Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 446: The Dank Threat Analysis (w/ Special Guest: Daniel Boguslaw)

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Today we welcome reporter and writer Daniel Boguslaw on the program to talk his latest for WIRED about what the feds are trying to do about widespread opposition to data centers among other topics of import. Daniel's piece in WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti-tech-extremism/ Support us: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty Support Daniel: https://danboguslaw.substack.com/

All right, welcome to the Trailbillies this week, everybody. It is May 28th, 2006. We're joined by Daniel Bogus Law, who, did I pronounce your last name, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hell yeah. It's like bogus law. It's like the law is bogus.

It's like the car talk guy at the end of Car Talk. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nominative determinism thing. I'm both. Daniel, I wanted to have you on this week to talk about some of your most recent reporting on AI data centers, the United States, you know, designating something called anti-tech extremism. But before we get to all that, I have a few house cleaning, a few items of house cleaning to do before we get there. First of all, I just wanted to congratulate you.

I think you're reporting on Marie Glucingham-Perez selling straight mids at Reed College. Maybe costing her the election, dog, she's down nine points in her. Wait, so is that head-to-head with the Republican or with the primary, the Dem primary guy? I think it's a Dem primary. Okay. The Democratic primary voters know, man. They know when they're getting sold a straight shape. mean if she had sold high grade perhaps it would have been doing better right now just the more

shit like i started doing that shit as a joke because like you know i had a buddy who was roommates with her during that time and it was just so funny and she was like killing chickens and she lived in this sort of like uh fucking like star wars ass fucking hovel like built out of different fucking you know buses and stuff um but then it was just like the more came out the more was like this is just like the worst evolution of this person. I heard that her husband is actually like a working class like mechanic dude, you know? And like she just

is like fucking cheating on him and like shits on him. And it just felt like it was the cartoon that I just kind of was like, oh, this is goofy like manifested into reality. It was so, yeah. The whole bus hubble thing, that checks out. You know, I'm not, listen, I'm not up to

speed on what's going on with, you know, animal husbandry in the Pacific Northwest. But I did not like it. C-line. story. Yeah, yeah. She was going, for those who have not followed

this as closely as all of us, she's trying to remove protections for sea lions that she says are eating the salmon. But it's one of those things where it just feels like, you know, everything she does,

she has like really useless messaging legislation that she does, right, about like, we can't like peel bananas and kindergartens, which is just a lie. It's just not true at all.

It's she made all of that up. And then, or then it's shit like this fucking a walrus or fucking sea lion thing where it's like okay yeah sure I get that there's probably a world where like these things are fucking eating everything and like if I was a farmer I like it just ate all my shit I would be pissed too but with Marie the question is always like what is she fucking hiding like what is this really about are they building someone told me they were thinking about building you know data center shit on the Willamette River and like is this a zoning thing

where if they get rid of this sea lion protection then there's more coastal zoning elimination So if you're any muckrakers out there have more free time than I do, you should, yeah, check out the Walrus. The Sea Lion. The Penipede. I'm not sure of the difference, and I mean no disrespect to that community either. I do. The fact checkers have weighed in, and I do have to set the record straight. It's not the primary, actually.

It is the race against the Republican. John. John Braun. His name is John Brown. John Braun. John Braun. Yeah. Haleet brother.

They, yeah, they, um, you sell Reggie and you will go down. That is really the moral of this story. But, um, but I don't know. We'll see. We'll see, that is crazy. Like, as good as the Democrats are doing so far in the midterms that she's down that far. Wait, I started. I was just have to say one more anecdote, which is that like, before she moved into the Star

Wars hovel, she, like, built what was described to me as a garage nest. So this was sort of like a raised platform in the garage. And then she installed a wood stove into like the roof of the garage. So it really was very much a Baba Yaga sort of ancient witchcraft. I was curious. When you said she was killing chickens, I was like in a centaurian fashion or like just ringing chicken next to either. You put the pieces together. There is something satanic about what's going on, I think.

It's like, there's almost like a kindred spirit thing with RFK Jr. Like they love getting animals. They have a weird thing with animals. I don't know. We've talked about that on the show before. Like, RFK Jr. might have body dysmorphia, but not like, it's like he thinks he is also an animal or something. You know what I mean? Like he maybe doesn't, he's not comfortable in his human skin suit.

