants being housed in asylum centers and migrant hotels across the country to “share the love.”
The camp in Crowborough, a former army cadet training site, has been repurposed by the Home Office to accommodate up to 540 male migrants who arrived via small boats. Local residents have protested the move, with demonstrations highlighting concerns over safety and community impact. The additional policing costs alone are projected at £5.62 million, according to Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne.
Cross urged community representatives to “stand with all those who share the love,” but her plan has been met with fierce backlash. Sussex Weald Conservative MP Nus Ghani called it “disturbing” and “highly irresponsible,” pointing to “widespread concern locally” and a lack of “regard for safeguarding” when involving children with “single adult men.”
Unfazed, Cross insisted the cards would be anonymous and that “there has been much misinformation about the men who will be housed in the camp and this has created a climate of fear.” She added, “But there is no evidence children or women are at a higher risk from people seeking asylum than other sections of our society.”
This naive stance ignores a pattern of sexual crimes linked to asylum seekers across the UK. Just days ago, details emerged of a chilling case where Ahmed Müller, a 23-year-old Afghan national who arrived illegally by small boat four months prior, was convicted of abducting, raping, and filming a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton.
The victim described the ordeal: “He was trying to strip my clothes off. He said nothing. He was laughing. I was saying, ‘Get off me.’ But he didn’t say anything. He just carried on. He was saying that he was going to kill my family. I was scared. He took photos. It felt weird. Why was he taking pictures of that?”
Müller showed no remorse, even blaming the child by claiming she demanded he film the attack. Immediately after, he used a government-issued debit card to buy a drink, which helped identify him. Warwickshire Police initially withheld his identity as an illegal migrant, citing “community cohesion,” and threatened a local councillor with contempt of court for trying to reveal it.
As reported on GB News, Crowborough resident Sammy White slammed Cross’s idea as “downright dangerous,” noting, “These men have very little respect for women and children.” She expressed being “appalled” at the councillor’s plan to deliver cards to asylum seekers in Crowborough.
‘This is downright dangerous. These men have very little respect for women and children.’
Sammy White says she is ‘appalled’ that a Green Party councillor has said she will be delivering Valentine’s cards to asylum seekers in Crowborough. pic.twitter.com/L3XWZ2Qstd
Cross, elected in August 2023 and proudly captioning a family photo “AnnMa’s crew” with a kiss emoji, defends the gesture as a common practice among refugee charities. Yet, with Afghan nationals committing sex crimes at a rate 20 times higher than the British population since 2021, and over 37,000 imported in that time, such actions expose the reckless hypocrisy of open-borders advocates.
The government’s dispersal of migrants into houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs) means families could unknowingly live near potential threats.
This episode underscores the failures of unchecked mass migration, where virtue signaling trumps child safety and community concerns. Until borders are secured and deportations ramped up, these dangers will persist, eroding the fabric of British society.
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German courts are currently deliberating whether leading Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Björn Höcke could be hit with a “speaking ban” during a campaign event in the city of Lindenberg im Allgäu.
The move could signal a worsening of free speech in Germany, with Höcke using the legal proceedings to make the case that his fundamental rights are being violated.
“Democrats of all countries, look to Germany! Right now, German courts are seriously deliberating whether I should be issued a speaking ban for political events! I am entitled to the fundamental right to exercise freedom of speech. I am a member of a constitutional body. I am the opposition leader of a German parliament,” wrote Höcke.
“And then there is also the party privilege: So in the future, a supposedly neutral administration should be allowed to decide with whom a party may conduct election campaigning and with whom not? That is absurd! What we are witnessing here is yet another attack on parliamentary democracy in Germany,” he added.
Demokraten aller Länder schaut auf Deutschland!
Zurzeit verhandeln deutsche Gerichte ernsthaft darüber, ob ich ein Redeverbot für politische Veranstaltungen erhalte! Mir steht das Grundrecht auf Ausübung der Meinungsfreiheit zu. Ich bin Mitglied eines Verfassungsorgans. Ich bin… https://t.co/19MBqc8Tjr
The move to ban Höcke from speaking comes after the city of Lindenberg im Allgäu lost its initial effort to ban the campaign event entirely. Now, the city is shifting its strategy to specifically bar Björn Höcke from the stage.
