Morning Wire - Nashville Mourns Shooting Victims & A.I. Misinformation Monitors | 3.29.23

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

The city of Nashville continues to mourn three children and three adults who were killed in a Nashville school shooting, the Federal Government has awarded millions of dollars in grant money toward online A.I. speech monitors, and backlash in France continues over the president’s pension reform. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.  Balance of Nature: Get 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Use promo code WIRE at checkout: https://www.balanceofnature.com/ Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The lives of three adults and three children are mourned in Nashville and across the nation. I listen to him say, we know she's in the arms of Christ, and we know he loves her more than he did. What else have we learned about the shooter and the potential motive? We strongly believe there was going to be some other targets, including maybe family members and one of the malls here in Nashville. I'm DailyWire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, March 29, and this is Morningwire.

New reports reveal the federal government has awarded millions in grants for the development of tools to monitor speech online. How would the AI tools work and is the use of this technology legal? And backlash in France continues over President Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms. What is Macron's strategy and what impact are the strikes having? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. A day after the Christian school shooting that rocked the city of Nashville,

new details began to emerge regarding the 28-year-old shooter and the heroic response from police officers on the scene. Who are the latest is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips. Cabot, we now have some body cam footage and a better understanding of the shooter and potential motives. Tell us what we've learned over the last 24 hours. Yeah, when we last spoke, we were still piecing together reports trying to get an idea of the timeline,

we now have a much better idea of what happened. Surveillance footage shows the shooter approaching the school at around 10.15, camo pants and a military-style vest with multiple guns draped over her shoulder. She then shoots through the glass-side doors and calmly crawls through into the school. At that point, she begins wandering around,

appearing to look for victims. We also got our first look at the harrowing body cam footage from police. Yeah, by now, we're all accustomed to seeing body cam footage following a high-profile crime, but this footage is just as intense as you can imagine. It comes from the body cams of officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Colazo. The footage starts as they arrive at the school, and within 60 seconds, they are already rushing through the school's front doors.

Let's go. I need three. One more. Let's go. Metro Police. When they get inside, alarms are blaring. and they begin clearing the school room by room. Remember, when they got there,

they had no idea where the shooter was. After about two minutes, they hear gunshots coming from the second level, and they rush up a stairwell. At this point, they began running down a hall towards the sound, at one point passing a victim lying motionless on the ground. Listen, as they run upstairs straight towards the sound of the gunfire. Push it.

Go. Shots fire. Shots fire. As those shots get loud, the team of five officers turns a corner to an atrium, where Officer Engelbert, fires off three shots from his rifle, dropping the shooter. The footage is difficult to watch for a number of reasons, but it gives an idea of just how heroic these officers were and how many lives they saved by acting without hesitation. Yeah, their courage really was inspiring. The police also offered more insight into the shooter and potential motives. Tell us about that. On Tuesday, police made sure to clarify that despite rumors, they've yet to discover evidence showing that specific victims were targeted. At the moment, the assumption is that the shooter simply shot in discreet.

But it is important to note, National Police Chief John Drake did say the school was clearly targeted for a reason. She went to that actual school. And so there's some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school. I don't have all the details of that just yet. And that's why this incident occurred. Police say the shooter had recently purchased seven guns, including the three she used during the shooting from five local stores in the area. They also say that she hid them from her parents because they felt she should not. own weapons due to her mental state. That's the other big thing we learned. Police say she was receiving medical treatment for what they called an emotional disorder,

and there was also a report that the shooter may have been autistic. As we reported yesterday, police have also noted that she appears to have recently begun identifying as transgender, listing the pronouns he, him online. Police say just before heading to the school, the shooter messaged an old friend saying, quote, I'm planning to die today. You'll probably hear about me on the news. And then, quote, I'm not trying to upset you or get attention. I just need to die.

That message prompted the friend to call police, but by then the shooting had already begun. And one final note on the shooter, police say they will not be releasing the contents of her manifesto until their investigation is complete. But they did reveal some details from her writing. There was a map of the school, a drawing of how potentially she would enter

and the assaults that would take place. It's quite a bit of writing to it. I have not read the whole entire manifesto. Our team and the FBI have been working on this. Now, I want to close with the victims. What more have we learned about the six people whose lives were taken Monday? Well, in addition to Dr. Catherine Coons,

the school's principal, there was also Cynthia Boyle's Peak, who was at the school that day as a substitute teacher and 61-year-old Mike Hill, who worked as a custodian and on the kitchen staff. He'd been there over a decade. There was nine-year-old Evelyn Dickhouse. Her fifth-grade sister, Eleanor, survived the shooting

but was heard crying individual Monday night. There was nine-year-old Will Kinney. Family and friends described as unflappable and unfailingly kind. And finally, there was nine-year-old Hallie Scruggs. Hallie's father is Chad Scruggs, the senior pastor at Covenant Presbyterian. He released a one-sentence statement after his daughter's death. Through tears, we trust that she is in the arms of Jesus, who will raise her to life once again. Well, many, many prayers, including ours, are with those families.

Kappa, thanks for reporting. That was Daily Wire's senior editor, Kappa Phillips. Multiple new reports find that the federal government, has been giving out millions and grants to develop AI speech monitoring tools. Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham, joins us to discuss. So, Megan, for a few months now, you've been reporting on efforts by the government to control information online via Twitter and some of these other platforms. But this news isn't related to that. You know, not really. This is actually something else.