Human skin, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So maybe something like that's going on with Marie. I don't know. But, but yeah, no, I mean, like I said, a few housekeeping. item speaking of the elections going into the midterms. I just wanted to do a quick update from our episode on Monday on the on the Patreon. Ken Paxton wound up winning in Texas over John Cornyn. I don't, I mean, that's pretty much what I thought was going to happen. There's really nothing

much to say and I'm sure you didn't join a podcast, Daniel, to talk about like the, you know, the horse race politics going into. of the midterms, but I don't know, it's just, I am just kind of like, I'm not surprised in any way, and I don't have any really, like, you know, great insight into any of this. All I can say, though, really, is that, like, American politics, have we ever seen a cult like this? Like, I'm not saying this in, like, the Lib sense. I'm saying it, like, in a larger, secular historical sense. Like, has there ever been a cult like this on the American political terrain. It is kind of crazy to me, like the people who were like, I'm going to hold my nose and vote for

cornice. Like, like, that he, or that Paxton was the lesser of T. Weevils. I don't know. It was just really kind of interesting watching some of the exit polling from that. I mean, I get that as someone who's a longstanding sufferer of oppositional defiance disorder. Like, it makes total sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. It does. Where you're like, this other. guys of fucking first of all I mean they both look like fucking monsters let's be clear oh yeah so fucked up

they are the creepiest looking motherfuckers I've ever seen now that aside we're talking about like xenomore physiognomy yes yes like or kind of like you know that Jedi that has like an extra heart in his head

yeah that's kind of what Corian gives like four island motherfucker yeah and then the general grievous looking motherfuckers. Paxton looks like a spell was cast on a corpse and was reanimated.

One of his eyes is not working. There's fucking flies. There's just flies buzzing around that guy. So, I mean, like, they're both horrible. But I do genuinely understand, like, the mentality, which is just, like,

Cornyn, like, this guy's establishment. Trump says this guy's a pussy. Like, like, okay, fine. Like, let's fuck it. There's that good Thomas Massey quote, which was like, I'm going to butcher it, but it's something about, like, I thought they knew about abolishing the Federal Reserve and, like, changing our currency to silver. He was like, then I realized they were just voting for the craziest motherfucker in the room. And that was me

and Rand. And so, like, that's, I actually think this shit has been going on a lot longer than Trump, you know, it's like, there's just, and especially in Texas, like the culture of that place, I feel like, it's just people like, fuck it. Like, this guy's crazy or Paxton is, Definitely crazy. Yeah. You know, fuck it. Whatever.

It's, okay, yeah. What was funny about it is like seeing people say like John Cornyn's, he went down, this is the end of

compassionate conservatism. Compassionate conservatism. This is the end? That's what they said. When did those good Mexican kids and concentration camps at the border? That's like,

yeah, that's like the, oh my God. I think it's because he worked, he worked with Kristen Sinimo one time to get like, a ban on bump stocks that never even went through or something. You know what I mean?

Like it was, it's something like that. It's like, but, but yeah, no, like that's three notches in Trump's belt, you know,

Thomas Massey went down, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and now Cornyn in Texas. The only reason I point out the, um, thing about like the sort of cult like mentality is just, what I'm, what I guess what I mean is that like, I've been reading a lot about like the sort of progressive era in the American

politics late 19th century early 20th century and like i guess i do kind of find it genuinely new maybe there was something with like Andrew jackson that might have been comparable but it feels very much like a kind of new thing on american politics like that we just don't know how to we don't know how to engage with a cult like how do you even engage with a cold on the political terrain i don't even know what you really do there right do you take them seriously you're yeah yeah we need our own guy that's what I'm saying. We need a own insane motherfucker. We do.

I'm not seeing it. I'm sorry. Like, the insurgents that we have on the left are not cutting it from me. They are like just approaching the level of insane we need to, you know. We need like a benevolent, benevolent sung young moon or something like that. You know what I mean? Like somebody appropriately insane, but not destroying people's lives. You know, I, battering people's lives.

Last week, I think I baselessly said. that Marine Galindo denied the Holocaust. I found no actual proof of that. I don't know who the fuck told me that or where I got it from. It might have come to me in a dream. But she said, you're a good candidate, man. What we're talking about.