The city originally attempted to cancel the AfD’s rental of the town hall entirely. However, the Augsburg Administrative Court blocked this move during urgent proceedings, declaring the total revocation of the hall inadmissible. Crucially, the judges noted that “as a milder priority measure, a ban on speaking for Mr. Höcke” was a legally viable alternative.
According to a city spokesperson, Lindenberg is now pursuing this option, according to the BR news outlet.
In response, the Westallgäu-Lindau AfD district association has signaled its intent to challenge this speech ban in court. In a court hearing expected to take place in Augsburg today, a final ruling is expected to be issued.
The dispute centers on a rally scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 15, in the municipal Löwensaal, where the AfD intends to introduce its candidates for the upcoming local elections on March 8. The city moved to reclaim the hall once it became clear that Höcke, the Thuringian AfD leader, was on the guest list.
City officials justified the move by stating they expected “criminal statements as well as statements approving of the Nazi dictatorship and anti-Semitic statements” from Höcke, specifically citing his two previous convictions for using a prohibited Nazi slogan.
While the Administrative Court found the city’s concerns to be “understandable,” they ruled that canceling the rental outright violated the principle of equal treatment for political parties. The court maintained that the administration’s arguments were “not sufficient for such a step.”
As the legal battle continues, local tensions are high. Opponents of the AfD have organized rallies and a demonstration, with at least 2,000 participants expected to gather in Lindenberg.
Lindenberg is not the only municipality fighting a “Höcke appearance” this week. A similar battle is unfolding in Seybothenreuth, Upper Franconia, where Höcke is slated to speak on Saturday. The local municipality is also attempting to block his speech, and a decision from the Bayreuth Administrative Court is expected this Thursday.
3 Detained, 1 Rumored Suicide As SWAT Team Swarms Home Near Guthrie’s House
In a dramatic Friday night development in a case that’s garnered enormous public interest, three people were detained as a SWAT team executed search warrants connected to the abduction of the mother of NBC “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie — and a neighbor claims another person shot himself in the head. Action unfolded at two locations — both of them only about two miles from Nancy Guthrie’s Tucson residence. As this is written, police have yet to reveal details.
The neighbor’s unconfirmed claim of a suicide was first reported by News4 Tucson. Two men and one of their mothers were detained. So far, it’s unclear if any of those three are considered suspects. A police source cautioned Fox News that “technically everyone is detained” when a search warrant is executed, and said Friday’s action was prompted by a tip to police. A spokeswoman for the Pima County Sheriff’s department confirmed the operation was related to Guthrie’s Feb. 1 abduction. Before SWAT went into action, Fox News observed a single-engine, Pima County Sheriff’s surveillance plan circling the area.
Police vehicles were used to block nearby intersections near a targeted house in a neighborhood that azcentral describes as “very similar” to Guthrie’s. “Because this is a joint investigation, at the request of the FBI — no additional information is currently available,” Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on X. Reporters observed a long procession of police and civilian vehicles proceeding toward the house, including a forensics vehicle.
While two locations were searched, details are still fuzzy. Azcentral reported that, near midnight, a second house just a half-mile away was raided. However, the New York Times reported secondary sheriff and FBI activity not at a home, but at the parking lot of a Culver’s restaurant, with investigators photographing a gray Range Rover, and shining flashlights into its interior. Fox News reports that a man associated with a search warrant was detained after a traffic stop at Culver’s.
Video taken at the Culver’s location showed deputies holding up a cloth to block onlookers’ view of them as they seemingly removed something from the vehicle. The Range Rover cannot be readily identified in the video, but the New York Timesreported the same activity:
🇺🇸 NANCY GUTHRIE CASE: WHAT WERE POLICE HIDING BEHIND THAT SHEET?
Officers were seen holding up a sheet while appearing to pull something from a Range Rover linked to search warrants in the Nancy Guthrie case.
After Guthrie’s disappearance on Feb 1, police found an ominous trail of blood that seemingly indicated the 84-year-old had been violently removed from her home. On Tuesday, authorities released footage from a Nest camera showing an armed person wearing a jacket, gloves, pants and carrying a backpack. The person can be seen obstructing the camera before walking into the front yard, and then returning to the front door with a small flashlight in their mouth before attempting to cover the camera with what appears to be foliage.
After analyzing the footage, the FBI released a description of the suspect, saying it’s a man of average build and roughly 5’9″ to 5’10” tall. Investigators say the video shows him carrying a black, 25-liter “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack. Earlier this week, police detained a man, but Sheriff Chris Nanos said investigators concluded he was not involved in the abduction.