So there were two different reports last week related to this. One came from the higher education news site, College Fix. And then the other came from the political news outlet, the Federalist. And both of those are on the right end of the political spectrum, by the way. So the College Fix report focused on about $6 million in grants that the National Science Foundation gave out to a group of five professors from several different universities to develop an AI fact-checking tool that they call course correct. So the system would use machine learning and natural language processing to crawl social media

and identify people or groups who might be, quote, at risk for believing or spreading so-called misinformation. Then it would, according to them, combat their skepticism by targeting them with facts and information that would encourage their trust in government institutions. Now, the federalist's reporting covered a similar development. So we're all pretty familiar with how communication tech firms can track data for retailers and other companies. Think of something like how. Amazon knows you clicked on a lawn equipment site and then it starts suggesting lawnmowers to you. Well, since 2020, the Department of Defense has awarded 500 contracts to some of these companies

to develop programs that use their monitoring and tracking technology to combat what they call misinformation. So usually I think of that being like targeted ads. How would that actually work in practice when it comes to misinformation? Well, according to the Federalists report, with the aid of AI and machine learning, this technology would actually be able to identify the source of mis or disinformation as it's published. And then it would isolate and de-amplify it before it could spread. So what that really means is it could squelch, say, for example, news from disfavored outlets before the public had an opportunity to read or hear it and judge for themselves how sound it is. And going by who's receiving these grants, it could really cover any discourse that happens online.

One company that received a $1.5 million grant peak metrics tracks millions of websites, blogs, social media apps, podcasts, mass emails, another that was awarded about the same, calls data from newspapers, TV networks, even messaging apps, and more. So really, anything that is written or said digitally. And when you combine the capabilities of these companies with the power of AI, you start to see just how quickly this gets into some constitutionally dangerous territory. Right. So the government would be able to de-amplify the reach of news sources they don't like. How is that legal?

Well, I think a big part of this debate is that the technological development's been going on so quietly that the courts are really just now starting to address it. And claims about needing to police information that are constitutionally, as you said, very questionable, are being accepted right now at face. value. And that was something that independent journalist Michael Schellenberger addressed during a House judiciary hearing on Twitter censorship earlier this month. We were fighting ISIS recruiting, and then it was Russian disinformation. And now they're in a situation where they're wanting to censor true information, accurate facts, because they're worried that people might behave in

ways that they don't want them to. That involves mind reading at a level that is grossly inappropriate. Absolutely. Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham. Coming up, backlash over France's pension reform continues. Hey guys, producer Brandon here. Do you struggle to get through the day without relying on caffeine and sugar? Consider adding balance of nature to your daily routine.

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Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to give us the latest on Macron's fight to raise France's retirement age. Hey Tim, how much pressure is Macron feeling right now? A lot. So last week on Thursday, according to one estimate, about 800,000 people took to the streets across France to protest the pension reforms. Police arrested about 450 people and over 400 officers reported being injured in the riots that day. Tuesday's protests were still quite large. Cars and a bank were burned.

And this goes back weeks, even months at this point, right? Right. The protesting is now into its third month. The unrest began about mid-January with backing from opposition leaders who berated Macron's cabinet in Parliament, in union leaders who have been organizing national days of striking. As a result, a lot of public transportation and public services have been restricted or shut down. Here's just one example. Garbage collection in Paris stopped several weeks ago, so alongside the husks of vehicles torched and riots, thousands of tons of trash currently lined Paris's streets waiting to be picked up.

That doesn't sound pleasant. Probably not. Macron is forged ahead so far despite polling with the highest disapproval numbers of his presidency. And on Tuesday, French economist Philippe Aguon became the latest Macron ally to abandon him. Agion said the president should put the reform on hold and take some time to reset the country. All right, so losing allies fast. What's Macron's strategy? He wants to write it out, and he has some reason to believe he can. His government survived two no-confidence votes in Parliament earlier this month.

And the mass unrest lessened some this week. The crowds were noticeably lighter, and some of the protest leaders may run out of steam soon. The CGT Union, which represents Paris sanitation workers, said Tuesday that it was calling off its strike because, quote, we hardly have any strikers left. And how much longer do we think Macron needs to last to ride this thing out? That's unclear, because while there are signs that the unrest could be breaking, there's still a committed opposition to Macron's reforms. It's important to note that these are national protests, so pretty much every major city is filling the effects of this. unrest forced McCrone this week to postpone indefinitely an official visit by Britain's King Charles. And of course, the troubles aren't just diplomatic. The Eiffel Tower, maybe France's most well-known landmark, is closed because workers are on strike. Same thing with the Louvre.

About 15% of France's gas stations are short of fuel because of refinery strikes, and at least one nuclear reactor in southwestern France has been shut down. It's going to be interesting to see if Macron keeps it up or caves. Tim, thanks for reporting. Sure, thanks for having me on. That was Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. Other stories we're tracking this week. According to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, FTCS founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with directing $40 million in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets related to his cryptocurrency business. The new charge of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act raised the number of charges Bankman-Fried now faces to 13. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.

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