But she did say we need to put Zionists in ice camps. That's a start, that's a, you know, started the right. Yeah, right. Well, what about, like, Huey Long, though? Like, what about people who, like, were corrupt and, like, but, like, we're populists and, like, we're fucking out of the way. their minds. Like, I think he's a good example from the area you talk about of, like, someone who was, like, pretty nutty guy, like, really his own person, but, like, did a huge amount of

good for the state, like, had an awesome platform, you know. There's a guy in Kentucky like that. Well, he's since retired. His name's Greg Stumbo, but he was always afraid of the baggage, his brother Grady. They called him Shady Grady brought to the table. But Stumbo would have been the perfect archetype for this. You know what I mean? He's like, you know, No scruples or anything like that, but like, you know, kind of has like a, the every man that is, you know, at heart, you know. I mean, yeah, it's weird. Like, I feel like, I don't know. I don't know why I like, I think corruption is bad, but I don't know, like the grand platinum stuff is interesting, right?

Where it's like they dug up all this crazy shit. People just like, eh, don't care. It doesn't fucking matter. Like, you know, that's, I like that. We should get more, you know, net jobs with PTSD on the right side of things. People with skeletons in their closet, I guess. Yeah, and on their skin, yeah, yeah. I'm also wondering, too, if sort of with the, you know, the rising sort of,

whether we're looking at pandemics or whether we're looking at what's in people's food, all these things, I'm wondering if that will create maybe a younger generation of completely insane people, you know, who can run for office, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Because, like, as someone with a small child, someone who has a child, like, I'd be like, we're wondering, like, what does, like, how much screens are okay? And, like, they tell you now, like, don't even have the TV on in the background, but I'm like, well, growing up in the 90s, we always had the TV on.

So how much of my development was stunted? And how much is it going to be even worse for the people born between, like, 2000 and 2016, right? Yeah, right. And so it's like they might have, you're right. I think I see what you're saying, Aaron. And like their grasp on reality may be so tenuous and thin that like we might get some crazy shit, you know, people tearing hearts out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like tearing hearts out in the village square, you know, zombie potion, Haitian zombie potion. Dutera, Dutera needs to make a comeback in regular politics, I think.

Yeah, esoteric rights and rituals. Yes. I would love to see make a comeback. They should smoke salvia before every debate. Yes, yes. Like every candidate should smoke salvia. Let me say, I didn't mean to besmirch the Santoreans when I was making the glucing camp reference. I was saying her version seems satan.

Yes. I wouldn't be clear. I think of Wexican. Yeah. It's like when white people do yoga. It's like it's disconnected from its origins. Yeah. So, okay, so the third item I had that I just wanted to bring up before we get into the real meat of the episode was the ongoing war with Iran.

The United States and Iran traded some missiles barrages, I guess, over the last few days. The United States says that it wasn't a violation of the ceasefire. And then I think Iran, you know, hit back maybe at a base in Kuwait. It's kind of unclear. But the part of the story of this story that I really wanted to highlight was Trump's like insistence that he's not bothered by rising economic costs. This is from the Financial Times. Donald Trump says rising economic costs will not force him into Iran deal. He said Wednesday he did not care about this year's midterm elections and is unconcerned about the surge in energy prices because Americans understand the aims of the conflict. They know that very simply Iran can not have a nuclear weapon.

I'm doing that for the world. I'm not doing it just for us. I have a question for you all. As I was reading this, it kind of occurred to me. I genuinely think that he thinks he's going to get a Nobel Peace Prize out of this. If he gets Iran to not have a new kid, he'll finally get his own coveted. Like he is obsessed with the fucking Nobel Peace Prize. I think that's kind of...

It's the only world he has left to conquer. Yeah, something so but now. He has a daytime Emmy, you know? Yes, yeah, yeah. Daytime Emmy and Tony, a Grammy and Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize. Like, dude, something so banal, he really would be, he really would be willing to send the entire world into global recession for something that boring. And the sick thing is they'll probably give it to.

Didn't he get a hand-me-down, though, from the Venezuelan opposition leader? He did. He basically gifted him the Nobel-Belt. She just gave it to him. She didn't. I feel like it's not good enough, though. Someone just gives it to you, and he knows that. He knows it's not good enough.