On Friday, police said they’d found DNA at Guthrie’s house which they couldn’t link to known visitors. “DNA other than Nancy Guthrie’s and those in close contact to her has been collected from the property,” the department told People. “Investigators are working to identify who it belongs to. We are not disclosing where that DNA was located.”
As the days since Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance have turned into weeks, worries about her health have been mounting. She has a pacemaker, cardiac problems, high blood pressure, chronic pain, major mobility limitations and requires many medications to manage her conditions. “We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her,” Savannah Guthrie said in a Feb 7 video message. “This is the only way we will have peace.”
Newsom Tells Europe “Trump Is Temporary,” Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda
California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at the Munich Security Conference earlier on Friday, telling European elites that President Trump is “temporary” and will be gone within three years.
Newsom, noticeably angered by Trump’s push for deregulation and the rollback of climate policy, lashed out at the president, calling him “more destructive” than the current occupant of the White House.
The issue for Newsom is that he still operates within the climate crisis framework promoted by globalists, even as the West is moving on from two decades of nation-killing green policy regime that hollowed out parts of the industrial base and fueled inflation.
On Thursday, President Trump rescinded the 2009 Obama-era “Endangerment Finding,” a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, which he said has been used by the radical left to justify $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs that have hurt American households and sent consumer prices soaring, especially for automobiles.
“The single largest deregulatory action in American history. That’s a big statement in American history, and I think we can add the words by far,” Trump told reporters.
Also this week, there was considerable discussion among industry leaders in Europe about Brussels watering down carbon-pricing markets, which have made electricity outrageously expensive and crushed the industrial base (Goldman explained more here).
And it is not just Trump and European industry leaders pushing to unwind green policies that have financially crushed working-class families and hollowed out the industrial base; major companies are also dialing back EV production plans and softening green targets as the net-zero dream collides with reality.
Here’s what Newsom said earlier at the MSC (courtesy of Real Clear Politics):
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: Donald Trump is doubling down on stupid.
California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan established the first tailpipe emissions standards in the United States of America and created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, a president by the name of Richard Nixon — another Republican — codified California’s leadership under the Clean Air Act.
Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant in the White House in Washington, D.C. He’s trying to recreate the 19th century. He’s a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, gas, and coal. He’s quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America.
He’s received close to half a billion dollars in campaign contributions. He asked for $1 billion — look it up — in return for basically eliminating all regulations in the United States of America. De facto, he just did that yesterday with federal regulations and the endangerment finding.
It is code red in terms of American leadership in this space — low-carbon, green growth — and I know a thing or two about this. I represent the fourth-largest economy, from a GDP perspective, in the world, and we ran the fourth-largest economy last year nine out of ten days on 100% clean energy — two-thirds renewable energy.
We’ve seen our GDP grow by 81% since 2000, and we’ve reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 21%. Seven times more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs.
We’re proving at scale that we can implement, we can compete, and we can dominate. But Donald Trump is trying to turn back the clock. And so we’re showing up, but we’re also showing what can be accomplished — the power of emulation.
We are in the great implementation in my state.
Final word. I hope, if there’s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years. California is a stable and reliable partner in this space, and it’s important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy.
MODERATOR]: Governor, many have called Joe Biden the climate president, but that didn’t help with his re-election. So how important do you think climate issues will be for the 2028 presidential election?
GAVIN NEWSOM: Well, you may not believe in science, but you’ve got to believe your own eyes. I mean, people are burning up, choking up, heating up. We have simultaneous droughts and floods. Historic wildfires. You may know little about California, but you’ve seen those images of these wildfires.
Talk about being as dumb as we want to be — places, lifestyles, traditions being wiped off the map. Greenville. Paradise, California.
And so this issue has been brought home in a very personal way, not a political way. Senator Whitehouse is here — he’s also someone who deeply understands that climate risk is financial risk. It’s becoming uninsurable.
This is an economic issue, not just a moral issue. It’s not just a competitiveness issue. And so it’s incredibly important that we talk in those terms to address some of the political dynamics. But it’s again something we’re on the other side of in California.
It’s a big blue state, but it also has more Republicans than most Republican states. And we have long moved beyond the partisanship on this issue, because there is no Republican thermometer, there’s no Democratic thermometer — there’s just reality.
And people in my state have been mugged by reality. Those that have been in denial understand that we’re on the other side of the debate.
