The President's Daily Brief - November 24th, 2023: Killer Robots, Indian Assassins, & Wuhan Warnings

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

In this episode of The President's Daily Brief: We dive into the global controversy surrounding the deployment of AI-controlled drones and the mounting pressure for international regulation.   A covert assassination initiative out of India is unearthed as an attempt on the life of a Sikh separatist in the U.S. is thwarted.   Documents surface, indicating that U.S. scientists expressed alarm over the safety protocols at the Wuhan virology lab well before the pandemic was on anyone's radar.   The Back of the Brief segment features a CBP internal memo instructing agents about pronoun use during public interactions.   Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief.   Email: [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's Friday, November 24th. If you're in the U.S., I hope you had a very relaxing and happy Thanksgiving. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. In today's PDB, we'll start by examining the intensifying debate over AI-controlled drones and the increasing calls for international oversight. Later, we'll investigate a secret Indian assassination program and a disrupted plot to assassinate

a Sikh separatist living in the U.S. Plus, newly released documents reveal that U.S. researchers harbored serious safety concerns about the Wuhan-coronavirus lab for a longer period than previously understood. Finally, in the back of the brief, an internal memo from U.S. Customs and Border Protection warrants its agents not to, wait for it, not to misgender members of the public. But first up, the PDB spotlight. Today, I wanted to start the program with a topic straight out of science fiction, killer robots. And by that, I don't mean the likes of the T-800 from the Terminator saga,

or anything you may have seen on Mystery Science Theater 3,000, still one of the finest shows ever produced, by the way. The real story is about AI-controlled drones that are becoming less fiction by the day. As it stands, the U.S., China, and Israel are on the front lines of bringing these automated warriors from concept to reality. There's already a bit of an arms race when it comes to these AI weapons, and the Pentagon isn't being secretive about its ambitions. Earlier this year, it revealed plans to deploy swarms of AI-enabled drones designed to counter those that are already being developed by China. So, how do these drones differ from the ones that we've seen already in conflict zones like Ukraine or Gaza?

The answer is autonomy. These drones don't just fly themselves. They can select and engage targets based on AI algorithms without human decision-making. This means that for the first time, the decision of life or death isn't in human hands, but is processed and executed by algorithms. Traditional battlefield decisions are getting a high-tech makeover where the machine could make the final call. Now, while this may seem like new ground, the U.S. military has been tiptoeing into autonomous warfare for some time. Certain missile defense systems already boast the ability to autonomously detainable.

tracked and neutralized threats. However, there's a catch. The current policy mandates that human operators must have the ability to override these systems if they start behaving unpredictably. But this is where waters get murky. Despite safeguards, there's a global debate brewing on whether international law should step in to regulate these AI soldiers. As of now, there's no international treaty to put a leash on this new breed of weapon. The call for oversight has reached the United Nations, well, that should give us all comfort, with several countries pushing for a legally binding resolution to restrict AI-operated killer robots. However, the United States, along with Russia, Australia, and Israel,

well, they're hedging their bets on a less restrictive approach, advocating for a non-binding resolution or a code of conduct instead. It's a classic standoff between technological advancement and ethical oversight. Again, the concept of taking the human out of the target selection and final decision-making process isn't new. In fact, decades ago, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union developed what was referred to as the dead-hand system, which allowed for the launch of nuclear weapons at U.S. targets in the event the Soviet command and control infrastructure was destroyed and no one was left to issue orders to launch the nukes.

The system would function on its own, unleashing a retaliatory strike without human input. The problem here is that technology has advanced exponentially since the Cold War, and AI, well, it's a genie in a bottle that we don't fully understand. But fear of what adversaries may accomplish, weapons capabilities using AI that they may develop, that fear will likely override the very real ethical concerns over removing the human element from the decisions over life and death. As with the weaponization of space, the development of AI-enabled weapons technology is fully

underway, and now, frankly, we're simply trying to put up fencing after the horse has gotten out of the barn. When we return, new details emerge about a secret Indian assassination program, and newly released documents raise more questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I'll be right back. Welcome back. Here's a story that's not getting nearly the attention it deserves. In a stunning revelation, U.S. authorities have foiled a plot to assassinate a Sikh activist on American soil.

The target of that assassination was Gertatawant and I, apologize for the pronunciation, Grapatawan Singh Panah, an advocate for the creation of a separate Sikh state known as Kalistan, who holds citizenship in both the United States and Canada. He serves as general counsel for a group called Sikhs for justice, which is actively campaigning for this independent state. The seriousness of the threat escalated to the point where the United States issued a warning to the Indian government citing concerns that they were directly involved in the conspiracy. The specifics of the U.S. warning, as reported by the Financial Times, remain unclear, including whether it deterred the plotters or if the FBI directly thwarted an

already unfolding scheme. Separate from the diplomatic warning, the U.S. Department of Justice is involved as well. U.S. federal prosecutors have filed a sealed indictment against at least one alleged perpetrator of the plot in a New York district court. If this all sounds familiar to you, it's because this plot mirrors a similar incident in Canada where Hardy Singh Nijjar, a prominent Sikh independence advocate, was murdered earlier this year. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau disclosed in September that investigations were underway into credible allegations of Indian government agents' involvement in Nijar's assassination outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia.