Well, he likes the new, if they made a new award that was similar, right? I mean, they made the board of peace or whatever. Uh-huh. I mean, some part of him knows, but. He thought that was going to be the master stroke that got him over with the Nobel hump, probably. I was listening to the radio this morning, and he said that, Umand knows the deal. If they don't sign on to the Abraham, of course, we're going to have to blow.

them up too. That's just fine. Like our own like that's just gold. I'm sorry. I saw that fucking video he did of throwing Stephen Colbert into a dumpster and then just doing a little his Trump dance.

It's fucking gold. Once a week he does something and I just fucking shit myself laughing. It's just, oh my God. Yeah. The Nobel, you're right. What's that, like, food processing? Isn't it like homel or hormel?

Is that what it is? It's like a food pricing. They make, like, hot dogs? Oh, like they make, like, the cancer chili mac in a box stuff. Yeah, yeah, you were saying if they made a new prize, Daniel, if they just gave him a new prize. Like the hormel piece prize, that's what he really made. The horropea's price. That would go hard.

He would love it. Accomplish all the things he wants. So, I don't know. I mean, what's, I don't know, is this really going to, like, I, you know, we've talked about this on Monday. We've talked about this every goddamn week for the last two, three months. But like, at what point are the market going to acknowledge that, like, are they going to realize, like, this is never going to end? That, like, Trump is never, that they're going to keep getting taken along for a ride. I don't know.

I mean, this is all pretty cliche, pretty trite stuff, pretty lukewarm. takes, but it's just just, you know, once again it's just insane watching it, you know, the same shit happened week in and week out. It's just insane for a sitting president to say he doesn't care about the midterms. That is pretty interesting.

It gives me an indication that he does not care if this war ends actually, because he won't even end it for political reasons. I think there is some consistency here, though. I was thinking about that. I think that, like, Congress doesn't do anything anyways, and I think he knows that, like, they will never even have the votes to impeach him even if the Democrats took back this.

in it. Like, there's, they don't do anything. Like, so. Just, juxtapose that with, like, McConnell trying to shake down Bush to just abruptly end the war in Iraq after they had built up, you know, had all this build up with the American public for two or three years, and then they looked like they were going to lose the midterms. And McConnell's like, we got to get out of here, Rock, if we're going to win the midterms.

Now they just don't get a shit. Right. Right. Maybe it won't matter. I don't know. I mean, as we've shown, like, Marie Glucent-Prez is, like, not doing great. So maybe that's a bellwether.

Maybe the Republicans are looking at that and they're like too many Democrats are they're selling mids, both literally and policy-wise. So like, we're good. We don't have to fucking worry about. I mean, it's, it is amazing how, it's funny. I'm reading this new Tim Weiner book about like the history of the modern CIA. And he's talking about Iraq and like this incredible, just the incredible willful disconnect between like the CIA analysts in Iraq watching the civil war.

break out and just like the Bush White House just like truly ignoring it like truly the Cheney intersankton like shielding you know I feel like everyone tells this story about Bush like kind of being cut in on everything and Cheney being cut everything and like this book is amazing because it just talks about how completely ass backwards their intelligence was the failures over and like these guys really fucked up and um the Iran stuff is so interesting in its parallels and its differences in so far as like you know First of all, you got wildcard Trump, the people have talked in the White House to have no idea what he's ever going to do. There's no predictive capability.

There's no personality like Cheney. There's no personality like Bush. Then you have the fucking Israelis who are just throwing gas on it in random ways, concealing intelligence, taking out fucking Iranian leaders before the Americans can install them, killing fucking Ahmadinejad before they can put him into the... I mean, and then you just have like the basic intelligence failures where we have the CIA fighting with the DIA over how many... How much uranium do they have left? how many missiles did we take out? And I just stopped looking at it.

Honestly, I'm like, there's just no. And even the, it's like you said, the markets can't fucking figure it out. They sent, uh, that research firm Citriani sent some fucking intern out to the fucking tip of Somali or some shit to, you know, try to figure out what's going on over there.