Watch Here:
Gavin Newsom To Europe: “Donald Trump Is Temporary, He’ll Be Gone In Three Years”
“He’s trying to recreate the 19th century. He’s a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, gas, and coal. He’s quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America.” pic.twitter.com/xM82zaACy4
The key question is why Newsom continues to prioritize a failed green agenda instead of pursuing deregulation and other relief measures for working-class families; for now, Trump is the one pressing ahead with what he describes as historic deregulation.
The UK government has issued new guidance allowing primary school children, some as young as four, to ‘socially transition’ the gender by changing their pronouns at school.
According to reports in The Times, the guidelines state that parents should be involved in the “vast majority” of cases where a child questions their gender, and schools should not initiate steps towards social transitioning.
However, the move has sparked outrage, with critics arguing it undermines parental rights and exposes vulnerable children to harmful ideologies.
??? UK Schools issued new Gender Rules
“Social transitioning in primary schools should happen very rarely”
“Children will be allowed to change the agenda and adopt different pronouns”
“Schools shouldn’t initiate guidance around a pupil changing their Gender”
The guidance specifies that “social transitioning in primary schools should happen very rarely,” but “children will be allowed to change their gender and adopt different pronouns.”
Pupils able to change their gender at school
Pronoun guidance for children as young as four
This is the travesty of activists have done to education & our children
Adults should be leading with care not this damaging harmful insanity
Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, lambasted the new guidance during an appearance on TalkTV, asserting that schools have been “indoctrinating children” with trans ideology for a decade, influenced by online content, influencers, and lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids that have been “mis-training teachers.”
She emphasized that “the government has started a de-radicalisation programme but we actually need to de-radicalise a whole generation of teachers,” adding that the guidance falls short because “only total clarity will stop it” at this point, as the issue has “gone so far.”
Joyce urged the public to respond to the 10-week consultation on keeping children safe in education, stressing that “no child can change sex.”
Maya Forstater, chief executive of the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “It should be clear by now that allowing children and parents to think that a child who starts their education as a girl can graduate as a boy, or vice versa, is a dangerous fairytale.”
Forstater noted that while the guidance has generated backlash, there are elements of it that constitute a step forward.
This latest development comes amid ongoing controversies over gender ideology and children, with trans lobbyists continuing to push extreme agendas.
Radicals from Stonewall have demanded schools stop calling pupils ‘boys and girls’ and that they replace ‘he’ and ‘she’ with ‘they’ to “remove any unnecessarily gendered language” from classrooms.
The group also advocated for gender-neutral bathrooms and uniforms in schools, even offering rewards for compliance.
A publicly funded LGBT group in Scotland was exposed for urging teachers not to inform parents about children ‘transitioning,’ with guidance stating that “a transgender young person may not have told their family about their gender identity” and that inadvertent disclosure could cause stress or risk.
These lobbyists, including LGBT Youth Scotland receiving nearly £1 million in taxpayer funds annually, have signed up over half of Scotland’s secondary schools and 40 primary schools to their schemes.
The new English guidance appears to continue this trend, despite the landmark Cass Review in 2024, which concluded that evidence for puberty blockers and gender-affirming care for children is “remarkably weak” and built on “shaky foundations.”
The review led to a ban on puberty blockers for under-18s outside clinical trials, highlighting risks like impacts on bone health and fertility.
Yet, controversy persists with a planned clinical trial in 2026 assessing puberty blockers’ risks and benefits for about 220 children under 16.
? EXCLUSIVE: Some 226 children who believe they are transgender will be given puberty blockers as part of an investigation commissioned by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, into their effects on the young.
Campaigners have launched legal efforts and petitions to suspend it, arguing it could harm vulnerable kids, with a government response acknowledging the “unacceptable safety risk” but proceeding to gather evidence.
The UK has commissioned a study on 226 kids who believe they are transgender to give them puberty blockers.
These drugs stop the body’s natural development and were already banned as “an unacceptable safety risk.” pic.twitter.com/kCI9zAAvNp
The new guidance also comes despite the UK Supreme Court ruling in April 2025 that the legal definition of sex under the Equality Act 2010 is based on biological sex at birth, not altered by a Gender Recognition Certificate.
The latest development is thus a massive step backward, allowing activist-driven policies to once again infiltrate education while sidelining science and parental authority.
With detransition lawsuits mounting and evidence mounting against hasty transitions, protecting children’s innocence from ideological overreach remains paramount.
