How AI Will Enslave Humans & Destroy Civilization — 5CAST (#25) Ft. Greg Stoker
00:00 Data centers are not just driving up your cost of living. They're actually building the architecture to absolutely control the population as well and expand the national security state. A lot of these tech billionaires have a very antihuman ideology. >> I think AI will probably lead to the end
00:15 of the world. With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. >> It is going to bother you because you're human and and I was human. I am human still. Over the past 2 years, we've seen Palunteer employ AI targeting data for kinetic strikes in Gaza and the south of
00:28 Lebanon and now Iran. All these data centers also have a military function. Any attempt to protest these data centers is going to be a national security issue. So terrorism charges. You know, there's a connection to the prison industrial complex with ICE buying up all these warehouses with our
00:43 tax money. The government is now looking at purchasing warehouses and retrofitting them to serve as detention facilities for immigrants before they are deported. >> And then Geog Group or Core Civic comes in and gets paid $90 a bed to just fill up these massive like concentration
00:58 camps. ICE is now deploying to monitor us. Same kind of technologies and spyware and espionage equipment tested on Palestinians in the West Bank. >> Killing my family in Palestine. >> Palente has such a key role in helping Israel kill children in Palestine. you can actually see what the endgame is and
01:14 what the imperial plan is both abroad and at home. So things are kind of collapsing around us. There is no plan. There is no leadership in the Democrat or the Republican party. This is all part of the system and it's working exactly as it's intended. >> Good morning and good afternoon. You're
01:29 watching available now on all major podcast platforms. Enjoy enjoy. >> Thanks so much for making the time, man. I really appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. >> Yeah. For those who don't know, can you tell us your name and what you're
01:41 currently running for? >> So, my name is Greg Stoker. I am a former US Army Ranger. I did four combat deployments to Afghanistan during the ill- fated and completely illegal war in Afghanistan. During the global war on terror, I'm now an anti-imperialist activist and uh military analyst.
01:56 Currently running for uh Congress in Congressional Texas Congressional District 31 where they're building a new AI data center superighway coming down from Dallas through Austin and into San Antonio. And 31 is above Round Rock, right? >> Yeah, it starts just at Round Rock.
02:11 >> And what are some of like the main concerns of the people living there when it comes to this new center? >> Well, it's pretty much a universal federal completely national issue. First of all, uh local bureaucracies are not able to stop these data centers. Just in Michigan, you had the Stargate data
02:25 center get uh rammed through massive sprawling campus. Of course, the Texas uh power grid is absolutely already stretched to maximum. So now they're having to bring in uh high transmission power lines from the Perian Basin which is one of the biggest energy hubs in the continental United States through the
02:42 district and a lot of people move there to like retire or move out of the city to where housing is more affordable and they're going to just eminent domain these massive high transmission power lines through there to support the data center because the local grids can't do it. Also massive water shortages inside
02:58 of Texas that's been a problem since the beginning. Corpus Christi is probably going to be tapped out of water due to it getting siphoned off for petroleum manufacturing. And so that city is about to get evacuated starting like 2027 next year and it's going to keep rolling up rolling up uh into the north of Texas
03:16 all these issues. But what I generally talk about based on my background is the data centers and militarization. And that is something that people aren't really focusing a lot about. So when I try to explain the threat of data centers beyond like the environmental impact, the impact to cost of living and
03:32 access to water, I talk about the simple framework of like the imperial boomer, which is where whatever forms of like violence or repression, war that we do overseas, uh whatever technology we use to implement that is always used back on us as a citizenry. Data centers are not just driving up your cost of living.
03:50 They're actually working and building the architecture to absolutely control the population as well and expand the national security state to a level that I thought was completely unprecedented. >> In what sense? Like would you say that the security state will will get to that unprecedented level?