Of course, the Indian government has staunchly rejected any allegations of involvement in the murder, leading to a growing diplomatic rift with Canada. Nevertheless, the pattern of events the murder in Canada and the disrupted assassination plot here in the U.S. suggests a larger campaign targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists across various nations. A secret intelligence assessment from Pakistan, exposed by the intercept, implicate India's intelligence agency, the research and analysis wing, in plotting to murder Sikh activists, particularly those residing abroad in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Pakistan. This conflict stems from the Sikh separatist movement that is particularly

popular in the state of Punjab. India considers many members of that movement to be terrorists. India has criticized nations with significant Sikh populations, like Canada and the UK, for their perceived leniency towards these groups, which India regards as a severe national security concern. All right. The story about the origins of the COVID-19 virus has fallen off the radar a bit, but we're getting new details that are worth our time. Specifically, new revelations about the controversy and suspicion surrounding the Wuhan

Institute of Phyology, the lab, from which the FBI and, frankly, many others, believes that COVID-19 originated. As it turns out, concerns about the lab date back at least three years before the first case of COVID-19 was ever detected. In particular, officials had long been concerned about the lab's work with genetically engineered viruses. However, these warnings either fell on deaf ears or were actively suppressed by top U.S. bureaucrats. Newly obtained records, first reported on by Vanity Fair, reveal that that, an official from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, spoke out about critical safety issues at the Wuhan Lab as far back as 2017. Those concerns were particularly pointed regarding

plans to engineer Ebola strains. Now, I think to the concern, officials at the time found a dangerous shortage of trained staff at the Institute, raising questions about Wuhan lab's operational safety. Now, here's where it gets bad, as if it wasn't already bad. When these issues were raised by an NIH official, he was reportedly told to omit them from a report to avoid provoking China. Yeah, we wouldn't want to upset the Chinese regime. And it's worth remembering that Dr. Anthony Fauci was running the NIH at the time. Now, this wasn't an isolated event. It appears that within the U.S. health bureaucracy, there was a culture of disregarding safety concerns. A year before the incident at the NIH,

U.S. energy officials warned the National Institute of Allergy and infectious diseases, the NIAID, about the perils of tinkering with pathogens. But Francis Collins, then head of the National Institutes of Health, dismissed these concerns as mere, quote, science fiction. Beyond the direct threat of a lab accident, officials also cautioned the NIH about the broader national security implications. Just months before the pandemic unfurled, the Department of Energy, energy delivered a stark warning to the NIAID, the research it was funding at the Wuhan part of which involved coronavirus studies could be exploited by the Chinese military. Now, frankly, the most obscene aspect of the entire COVID story is that the world has failed

to demand that the Chinese regime be transferred and actually cooperate with the investigation into the origins of the pandemic. Millions of people died around the globe, and yet, Xi and his regime essentially got a free pass. They've covered up, they've obfuscated, they've refused to cooperate. The reality is, we don't know for sure how the pandemic started because the Chinese regime has failed to act responsibly and show any interest in contributing to a scientific understanding

of the origins of COVID-19. And that leaves us more vulnerable to whatever the next pandemic will be. All right, coming up in the back of the brief, as record numbers of foreign nationals stream across the U.S. border, bureaucrats within the U.S. Customs and Border Protection are busy solving the real problems, like misgendering people. I'll be right back. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel

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Kayak, got that right. In today's back of the brief, in a nod to the evolving landscape of gender identity, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection memo is guiding agents to tread carefully around the issues of Pronouns. The document directs agents to steer clear of traditional pronouns like he, him, she, her in their initial public interactions. The memo instructs agents, quote, do not use he, him, she, her pronouns until you have more information about or provided by the individual. The memo goes on to suggest that these terms meanings may change over time. take another run at that. According to the memo, the meaning of the words he, him, she, and her

may change over tongue. No, it seems just as incomprehensible the second time through. But the memo doesn't stop there. This memo is practically a gender dictionary. It lists key terms with definitions next to each. Those terms include bisexual, gay, gender expression, gender identity, gender non-conforming, intersex, lesbian, non-binary, queer, questioning, sex assigned at birth, sexual orientation, transgender, transgender women, transgender man, and transitioning. Okay, honestly, there is nothing I can say that would make this particular story any less stupid. I can only salute the brave men and women of the CBP and wish them well as they navigate the gender mindfield that bureaucrats have now laid along the border.

step carefully. And that, my friends, is the president's daily brief for Friday 24 November. If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. I'm Mike Baker. I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.