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Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections.
While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted since 2021 for quoting Bible verses to church members and on social media that questioned her church’s participation in a Gay Pride march. Although she was acquitted, first by a local district court and then by an appellate court, prosecutors appealed the decision to Finland’s supreme court, where the case currently sits.
“My prosecution shows how quickly democratic societies can abandon free expression when the state decides which beliefs are acceptable,” Rasanen told The Epoch Times.
“I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she said. “Americans should be concerned because once censorship is normalized, it never stays confined to one country.”
The trend among Western countries to restrict religious speech has spread beyond Europe, with the Canadian government currently advancing a bill that would remove a religious exemption from “hate speech” laws in the country’s Criminal Code. Similarly, newly proposed legislation in Queensland, Australia, would criminalize certain symbols and phrases, with penalties of up to two years in prison.
While speaking before Congress, Rasanen was joined by Graham Linehan, an Irish writer and comedian who was arrested upon traveling through Heathrow Airport in 2025 for statements he had made in America on transgender issues.
“For a decade, the British police have harassed me for expressing views that the majority of the public share,” Linehan stated. “We have simply been punished for objecting to fashionable yet incoherent orthodoxies.”
‘Foreign Censorship Threat’
Their testimony was underscored by the release of a Feb. 3 House report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat,” which charged that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.”
More specifically, the report states that “though ostensibly meant to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’ nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last 10 years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.”
This included regular meetings between U.S. tech companies and European Union regulators to put “content moderation” policies and algorithms in place to conform to European laws regarding “hate speech” and “misinformation,” the report states. The EU claims these initiatives were voluntary, but subpoenaed emails from tech executives stated that “we don’t really have a choice.”
Judicial Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told hearing attendees that, based on subpoenas issued to U.S. tech companies regarding their correspondence with EU officials, a pattern of compelled censorship emerged that included U.S. citizens.
“The European Commission successfully pressured social media companies to change their global content moderation rules, directly harming the speech of Americans in the United States,” Jordan stated. He also referenced an incident in which European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk that his company may face penalties for posting an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.
“The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide,” Jordan said. “When the European Commission makes censorship demands, platforms have to listen.”
Safety or Control?
According to the European Commission’s website, the Digital Services Act (DSA) “empowers citizens by strengthening the protection of their fundamental rights online and giving them greater control and more choices when they navigate online platforms and search engines.” The DSA also requires platforms to “minimise the risks of exposing citizens, including children and young people, to illegal and harmful content.”
Critics of EU speech laws say they have become a tool to punish U.S. tech companies for allowing any content that a European country has deemed to be illegal. In countries such as Germany, that could include insulting government officials.
French member of the European Parliament Virginie Joron called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.” Joron accused government officials of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.”
And legal analysts say that the reach of the DSA extends beyond Europe.
The DSA “creates a pathway for foreign governments to influence public debate inside the United States without ever passing a single American law,” Lorcan Price, an Irish barrister who defended Rasanen and testified at the House hearing, told The Epoch Times.
“The EU’s Digital Services Act gives European regulators unprecedented leverage over American tech companies, which means European speech rules can end up shaping what Americans are allowed to say online,” Price said. “Once U.S. platforms are forced to comply with European censorship demands to avoid massive fines, those restrictions don’t stop at Europe’s borders.”
Enormous Fines and ‘Days of Action’
According to Price, U.S. companies have already been fined €3.8 billion for violating EU speech codes, and Spain has announced that it will impose criminal charges against company owners for violations.
“The enormous fines levied on X corporation by the European Commission since the last hearing, has proved beyond all doubt that the European Union means to strangle free speech by a systemic assault on U.S. companies,” Price told hearing attendees. “The EU has a multi-pronged strategy to open multiple investigations, to add more and more regulations and to impose crippling fines, and ultimately, I fear, to attempt to break up or ban companies such as X who are pro-free speech.”
Europe has become increasingly aggressive in prosecuting speech crimes, with Germany leading the effort. In June 2025, German police conducted early morning raids on 140 residents who were accused of violating speech laws, as part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts.”
Germany prosecuted 10,732 of its citizens for “hate speech” or “harmful speech” in 2024, according to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office. Similar actions have taken place in at least a dozen other European countries, according to Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.
These prosecutions have had a chilling effect on public expression. In a 2025 Cato report, author David Inserra stated that Germans now feel increasingly “unable to express their opinions, with multiple polls finding around 44 percent of Germans expressing such concerns, up from 16 percent in 1990.”