04:05 >> Technology has always been used during imperial conflicts like Vietnam. That's when we saw the precursor to the modern internet called ARPANET. He was monitoring and tracking Vietkong on the Ho Chi Min trail while also monitoring climate activists, Black Panthers, student organizers, labor organizers
04:22 that were against the war. We saw the expansion of that during the global war on terror with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, ICE, all with the justification of national security interests. Over the past 2 years, we've seen weapons testing in what we call the
04:39 Palestine Laboratory. So in defense circles, it's kind of like a marketing tool. Like you go to these trade shows for these different like AI tech companies and weapons manufacturers and they will say tested in Gaza. Over the past 2 years, we've seen Palunteer employ AI targeting data to rapidly
04:55 expand uh strike packages that are for kinetic strikes in Gaza and the south of Lebanon and Syria and now Iran. Now, with the Iran war, we're seeing another repercussions because during the two-monthlong conflict, I forget how long it's been going on. The US air defenses in the Gulf were completely
05:13 overwhelmed because they just flooded the zone with ballistic missiles and these Shahed drones and an Amazon data center got taken out and had massive repercussions. So now all these data centers which we are seeing in our rural towns throughout the United States are now called dual use. So they have a
05:29 civilian function for like something like Dropbox. But all these companies also have ties to the defense sector. It's how you get subsidies and tax breaks for research and development. So all these data centers also have a military function. New York Times reported last month that these are being
05:43 called critical infrastructure or for military operations. So like what we can see in this dystopian future that we're building is that any attempt to protest these data centers is going to be a national security issue. So terrorism charges, we've been seeing an expansion of that term as well. So what we see is
06:01 that there is a concern that things are kind of collapsing around us and there is no plan. There is no leadership in the Democrat or the Republican party which is why I'm running for Congress on a nonpartisan platform. You know these culture wars are basically a huge scop to get us to not actually see the real
06:18 threat that's being posed. But it's militarization of the police, the AI being integrated into the defense sector. uh you have Palunteer software platforms being used to create a national database between three-letter agencies where their uh information used to be siloed between the ATF, DEA, CIA,
06:37 FBI and we're seeing a expansion of like drones being integrated into law enforcement and once AI gets that's kind of like a game over point. I I struggle to get people to accept this reality, especially people who still want to like vote out the Trump administration, get the Democrats back in power, but as
06:54 someone who did four combat diplomats under Obama, they're very much the party of war and the expansion of the national security state. There's no vision for a better future from either of our two political camps. And so my one conclusion, and we're seeing this play out year after year, is that there is no
07:11 plan. the militization of the police and the consolidation of the national security state is the student debt plan. It's the housing crisis plan. It's the climate displacement plan. It is basically the homelessness plan. This is all part of the system and it's working exactly as it's intended. Yeah, it's
07:28 interesting cuz uh we've been covering this data center here in the Imperial Valley and there's a developer named Sebastian Ruchcci who's like zoning it and kind of exploiting these like different loopholes where he doesn't have to go through the environmental protection board to be able to build it.
07:39 But nobody knows who the end buyer is. He won't say most people think it's like Google Gemini or OpenAI or you know one of these like LLMs looking to use the data centers for large language models to power software like chat GPT and Gemini and stuff like that but I wasn't aware of the defense contractor defense
07:54 weapons industry connection >> in the jargon of the industry it's called dual use facilities that's how they're going to cut through a lot of red tape going forward as more and more local communities are going to try to mobilize their local government to stop this they're going to be like oh sorry
08:08 uh national security interests like this supersedes any of your really annoying local, you know, bleeding heart bureaucracies or administrations. So, you know, we just saw, again, I mentioned the Stargate AI Center in Michigan just get absolutely rammed through despite, you know, being shut
08:24 down by local uh city councils. >> So, we're in a pretty dystopian situation here. >> Yeah. I keep warning people like whatever you see these companies doing overseas, these corporations, these business interests, these oligarchs driving US foreign policy, they're
08:39 willing to do to you, you know, for their own interests. And that's why I've kind of really spent a lot of time talking about the Palestine issue because it is the most heightened expression of like the imperial nature of the US Empire and it has intersectionality to all of our like
08:55 issues. People still don't believe that it could happen here, but it's demonstrabably already happening. We just need to find a way to wake people up. Hey guys, just quick reminder, this entire podcast is available in audio only form on all major podcast platforms. Just look upcast in all caps.
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09:28 listen to this while you drive and don't want to look down at your phone and potentially crash and endanger your life, 5K is the way to do it. All right, that's all I want to say. Back to the interview. >> I guess in layman's terms then, what is the connection between Palestine and
09:39 data centers or the US and Israeli aggression in Palestine and the data centers being built here? >> So, there's multiple ways to to look at it. First of all, a lot of these large language models and other uh AI platforms that are now integrated into every aspect of American war fighting
09:55 capabilities, they're tested there. So like Palunteer is literally creating this national database. I think it's Foundry. There's a lot of different uh Palunteer programs to keep track of that's going to be used in a pandemic response. They're also monitoring all the signals, the phone signals in Gaza
10:09 to see how people move and function during mass displacement and disaster events. that's going to be used here. There's also concerning that Palunteer has come under a lot of controversy for like predictive policing models and mobilizing AI to do that. So like where would there be some sort of uprising?
