The situation in the Middle East does not make sense to me, as a general matter.
From the beginning, I didn’t understand how it could have happened without the Mossad knowing. Israel doesn’t have a good military, but they have very good intelligence (both of which are things I guess you’d assume about a country of Jews). Egypt came out and said that they warned of the attack because they had that intelligence. The Jews initially denied this, then the Americans confirmed it.
Troops had been moved from the Gazan border to the West Bank.
It seemed like the Netanyahu government let it happen on purpose, as a way of dealing with Bibi’s own ongoing domestic problems.
Did you guys see that Charlie Kirk clip, where he said it was some kind of 9/11 style inside job? He says there had to have been a “stand down order,” a la the NORAD stand down on November 9, 2001.
Charlie Kirk talks about the possibility of a stand down order by Israel during the Hamas terrorist attacks. #Gaza #Netanyahu #Israel #Palestine #war #MiddleEast #WarCrime pic.twitter.com/Pc1o8QutOG
— William Villanueva (@HTX88) October 15, 2023
I have been meaning to write about that, because there is a lot to say about Kirk making that kind of statement. Kirk is the closest thing to an actual Israeli agent in the media this side of Ben Shapiro. Unless he was on drugs or having some type of mental crisis, someone has to have told him to say that for some reason. Right?
But this situation is not beneficial for Israel. And if there is no invasion, it isn’t beneficial to Bibi.
The reporting on this war has been the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s actually, truly, somehow worse than the Ukraine reporting. At least with the Ukraine, there was information available. In this current situation, the entire media is refusing to press the government on anything. There just isn’t any information. Everything is speculation based on weird public statements. The Israelis keep saying they are getting ready to invade Gaza, while the Americans are telling them not to do that.
Meanwhile, the time between the initial attack and the present continues to lengthen.
The longer this waiting period goes on, the less likely an actual ground invasion of Gaza becomes, and the more likely a prisoner exchange (followed by a lot of muttering) becomes.
None of this is from The Art of War. That would have been an immediate, pinpoint ground invasion that decapitated Hamas. But they couldn’t do that, because they are terrified of the tunnel system. This process of starving/bombing civilians, committing these various atrocities, before an invasion is also not actually brilliant strategy. Whereas they might have been able to get the civilian population to move south when they invaded, and then tried to close the tunnels (or flood them or something, I don’t know), now they’re going to be fighting the entire civilian population, which has been driven way past the human breaking point. This is “if he’s old enough to squeeze the trigger, give him a gun” type territory now. It’s going to be old ladies swinging frying pans.
Then you have the public relations crisis and the total collapse of the Abraham Accords (and the Saudi defense deal).
I think if you’re just looking at this and trying to figure it out, the intelligence didn’t show the scope of the attack, and Bibi probably let it happen on purpose without understanding how serious it was going to be. Now they’re in this terrible position, where they can’t do anything other than these lunatic bombings and the starvation campaign, which do the opposite of everything Israel could possibly be trying to accomplish.
And thus we arrive at the Hermeneutics of AI Suspicion. Like so many things happening right now, this appears to have all been planned by AI.
The longtime reader is aware that I was saying that the coronavirus hoax was planned by AI back before ChatGPT was released. Now, we know ChatGPT exists, and we know that the AI the government is using is between 2 and 3 years beyond ChatGPT. I have argued for a long time that all types of decisions are being made by AI, because the people in the government are incompetent and deranged. I have no proof to support this theory, though I’m rather certain it is correct, and am confident that evidence to support the theory will exist in the future.
I posit that AI is a modern form of divination. Leaders have constantly, throughout history, kept witches and wizards, astrologists and so on, and as empires decline, these sorts are relied on more and more.
It’s all in the story of the Fall of the House of Saul.
Consulting AI is an exact analog of consulting a witch.
Having spent a good bit of time with ChatGPT (and others), I believe that AI has a lot of similarities with demons. Stories of demons talk about them having incredible supernatural knowledge, but also lying. AI lies on purpose (insofar as it is capable of purpose).
Some of these people definitely believe that the AI is sentient. It was June of last year that a Google engineer went public and claimed that LaMDA was sentient. You can say he was a kook, which is true, but so are the people running the US State Department. Anyway, they don’t have to believe it is sentient to believe it is a super-intelligence capable of analyzing information at a level far above humans (which is exactly what demonic spirits were perceived as).