The Risks of an Unregulated Internet
The issue of online censorship has recently been complicated by the spread of child sexual abuse images and nonconsensual sexualized images of public figures, many of which were created by artificial intelligence.
On Feb. 3, French police raided the offices of X, the social media company owned by Elon Musk, charging the company with permitting child pornography and pornographic deepfake images on its site. They also summoned Musk for questioning.
British regulators are also investigating instances in which Grok, X’s AI chatbot, created numerous sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images at the request of X’s users. In 2025, the United States passed the “Take It Down Act,” which requires internet service providers, social media sites, and search engines to take down nonconsensual sexual material within 48 hours of being notified, and subjects individuals who post such material to up to two years imprisonment.
In addition, children’s access to online pornography has prompted many lawmakers, in Europe and America, to advocate for higher age limits to be imposed on internet access.
In the United States, the age limit for children to access the internet is currently 13. Compliance with such laws, however, generally requires that tech companies verify the identity of whoever uses their apps and websites.
The public fixation on the Epstein files has settled, predictably, on the most lurid elements of the story.
This is understandable.
Sexual exploitation, particularly of the young, is among the most corrosive of crimes, and the scale of Epstein’s abuse, as well as the apparent indifference of powerful institutions to it, demands moral outrage.
But to focus exclusively on the sexual scandal is to miss the deeper and more unsettling lesson the affair reveals.
What the Epstein files expose, above all, is the social and moral estrangement of American elites from the people they claim to govern.
Epstein was not merely a predator who gained access to power. He was a node within a closed world of wealth, influence, and immunity. The scandal is not that powerful people behaved badly in private—history shows many such examples—but that they did so with a confidence rooted in the belief they were insulated from the consequences of their behavior.
They moved through a transnational elite culture that had largely severed itself from ordinary moral constraints, legal accountability, and civic obligation. That culture did not merely tolerate Epstein but normalized him.
This echoes the point Christopher Lasch made decades ago, long before private islands and hedge-fund philanthropy became familiar symbols of elite excess. In his 1994 book “The Revolt of the Elites,” Lasch argued that the modern American ruling classes had stopped seeing themselves as stewards of a shared national project. Instead, they increasingly saw themselves as a mobile, globalized caste, educated in the same institutions, moving through the same cities, governed by the same tastes, and primarily accountable only to each other. Citizenship was seen as a minor inconvenience. Nationhood and patriotism were just sentimental relics from less enlightened times.
The Epstein affair reads like a case study in Lasch’s thesis.
Here was an individual whose wealth was opaque, whose sources of income were rarely scrutinized, and whose social standing seemed immune to ordinary reputational risk. He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities, many of whom publicly advocated policies of moral uplift, social justice, and global responsibility. Yet in private, they inhabited a world defined by indulgence, entitlement, and a contempt for limits.
Elite detachment today is not only economic but also existential, and it is hardly confined to Americans. The governing classes of advanced democracies increasingly inhabit a world defined by mobility, abstraction, and insulation from consequence. Their loyalties are professional rather than civic, global rather than national, and managerial rather than moral. They experience society less as a shared inheritance than as a set of problems to be administered at a distance. In such a world, attachment to place, memory, and common fate appears parochial, even suspect, while belonging itself is quietly redefined as an obstacle to progress.
Those who create policies affecting immigration, policing, education, public health, and national security rarely face the consequences themselves. They do not send their children to failing schools, live in high-crime neighborhoods, compete for scarce housing, or navigate broken public institutions. Their lives are shielded by wealth, location, private services, and increasingly by law itself.
The Epstein files sharpen this reality because they reveal not just hypocrisy, but impunity. Despite extensive documentation, repeated warnings, and credible testimony, accountability arrived slowly and incompletely. This is not because the crimes were ambiguous, but because the accused moved within a protected sphere where consequences were negotiable and enforcement discretionary. Justice, like morality, was something applied elsewhere for other people.
What enrages the public is not prurience, but recognition. The scandal resonates because it confirms a growing suspicion among ordinary people that there is one moral universe for the governing class and another for everyone else. Elites preach restraint, sustainability, and responsibility while living lives of extraordinary consumption and indulgence. They urge social sacrifice while exempting themselves from its costs. They speak the language of progress while practicing a refined form of decadence.