10:26 You know during the the hurricanes on the eastern seabboard it was I think it was last year the year before there was food rotting in grocery stores. People were trying to break into the grocery stores. Police were deployed. It got really intense in some parts of Appalachia. Well that's kind of like
10:40 what we're looking at. So in military science, there's this idea of a force multiplier, which basically means that you have a certain amount of cops and a certain amount of soldiers. You can't get more of them, right? So what you do is you integrate like force multipliers, which is mobility, the uh the ability to
10:57 conduct like two operations in a night instead of three. It gives you the presence of having more boots on the ground without having more boots on the ground. So predictive policing models are force multipliers in the case that people no longer feel like following these really one-sided unjust laws. You
11:13 know, the lawlessness of the owning class and you know, we're all expected to stay in line. Well, there's never enough cops and there's never enough soldiers when these things happen. So predictive policing, largecale predictive policing is going to be a force multiplier in those things. So
11:27 we're seeing these being tested out actively uh during uh the genocidal assault in Gaza. And it's it's linked to data centers here. And one of the biggest premises of this imperial boomerang framework is if the people in control of policies use these repressive techniques or violent techniques over
11:44 there to quash disscent and they work, why wouldn't they use it here? Like that's how the modern police came into being in the first place. So why do you think the government wants to create such a broad surveillance network, figure out exactly what everyone is doing and monitor our our data
11:59 consumption habits so closely? Do you think that they're planning some kind of like further repression of civil liberties and rights here? Do you think it's already happening? Like a lot of people when you bring up data center concerns or even surveillance as a concern as a whole, a lot of people say
12:12 stuff like, "Oh, I don't care if the FBI is watching me. I'm not doing anything crazy." Like what do you think their endgame is? I think it was 2011. I was working in a tactical operations center. This is after I got my top secret security clearance and got more involved into the intelligence side of things. A
12:26 lot of controversial stuff was happening at the NSA during that time. I think some documents were leaked or I forget which whistleblower it was at the time, but a lot of these intel analysts were like, "This is kind of weird, but I'm not doing anything wrong, you know, but now we're seeing this arbitrariness and
12:41 how laws are being enforced connected with ICE and how American citizens are now being targeted. Why are we trusting the the people who are doing this?" How it works is, you know, these moral panics that are generated like after 9/11, it's used to justify more and more of this consolidation of state and
12:58 corporate power which are merging together. 911 was a nightmare for civil liberties and once these things get put into place, they never ever get repealed because there's no political reason to do so. And the big problem is it just makes so much money for a very select group of people. And so we're kind of
13:16 seeing this administration and of course I don't like to say the Trump administration because the Democrats really aren't doing anything to to resist it in any structural way because they have the same donors and they're manipulating the markets with this war in Iran, making it absolute killing,
13:31 looting the government, using our tax dollars to subsidize their business interests. You can look at it in every sector. You know, there's a connection to the prison industrial complex with ICE basically buying up all these wear uh warehouses with our tax money way over market value. Where's that money
13:47 going? And then Geo Group or Core Civic comes in and gets paid I don't know like $50 to $90 a bed to just fill up these massive like concentration camps. And also ICE is now deploying to monitor us the same kind of technologies and spyware and espionage equipment tested on Palestinians in the West Bank. So, I
14:04 think the Palestine issue came up during the 2024 election between Harris and Trump. A lot of people on the liberal side were like, I can't afford to be a single issue voter. I do understand why you would think that, but I can draw a line connecting all of this to it's one single issue. It's a very small group of
14:22 people who control this. A lot of these tech billionaires have a very, I'd say, antihuman ideology. Yeah. >> That they're championing. I wanted to get into that a little bit because you know like Larry Ellison, Larry Page and a lot of these people that are involved in big tech, they're like buying up
14:37 different media outlets with the express purpose of limiting coverage about data centers or critical coverage about data centers and of course coverage critical of Israel as well. But those seem to be their two biggest issues. And a lot of these people like Sam Alman for example is invested in a startup called Nectto
14:52 and he plans to upload his brain after he dies into a data center to be the framework for cyber immortality. And Larry Paige, co-founder of Google, who's supposedly the uh buyer behind the data center here, also believes that cyber immortality is the next step in human evolution. So, I don't want to go too
15:08 far in the tinfoil rabbit hole here, but I mean, they're saying it. I don't know if it's a >> It's not a It's not a tinfoil rabbit hole. You know, it reminds me cuz I've been really focusing, as I said before, like on the Palestine issue. People like it's not a genocide. They're doing this.