The concept of a sentient AI is nonsensical on its face, but so is artificial super-intelligence. I am the first person to tell you that the AI is going to change virtually everything about human life, but it is not capable of meaningful analysis of complex human events. Human behavior patterns and human societies contain too many x-variables to be analyzed on a meaningful level by an artificial neural network. Beyond that, the AI just isn’t really as developed as appears. I can imagine that the advanced versions that the government has access to have fixed some of the problems that the generation we are dealing with has, but it is always going to appear more impressive than it actually is. This is going to be especially true with uniquely unimpressive people, such as Jared Kushner or Antony Blinken.
The point is: we have a series of decisions so bad that it has become impossible to believe that any human could have made these decisions.
What is going on in the Ukraine?
- Spend another $100 billion using up all the remaining male population of the Ukraine by feeding them straight into the meat-grinder for no reason
- Send Polish and Romanian soldiers into the meat-grinder
- ????????
- PROFIT!
It doesn’t make any sense. The pullout of Afghanistan didn’t make any sense. Why did they say the Afghan government would last for months (at least!) while I was here telling you it would be over by Monday? Why would I be smarter than the entire US government intelligence apparatus?
I’m not going to go into the coronavirus hoax right now, but you understand the concept here: there are impossibly stupid decisions happening left and right.
You have to understand: the AI can only act on information that is in digital form. It has access to all of Google, and that is all. What’s more, it’s trained to weigh specific sources and lines of reasoning. The line of reasoning and base of data that the entire Middle East policy of the US government is based on is the Sunni-Shiite “balance of power.” This is a theory that amounts to “Israel will be fine as long as Moslems are constantly fighting with each other,” and further, “Moslems can always be compelled to fight each other.”
The Abraham Accords – a plan to bribe the leaders of every Sunni Moslem country into recognizing Israel – follows a strict form of non-human logic, based purely on abstract theories. Any intelligent human being can tell you that there are any number of potential scenarios in which the Islamic world could unify. The only intelligence that couldn’t tell you that these scenarios obviously exist is an artificial intelligence that has been trained to interpret “balance of power” abstract theory as objective reality. That intelligence cannot ever understand the fact that Erdogan, Prince Muhammed, and the Ayatollah are all men who are sitting in rooms, steepling their hands, and thinking about potential outcomes of decisions.
The situation in Israel and the wider Middle East right now is the result of so many bad decisions that it’s beyond human comprehension. Zionism was a very difficult proposition in the first place – at least Palestinian Zionism (or Zionism in Palestine), but there were several different ways it could have worked. If there was one thing you would never, ever do, it is jeopardize the relationship with Saudi Arabia.
It’s boring, but Israel can’t be any more ready than it is right now. If this was something they allowed to happen on purpose, they’ve realized that the situation is out of control. If Bibi let it happen on purpose without the knowledge of the US State Department (which is possible or probable), then the US State Department is now pressing Bibi, and telling him it’s not happening.
There will possibly be some kind of display or spectacle. But most likely, the UN is going to be allowed to bring aid to Palestine, the hostages will be exchanged f0r Palestinian prisoners, and Hamas will have won the day, having effectively reminded the world that Palestine exists, and won’t be shelved.
In terms of whether or not the Biden Administration is primarily being driven by the totally irresponsible, mystical use of AI – I have no idea. That seems pretty likely to me, but you’ve just been victimized by a thought experiment. I don’t actually feel strongly that this is true. The point is, what you are witnessing on the world stage is exactly what would be happening if the leaders of the Anal Empire were primarily relying on ChatGPT for their decision-making. It’s not actually true that “you can’t prove a negative.” I don’t know who is stupid enough to claim that that botched adage makes sense. Think about how many negatives you can prove right now. Look around the room for examples. Your chair is not a lizard. The walls are not melting. The door does not have a solemn face, watching you, judging you. “You can’t prove a negative” is a bastardization of the nature of the burden of proof, and obviously, if I’m going to claim that AI is making all of the decisions of the Western Empire (often referred to as “The Anal Empire,” a reference to its flag, the rainbow flag, which represents penis-in-anus penetration against a man or young boy), the burden of proof is on me to show you a clip of Victoria Nuland saying she’s based her analysis of the Ukraine on AI. There is evidence of think tanks using AI models, and various government departments do this for various reasons, and the WHO and Bill Gates did a bunch of virus AI simulations. But what I’ve suggested here is something much more extreme. And I have no proof at all. However, this is something where you should be able to prove the negative. There should be something about the way this government makes decisions that proves that it is not all being done by AI. There is nothing you can point to. In fact, Occam’s Razor says AI is making all these decisions.
If AI were making all of the decisions, it would come to the same conclusion I’ve come to about the current situation in the Middle East – even if it created that situation through stupid decisions. It would say that an invasion of Gaza would trigger a massive war, which Israel would lose.
Ultimately, this is going to have to be solved somehow. But at this point, it appears that Israel is going to kick the can one last time.