Lasch warned that such a ruling class would eventually forfeit legitimacy, not because of ideology, but because of character. A society cannot be governed indefinitely by people who do not believe they belong to it. When elites become tourists in their own countries, financially global, culturally unrooted, and morally untethered, their authority rests on little more than coercion and spectacle.
The Epstein files should therefore be read less as an aberration than as a symptom. They reveal a governing class that has lost the habits of self-restraint that once justified its power, and the sense of common fate that once bound leaders to citizens.
For many, the salient point of the Epstein files is the scandal. I think it is more accurately seen as a disclosure.
The danger is not merely that such elites are corrupt, but that they are bored. Bored with limits, bored with norms, bored with accountability, and ultimately bored with democracy itself. That boredom, Lasch understood, is the precondition of revolt, not by the masses, but by those who no longer feel answerable to them.
If the Epstein affair provokes lasting anger, it is because it crystallizes a truth many citizens already sense, that the people shaping the future live in a world apart, governed by different rules, and increasingly incapable of moral seriousness. No society can long endure that division without consequence.
The question is not whether further revelations will emerge. It is whether the public will finally insist that elites once again live under the same moral and civic conditions as those they presume to lead.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Germany, France Hold Secret Talks On Continental Nuclear Shield In Pivot From US
Has Europe really embarked on a nuclear reset, rethinking its US-led deterrent architecture? For the first time since the Cold War, major European capitals are openly debating the need for an independent nuclear deterrent – an emerging theme on clear display this week at the Munich Security Conference.
We’ve reported before that the turning point came in March, when Washington temporarily halted battlefield intelligence sharing with Ukraine – a move that forced allies to confront the prospect that Washington may no longer serve as a dependable security guarantor, also as ratcheting Trump rhetoric increasingly highlights Europe needing to shoulder its own defense burden.
France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz held “confidential talks” on European nuclear deterrence, the German chancellor has confirmed. Still, he tried to downplay the full implications in his Friday remarks: “We Germans are adhering to our legal obligations. We consider this strictly within the context of our nuclear sharing within NATO and we will not allow zones of differing security to emerge in Europe,” Merz said.
However, President Macron on the same day was a little more forthright, describing amid the backdrop of ongoing direct talks between Moscow and the United States: “We will live with Russia in the same place, and the Europeans at the same place, and I don’t want this negotiation to be organized by someone else,” he said. And more bluntness on the nuclear issue:
Macron told the gathering in Munich, which focuses on security and brings together world leaders, future parameters of security may include a new, more holistic nuclear deterrence among European allies. Until now, deterrence has been a strictly national domain and a highly delicate issue because of its implications on sovereignty.
The French leader teased a “new strategic dialogue” on nuclear arms.
“We have engaged a strategic dialogue with Chancelor Merz and (other) European leaders in order to see how we can articulate our national doctrine” with special cooperation and common security interests in some key countries, he said.
“This dialogue is important because it’s a way to articulate nuclear deterrence in a holistic approach of defense and security, Macron continued. “This is a way to create convergence in our strategic approach between Germany and France.”
Macron’s remarks before the Munich audience were tinged with implicit (negative) references to the US administration: “We need a much more positive mindset. There has been a tendency in this place and beyond to overlook Europe and sometimes to criticise it outright,” he stated.
“Caricatures have been made, Europe has been vilified as an aging, slow, fragmented construct sidelined by history. As an overregulated economy that shuts innovation, as a society preyed by migration that would corruption its precious traditions.”
“And most curiously yet, in some quarters, as a repressive continent,” he added. “Everyone should take a cue from us, instead of trying to divide us.”
“The leadership claim of the U.S. is being challenged, perhaps already lost,” Merz said during the opening of the Munich Security Conference, laying out the starkest assessment yet from Berlin of a world increasingly defined by great-power rivalry. “In the era of great powers, our freedom is no longer simply guaranteed. It is under threat.”
He argued the global system itself may already have collapsed. “The international order based on rights and rules… no longer exists in the way it once did,” he said.
The Europeans are fundamentally worried that any new regional architecture related to potential settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war could leave the continent weakened and exposed, and that the Trump admin might be willing to cede too much in the way of compromise to Russia.
We underscored previously that ff the US and Russia craft the final settlement, Europe must either accept it or refuse and confront the consequences alone. And yet, neither Paris nor Berlin is prepared for the latter scenario.
Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion.
There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.