15:22 They're saying this. Well, you go into Hebrew media and you have like ministers be like, "Oh, yeah, no, we're trying to cleanse the entire strip. We want to build a dystopian smart city and use whatever Palestinians are left as like a slave labor force to build it. And then people are like we we they they're
15:36 telling us what they want to do. We're just like not listening. >> But the dystopian nightmare would be like total population control cuz these guys also believe in genius theory. So like gutting of the working class, eraser of the common person, there's only a select few people left on Earth.
15:51 Data centers exist. Humans don't. Only the richest people inside of the cloud. Yeah, presumably you'd still need like a subservient human class to like maybe manage some functions like maybe like pick strawberries or something because if they are not able to upload the brain I I assume they will need food of some
16:09 sort. No, that's kind of what we're seeing go into place. This is kind of like the natural like end stage of our political and e economic system where power is concentrated amongst a really small group of people to like like pre-French revolution standards and they are willing to give up nothing.
16:27 Absolutely nothing. You know, we're here in California there's supposed to be a wealth tax which we're calling an anti-revolution tax because people are starting to like wake up. Most people are now identifying as independent voters. Like there are a lot of common issues. We're seeing a complete
16:41 transformation. At least I am, who's running in one of the only districts in Texas who's never been represented by a Democrat. Talking to voters, I really have not experience anyone talking about like culture war issues anymore. Like this is very pressing for people who live there and it's becoming more of a a
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18:49 video. So you think that with these data centers being the blueprint of the future American apocalypse, we'll get to a point where the class war can defeat the culture war in the media zeitgeist as far as Americans being hypnotized to think a certain way. >> I'm only speaking for a select a really
19:03 small um geographical landscape, but I'm I'm just not seeing it >> at all. Um >> I'm only seeing in like gentrified corridors. That's where you still see culture war absolutely booming. >> Yeah. >> And like in bland suburbs outside of
19:16 blue cities. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, if you don't have to worry about the price of gas being $6 a gallon and that won't like bankrupt you, yeah, of course you can keep talking about, you know, men and women's sports or however they frame it. >> And do you think that like um some of
19:29 the big tech overlords who are also invested in AI data centers and >> they're the ones pushing this crap on my algorithm? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I it's it's literally what we call a psychological operation. >> And in short, how would you explain what
19:41 that scop is? The SCOP is to break any sort of class solidarity and to get you to envy billionaires and live in false consciousness with them. You know, like one day I could be like Elon Musk or he cares about he talks about universal basic income. You're never getting that dude. Like so um it it's to glorify this
20:04 picture of wealth. See it's attainable without actually like criticizing the economic system that has allowed a small group of people to dominate everything in life. There was a ton of different scops. I was kind of adjacent to like psychological operations when I was in the military. But like the red pill grow
20:18 culture is like the most brilliant way to like protect capitalism and you know this massive accumulation and concentration of power, you know, by making it all about the individual. This is what you need to do to become a high value man and attract women, but you also hate women and you need to escape
20:34 the matrix even though the matrix is really what's alienating you. It's called capitalism. Uh, it's very individualistic. It's meant to take young men away from any sort of collective action or being part of anything else. It's very like lonely and it's manufactured that way.
