Fiddling Around after Torching America

“We think this could be a great technology, but we’re not going to give these guys a carte blanche,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said at a “pro-human” conference on the dangers of AI on Tuesday. “There’s been no debate.”

Just before Bannon spoke, democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont told the same crowd that Washington policymakers had not addressed the “potentially catastrophic consequence” of unregulated AI.

“Congress under both Democratic and Republican control has been asleep at the wheel,” he said. “And now we have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing.”

There’s no need to describe all the ways AI could wreak destruction. But it could scarcely be scarier than the apocalypse Trump has been busily fomenting in his second term. Thanks to his executive actions and his Big Beautiful Bull, he has:

• Hastened the closing of small hospitals by restricting Medicaid payments, leaving entire communities without accessible medical care
• Enabled an epidemic of  food poisonings by relaxing inspection requirements, and measles, long well under control, by backpedaling on vaccinations
• Spent billions to terrorize immigrant communities, causing grief, anxiety, povertyand labor shortages
• Choked farmers and ranchers with tariffs and socked them with high costs for fuel and fertilizer
• Caused disease and deprivation to spread across the global south by axing USAID, drying up export markets for food that farmers depended on
• Promised and failed to end two costly wars quickly, one of them his and Bibi’s own devising, sapping our military capabilities
• Set back Biden’s shift to greener energy by years, loosening regulations on coal, and even paying a company millions not to build a wind farm 
• Thrown the voting system in turmoil and threatened to send federal agents to polling places to intimidate voters

I could go on about his financial skullduggery and pardoning fraudsters, but they’re small potatoes compared to the economic carnage. These policies are more than demoralizing. They are causing real pain and raising the cost of almost everything. Things will only get worse as things like spare part shortages and double-digit increases in fuel costs work their way up supply chains. You have surely been hit by it at the gas pump, the grocery store, and in your utility bills. The economy is being propped up by spending from better-off people. Credit card debt is rampant for many consumers; should they stop buying non-necessities, the economic fallout won’t be pretty.

Aware of this, in September the Federal Reserve increased interest rates by a quarter of a percent, which of course angered Trump, who called for a 1% interest rate. But the Fed can’t stop inflation now no matter what it does because the root causes are simply beyond its control. Trump has sailed the ship of state into dangerous economic waters and only a swift change of course will stop us from entering a maelstrom of personal and national debt. Former allies and miffed trading partners are regrouping in blocs to insulate them from the chaos. If the EU ever manages to define how “associate membership” is supposed to work, Canada will join them. And the BRICS alliance, once ineffective, will get some teeth now that China, Russia, and India are putting more weight behind it.

Trump doesn’t care as long as he’s doing okay, having followed Putin’s instructions to the letter to weaken our country and marginalize us as a global power. He’s indebted to Russia for bailouts and doesn’t want Putin to reveal dirt about him. And his sycophantic wet nurse Natalie Harp could be a Russian asset, as David Corn, Washington Correspondent for Mother Jones, surmised in a recent blog post:

An attractive aide has an oddly close connection to the president and is situated to know everything and can influence his thinking. She helps write his tweets. She can control what information he receives. She once worked for an organization that has aired Russian disinformation, that has been identified by US intelligence as an outlet for Kremlin propaganda, and that has been ordered by its owner to go easy on Russia. And she was reluctant to submit to a security clearance investigation.