This recognition of complexity, fallibility, and the limits of one’s own certainty is among the quiet achievements of maturity. It marks the point at which conviction learns restraint and moral seriousness acquires humility.
Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure.
That inversion was on clear display at the recent Grammy Awards, when Billie Eilish declared to enthusiastic applause that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” It was left unspecified just whose land was being referenced, by whom it was stolen, and according to what historical or legal criteria that claim could be made.
The audience, however, needed no clarification. Eilish’s statement was rewarded exactly because it avoided complexity and invited no questions.
What was on display was not moral seriousness but a high school performance, an adolescent sense of righteousness delivered with absolute certainty and accepted as self-evident truth. One might charitably attribute such unthinking, categorical statements to Eilish’s youth. Alas, hers is a posture that we have come to expect from many of Hollywood’s men and women: confident, declarative, and curiously uninterested in the burdens of thought that genuine moral judgment requires.
This brings us to the core issue. The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t obvious censorship or government orders. Instead, it’s a more subtle and widespread force: cultural groupthink. This informal but influential system of rewards and punishments quietly limits the range of acceptable opinions, shaping what people feel allowed to say, what they hesitate to voice, and which questions are no longer asked.
Nowhere is this trend more evident than in modern celebrity culture. Hollywood and the broader entertainment sector have become models of ideological conformity, especially on divisive social and political topics. From climate change and gender issues to racial justice and international conflicts, Hollywood repeats the same messages, all delivered with youthful confidence. The same moral language, slogans, and conclusions are echoed with ritualistic consistency.
The Eilish episode was not an aberration but a symptom. It illustrated a broader pattern in which public speech functions less as a means of inquiry than as a test of ideological conformity. The cost of dissent is not a thoughtful and considered rebuttal. Rather, it takes the form of reputational damage through social media pile-ons, calls for boycotts, professional exclusion, or quiet blacklisting. Under such conditions, silence is often the rational choice. Most people have families to support and livelihoods to protect.
The greater danger lies in the lesson this celebrity culture teaches: that there is only one permissible way to think and speak about certain issues, and that deviation signals not error but moral failure. Political and social questions are reduced to dogma rather than debated. Once moralized in this way, disagreement becomes illegitimate by definition.
This logic now extends well beyond Hollywood. Similar patterns can be found in journalism, medicine, academia, corporate governance, and even the legal profession. Approved vocabularies narrow discussion; certain premises must be affirmed before conversation can begin; others may not be questioned at all. Arguments are no longer answered on their merits but dismissed as evidence of bad character or suspect motives.
The consequences for democratic culture are profound. Democracies do not depend on unanimity but on citizens who can weigh competing claims, tolerate uncertainty, and revise their views in light of evidence and argument. Groupthink undermines these capacities by rewarding conformity and punishing independent judgment. Over time, public discourse loses its corrective function. Errors persist not because they are persuasive, but because questioning them carries too high a cost.
When dialogue is replaced by dogma, democratic societies become brittle. They lose their ability to self-correct and grow more intolerant of internal differences. Public conversations turn into moral theater, where the goal is no longer understanding opposing views but performing virtue and condemning heresy. Speech persists only in its performative form, losing its role in testing ideas and correcting errors.
The defense of free speech, therefore, is not a defense of cruelty, indifference, or provocation for its own sake. It is a defense of intellectual diversity and the recognition that complex problems seldom have simple solutions; progress relies on the open debate of ideas. Democracies do not demand that citizens agree; they require honest argument, careful listening, and acceptance that disagreement is not a moral flaw but a civic essential.
It is a hard truth that others, who are just as committed, moral, or intelligent as we are, nonetheless see the world differently. The challenge is in accepting that our opponents are not simply ignorant or malicious but may have reached their conclusions through reasons as serious as our own. This common insight strips away the adolescent comfort of moral superiority. It forces us to face the possibility that we, too, may be wrong.
Such humility is rarely celebrated. But it is among the foundational virtues of democratic life. The alternative is a culture of silence and self-censorship, in which people say only what is safe and believe only what is approved. Such cultures may appear stable—even virtuous—but they are dangerously fragile. When reality intrudes, as it always does, societies that have lost the habit of open debate are poorly equipped to respond.
The strongest defense of democratic life is not enforced consensus but the courage to dissent, the patience to listen, and the willingness to engage in genuine dialogue, where we can change our minds.
Free speech, properly understood, is not a threat to democracy. It is its foundation.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