20:50 >> What sios do you think of fractured the left? >> The things I mostly pay attention to are like what comes out of like DNC think tanks like chorus and third way and democratic politicians claiming to be on the left and like you might be progressive I guess but the left really
21:05 begins at like anti- capitalism. And honestly, when it comes to like left, like people on the left, we don't need scops to like fight each other at this point because there's just so many different like types of ideologies. Um, so no, I I think it's mostly about the distinction between like liberals and
21:22 who still believe in like the Democratic party as an entity uh that can somehow just get back in the midterms and turn this whole franchise around. Been trying that for 40 years and it hasn't been working. So a lot of like the the talking points are like manufactured be like oh you want something different
21:38 well what's your plan dude what's your plan you've been trying the same thing for 40 years and it's what got us here progressive reform politics and honestly as someone who identifies more with the actual political left I have a lot more in common with people who identify as conservative because they're like closer
21:56 to socialism than liberals I I see like one of the big talking points is a pseudo soociological theory called the horseshoe theory that they talk about you go far enough left or too far right you meet in the middle and we you know establishment dems can sit right here on the top of the horseshoe on the moral
22:12 high ground but the system at least for them especially for the money DNC elites and the donors it works for them it works for them and so they also push culture war issues too like a a big thing that happened over the past two years was to criticize the Palestine movement and and and try to keep it
22:33 separate from other uh movements associated with marginalized groups. Keep it separate from ICE. Keep it separate from like black liberation and stuff like that. So keep all these things departmentalize and break apart any sort of intersectionality and that's kind of like the biggest fear u that
22:49 they have. Well, I mean revolutions happen when resource scarcity like truly comes and these data centers might push us to that point. I would hate for people to not have access to water and stuff like that, but I mean I have noticed that even Americans who talk about like revolution like during the um
23:02 the stop the steel movement when people were storming the capital. I mean they were being spun up by Fox News and a number of like more cynical grifter pundits at the end of the day Cracker Barrel was still open. 7-Eleven was still open. So like after a long day of yelling they can kind of they have this
23:16 cushion of consumerism and resource availability that kind of would stop them from I don't know throwing a Molotov cocktail or actually taking up arms against the government. But when people lose access to gasoline, water, electricity, that's when, talk about a collapse of cultural war issues. That's
23:29 when people don't give a about, like you said, men and women sports, and they decide to really come together and figure out what they can do to undo that situation and stabilize the situation. Do you expect data centers ecologically driving us to that point of scarcity? >> Well, I think data centers are one part
23:44 of a bigger picture, but yeah, absolutely. Um, because they want to put everything on a meter. It's not just access to water, it's access to any sort of information. You know, they've stolen all the art and all the literature and all the cinema and they're going to hoard it and then they're going to sell
23:58 it back to us as Sam Alman says on a meter. Every part of our life, not just water, not just electricity, is going to be literally paidwalled by a couple of people who own everything. And in order for us to have access to the basics for survival, we're going to have to pay them. If not, homeless. If not, that's
24:15 going to get that's going to be a prison sentence and then you can go work uh in a legalized slave labor for like a few cents a day. Um so it's not just that like everything will be paywalled. Um and of course the water and the food uh and the electricity are going to be like the most I don't know poignant examples
24:34 of that but it's going to be everything. >> You mentioned the prison industrial complex a lot when you talk about data centers. Could you kind of flesh that out a bit for people who haven't heard >> in terms of like >> people you you drew I saw a clip that Zoe sent me where you were talking about
24:47 how the data centers want to eliminate the working class, force people into poverty. Everything is engineered toward putting people in a position to become custody of the state and you know press license plates and stuff for 20 cents an hour. Could you kind of explain that pipeline a bit and the connection
25:01 between the prison industrial complex and the data centers? >> Yeah, look all of this is for profit, right? this what we we have to, you know, national security, the expansion of the police state, it's all making money. It's washing tax money out of the public sector and into the private
25:17 sector for defense contractors or prison contractors. Um, and so we can we can look at the expansion of data centers that are literally trying to replace humans. you know, uh, Sam Alman has this, uh, Open AI has this infamous quip like, you know, it takes a long time and a lot of energy to train humans, you
25:35 know, and like once an AI model's trained, it just keeps perpetuating that. Um, I think we're anticipating a lot of these tech billers anticipate a time where, as you mentioned, we're kind of like redundant. We're actually a burden, you know, because first of all, we're a liability. What happens if we
25:49 unite and say like, "Okay, this government's not going to do anything to halt this. So, we're going to have to Well, where are you going to house all these people that you replace and who are on the street with nothing better to do than cause problems, you know? You don't want like an unstable population
26:06 going? You don't want mass migration events. They just destabilize everything. So concern is and they're build they're certainly building the infrastructure for this is to house more humans than can be accounted for through ICE or deportation operations. So what is it for? We do expect those to get
26:23 filled somehow in the dystopian future. Like they're literally reopening the concentration camps from World War II that we put Japanese citizens or American Japanese citizens in um after Pearl Harbor. It's literally insane. So it's happening before our eyes, in front of our eyes. And one of the things, one
26:44 of the big issues I have with u activists that I interact with is they don't actually see that happening. Like it it it's too far. It's too it's too dystopian for the sci. It's too sci-fi. I literally just watched a live stream genocide for the past 2 years on my phone while being gas lit that it's not.
27:01 I used to be adjacently involved in kinetic strike targeting operations. I know that what the IDF were doing. They were trying to destroy and delete an entire population, but there's still something because we grew up in this like consumer culture and we can watch the next show on Netflix and then buy
27:18 something that it doesn't seem as real. We're kind of like placated and uh sedated by this. And I've lived in other countries. We are kind of like one of the more complacent populations, I say, and it's been engineered that way. We're dealing and fighting against generation after generation of propaganda that
27:36 tells us it can't happen here. that this is, you know, the bastion of democracy and freedom. But I don't know if if you ever served in the military, you know that we don't do that around here or any sort of intelligence service. We don't really support that. >> You mean like we attempt to have a
27:48 revolution on domestic soil and the government like kills everybody? >> Uh well, people think it can't happen here like the dystopian future that we're discussing in this conversation. >> So you're talking about like reduction in population. >> Yeah. The Malthusian is a
28:00 >> anybody who speaks out against the government goes to jail. Yeah. >> Or is eliminated or turned into a >> migration. That's that's too crazy, you know? It's it's never happened before. There's no historical precedent. And that's what I get frustrated because like there's no structural analysis of
28:14 anything going on. Like no principled ideology, just like vibes, you know, Gavin Newsome's going to run for president, you know, fix everything. It's just it's just insane. And uh we learned nothing. We've learned nothing. But the people I have the easiest time connecting with are people who identify
28:31 as conservatives. Yes. um you know because you know they got lambasted for years and years and years actually talking about this being like no we don't want to just abolish you know all this we ICE we want to abolish like the Patriot Act as well everything that came out of the global war on terror they got
28:49 called conspiracy theorists about the Epstein files and all this and uh they're closer to uh actually seeing what's going on than people who carry signs to no kings protest saying if Kla Harris were president I'd be at brunch right now. >> Yeah, that's an actual sign.
29:05 >> Oh, you haven't seen those photos? No, I haven't. It's It was It's a trend at these No Kings protest rallies >> which are funded by billionaires. >> Walmart sign up. >> Yeah, Walmart sign up. Exactly. There's a whole I saw a whole carousel deck that someone put together by this one
29:20 trending sign is Yes. If Harris were president, we'd be at brunch right now. And that's that's the issue. >> Even the title No Kings, it's like it ignores the reality of like Americans elected this guy. >> Yeah. Like people love him in the interior of the country. Yeah, but also
29:32 he's not a king. We've never had kings. We have something worse. It's called imperial presidents. >> Yeah. >> You know, so >> yeah, >> kings can afford to be like beneficent. Presidents don't really do that.
29:44 >> Also, like you mentioned some of those early kind of whistleblowers in like the probably more conservative leaning libertarian sphere blowing the whistle on like mass surveillance and stuff. I feel like there was a different SCOP that happened after the Occupy movement in particular to like shroud all of
29:57 their very real concerns with like unbelievable like QAnon and flat earth. Even the word Jeffrey Epstein had like basically been lumped in with like Pizzagate and all these like deliberately deployed pieces of misinformation. We're just kind of now coming out of that fog of like, wait,
30:09 this was true, this wasn't. This was true, this wasn't. And it's it's it's kind of a nice time right now, honestly. Like you're seeing more unity, at least on the internet and with people that I know in real life, than you had 5 10 years ago. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the the
30:22 libertarian aspect. Uh when I was still working at Mint Press News uh like last year, I interviewed John Kuryaku who blew the was a CIA officer who blew the whistle on the uh enhanced interrogation techniques program and yeah, we disagree on like some stuff economically, but everybody's kind of like getting on the
30:39 same page with what's what's going forward. So, it's an interesting time. It's it's be the the deployed misinformation and now these techno wizards control the algorithms and like >> yeah like really pushing stuff that has no business being in my feed >> like what like I don't know like I don't
30:55 really deal too much with like the manosphere or like culture war issues. It's mostly just like uh recipes I never will ever cook some cat memes and like Warhammer 40k painting tutorials. But now, no, I'm I'm getting like a lot of like pro-Iranian monarchist propaganda
31:12 >> for what's his name? Resa Pavali. >> Oh, yes. The Yes. The the crown prince. Yeah. So, it's absolutely insane. >> Yeah. But you think we're going to be okay in the long run. You think it's too late? >> Well, I always do call to actions. I mean, look, none of this none of buying
31:27 CBS, installing Barry Weiss as the propagandist chief, buying Tik Tok, it's actually not coming from a place of strength. You know, if you were that concern, like if you were that confident in your position, why would you have to be doing all of this that people is actually bringing more attention to the
31:44 amount of power that you actually have to be executing these tasks, to be buying these companies, to be influencing this kind of policy. If you were really in that control, you could just be in the shadows and be like the cigarette man from the XFiles. But they're not doing that. So structurally,
31:58 I don't really see this as coming from a position of strength. There's a lot of fear behind it. You can see how like triggered a lot of these billionaires are getting when Zora mom Donnie goes and says like we're going to tax the rich. They're like that's like saying racial slurs like the n-word, you know?
32:12 I I think they are kind of getting scared and if they weren't, they wouldn't need to do all this. >> Yeah. It probably is from a place of insecurity like all the mergers and media acquisitions. You mentioned the the algorithmic control like how Larry Ellison bought like I think 15% of Tik
32:24 Tok's algorithm. It's sad because you know the internet was supposed to be the antidote to what people saw as like the broken and corrupt press of yester year. You know, we grew up with the 24-hour news cycle and just like partisan punditry dominating the airwaves. And there was a brief moment in time, I
32:37 think around 2019, right when I kind of started, where the internet was a place where you could start as an independent journalist and build a grassroots following without the co-sign or algorithmic signal boost of one of these tech billionaires. Nowadays, the only way to really blow up as an independent
32:50 journalist would be like to follow the lead of one of the culture war scares that the president sets into motion. Like for example, if I were just like a someone cynically trying to make as much money as possible doing interviews, I would just latch on to whatever culture war scare exists because I know that
33:06 it'll be promoted all the way. Like Somali fraud in Minnesota, Haitians eating cats in Springfield, Ohio, Venezuelan gang takeover in Colorado. Each one of these immigrant scares, like you can make microeconomies emerge for creators within those spaces themselves. So you don't even need XFiles cigarette
33:23 guy to tell you what to do to advance the SCOP. Even the economic incentive is enough to have an independent contractor to follow that lead on his own. >> Yeah. I just wanted to bring up cuz uh we we were talking earlier about like the Somali like moral panic or the Haitian stuff. Like every time these
33:37 marginalized groups are like targeted by these culture war stuff, it's always like a foreign policy objective in the backfield. First of all, we need more regional dominance in the Horn of Africa to uh to counter Houthy power over the Gulf of Aiden. Israel is now getting really involved in Somali land. Uh we
33:55 want to build five bases in Somalia. Now again, now we're doing really public like anti-ISIS operations, sending in sealed teams and Delta Force into Somalia for some reason for the first time. At the same time, just when this breaks out about, you know, Somalians, you know, contaminating the food supply,
34:12 Eric Prince is running mercenary armies in there. Seventh Special Forces Group is over there. Half a port of Prince's air base is apparently being used for uh military uh action landing. Uh it's not a military airfield, but it is a short bombing run away from Cuba. And then, you know, Venezuela, obviously, we just
34:30 did a coup there. So, yeah, there's always foreign policy implications there, too. So, it's like culture wars, but also meant to progress foreign policy objectives. So, kind of have to ask the question, who's mobilizing these creators as well? Why does it align in certain ways that are kind of suspect? I
34:47 I don't spend too much time talking about it because I am not able to draw like a linear line between it, but it's just something to to be vigilant about too. Like definitely. Well, I mean the goal is to like manufacture domestic consent for imperial action and media is the best way to do that. Even just to
35:02 create buzzword associations in people's minds, you know, like oh Somalia pirates go there. So Hollywood plays a big role in that too. >> Yeah. >> As far as your campaign, when is voting day? How can somebody vote for you or get involved?
35:14 >> If you are a US citizen, uh you can contribute to Stoker for Texas uh campaign um through donations or you can volunteer for phone banking. If you live in the district, we'd love to have you working on like canvases and like community building. We we're going to start showing up at a lot of these
35:29 community action meetings to fight the data centers and um try to use the infrastructure of electoral politics to help with community organizing and cuz a lot of these different communities are kind of like isolated and siloed away from each other. There's not like all these different like townships coming
35:45 together to like fight as like one unified entity. So, we want to do that. And if you'd like to help out with that, you can volunteer. You can just uh keep keep watching the congressional race for uh Texas District 31. It's me, a Democrat, and a Republican. I'm the nonpartisan uh candidate. The general
36:01 election is November 3rd of this year. >> So, you got a long ways to go. >> Yeah, I'm gonna be around yapping for quite a long time. >> Well, I hope you win, man. Oh, and you know a lot of stuff, too. You make me feel like I need to learn more stuff. So, I want to know where do you get your
36:14 news from on a daily basis. >> Like, when it comes to the Palestine stuff, um I like Harets because it's like a liberal Zionist outlet that sometimes gives away the game. Um, I do a lot of I follow a lot of like independent journalists and it depends on like the subject matter. So when it
36:29 comes to like environmental impacts by military uh data centers and stuff like that like the Empire Files like Abby Martin, I don't know. I just just kind of like suck it all up and try to read as much as possible. Some of them a lot of what I read is actually not news. It is think tank pieces like especially
36:47 like hawkish think tanks like the Atlantic Council, um the National Endowment for Democracy. So you can actually see what the endgame is and what the imperial plan is both abroad and at home. So I read a lot of think tank pieces that I hate from institutions that I loathe because again
37:04 they say what they actually want to do and what they're going to do. >> What's the most loathome think tank piece you came across in recent memory? >> It must have been something from the Atlantic Council. They have this uh this fellow who's a Palestinian that basically champions apartheid. So,
37:19 probably one of his editorials. Very useful uh for the imper uh Imperial consent manufacturing. >> Yeah, totally. They have some of those in the south, too. Mhm. >> Like black people's Confederate flag hats. >> Oh, yeah. It's very, very useful.
37:31 >> I like how you said you connect more with like conservatives nowadays than you do like liberals. >> Yeah. >> You know, cuz at least the conservatives like speak their mind. Typically know how much the gas is. >> Yeah. And also, you know, since I'm
37:42 running as a left candidate in a conservative district, I'm not going to be attacked by the Republicans. the DNC is going to be who who comes after me for siphoning away votes. It's like, look, if you're if you're going to vote Democrat, you're going to vote Democrat in Texas. Like, you're not going to
37:57 court conservative votes. You maybe get some independent ones, but I'm not going to be taking um away any of your guys' stuff, but the thing is they're just like threatened by a more progressive alternative to the Democratic party that can actually bring in former conservative or actual conservative
38:14 voters. So my my position has always been the uh the Democratic party doesn't exist to defeat Republicans. It exists to block progressive candidates for access to political power. So it's kind of what we're looking forward to going into uh November. >> And on a solidarity level, have you seen
38:29 like a lot of similar demonstrations and resistance movements across the country when it comes to data centers? >> Yeah. Um the one thing that we we kind of like want to bridge the gap is like a lot of conservatives have a lot of experience like getting ready for like disaster events and like organizing like
38:46 locally about like very like centric issues but they don't have a lot of experience in like grassroots activism with different like issues like interconnected like solidarity. You know it worked so well when Fred Hampton did in Chicago with the Rainbow Coalition that the FBI had to assassinate him. So,
39:02 we're trying to get those vibes back, I guess. >> Well, I guess now the FBI doesn't have to assassinate you. They could just smear you and algorithmically suppress you into oblivion. >> You'll die from poverty. >> Yeah, we'll see what happens with that.
39:13 >> Well, good luck. >> Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for your time, man. Appreciate it. That was awesome. >> Hey, I would just also like to say real quick that we just launched our own independent streaming platform called C5.now.
39:25 Available on smart TV, as an app on your phone, on Roku, and elsewhere as well, like on the web browser. We made it to give other people a platform to post their sick ass and get paid fairly while doing it by offering a very competitive 100% creator forward residual share. We just put out a new
39:41 film today actually directed by David Bim about a crocodile hunter in Cuba during the pandemic. It's called To the West in Zapata. Here's the trailer. Heat. Heat. Heat up Baby,
41:05 heat. All right, there it was. Artsy. If you want to check out that amazing documentary film again, go to c5.now. I'm going to put the link in the description box and pin comment of this video. >> Channel 5 live worldwide, Hollywood and
41:38 Vine. the authority. Channel 5 News, channel 55. We don't with custers and five is the best number.
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