Just look out on the motion. See what's going on out there. But the greatest failure is maybe of the media, right? Like the point of the media is supposed to like, be like, here's here's Trump's mood this week here's what's actually going on here's what the intel analysts here's how we actually aggregate the intel

here's actually what we think as the media talking to different sources is going on in this war and they've just failed you know they've just completely failed so I don't fucking know I don't fucking know what's going on and that's why the markets don't either it's complete there's just so many

idiots fucking messing with this thing poking this thing from different sides it's taken on a kind of like momentum or center of gravity that like we all know that Trump isn't being fed any kind of quote unquote intelligence or information that would like

you know drive or motivate his responses in any, not that he's a rational person to begin with but like I'm not sure to make much distance anyway. Right, but like him being shown like two minute clips of just things being exploded in Iran and stuff right? It's just like

it's a fantasy like we're giving a madman a fantasy version of world and um yeah i don't know it's just like i've said multiple times of the last few weeks like there's just this like pervasive sense of unreality i think that kind of it's just kind of like eerie it's very eerie right now is everything is just kind of in a you know stumbling sort of like dreamlike state so i don't i don't know um very weird to consider but uh i be i think on that on that note. I think this is relevant to

that larger theme. Daniel, I wanted to have you on the show because your recent reporting for Wired is about the federal governments essentially like trying to designate anti-tech, anti-AI,

anti-data center activism as a form of terrorism. Or at least political extremism. There's a A lot of stuff I kind of wanted to talk about this. It's been a weird or a very, you know, big week for AI news, just in general.

Like the Pope released his encyclical on AI. I don't know if you'll saw this, like, these, there were at least two videos from graduation commencement speeches last week where, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think former Google CEO Eric Schmidt got booed for saying, like, you know, AI is, you know, on his coming and you know we need to like prepare for it and all this and um great thing to say to a bunch of young people who are going to be out of a fucking job you know what i mean yeah before maybe even been out into the world to find a fucking job you know yeah i just got shackle with uh six figures worth of debt for i don't know what i have to do just i kind of hang out

for four years until like i think the funny entry level jobs are gone the funniest one was this Nashville record label executive Scott Borchetta. I don't know if you'll saw that video. He was speaking at a, I think, a Tennessee University and was basically talking about the creative applications of AI and how good it's going to be

and he got, you know, routinely just roundly booed and he kind of like dug in on it. He got very defensive and indignant about it. So I think that like, you know and on that note also I did want to point out this funny

post from Kevin O'Leary, who has, you know, recently tried his hand at acting. But he, uh, he like had his tweet. He said, we uncovered something far bigger than I ever expected. After seeing coordinated false attacks against the Utah Data Center project, we brought in an advanced data science team to trace where the content was coming from, and the results were shocking. We found, what we found led back to organized networks, political activist groups, and funding trails tied to massive international

entities. I think that like there's listen. I'm going to tell you, I'm good at sussing out rural people. These were not people tied to any of the international bad men. These were like, you know, guys that hang drywall for a living ready to fucking put his head on a pole. Yeah. This wasn't

no coordinated astro-turf thing. I saw that shit. Yeah. Actually, I want to talk about that in a second, Tom, like just because there's some anti-data center organizing happening. In our neck of the woods, and I use the word organizing very, like, loosely. It is crazy to see...

They're on day five of that. We'll get to it. It is really astonished me to see the widespread. I mean, genuinely, if you're engaged in any kind of organizing in this country, you'll know that, like, for any cause or issue, you'll only get, like, a smattering of people to show up because everything is so, quote, unquote, polarized. Everything is sort of, you know, fragmented out into all.

these different like, you know, positions on a certain topic. But like on the AI thing and on data centers, like it is genuinely astonishing how many people do not fuck with that shit. Yeah, it's awesome. That's why I even started this whole investigation because it's like everyone hates it, you know? Yeah. You know, you know when you're seeing like people like farmers in Kentucky turning down like life-changing amounts of money to build these things.

The hate runs deep. Yeah. It's a type of hate. I don't know we've ever, honestly, like that thing you just said, it's like, what, in what world? Like, yeah, maybe in like Wally or something, that same thing happened in like a fictional lib movie. Some farmers didn't take $5 million. But to have that happen in reality is like it is something that I don't think has ever happened. And it's fascinating seeing.

There's also a really crazy thing. that I feel like the left sleeps on, which being involved in the reporting on this I've started to learn more about, which is like, like, I had this guy in my DMs after my piece came out being like, I am a CEO of a small healthcare company in Oklahoma. I love my town. And AI is fucking demonic. And it has to be fucking shut down. It's fucking Satan's engine. And I was like, yes. There is like a huge demographic of Christians who believe this is demonic shit. it. You know, it's like Satan's machine. And they actually, like, have power. Like, they have started lobbying groups in Washington. So it's, it's crazy. And I think also another big news,

AI news story from the past week was, I don't know if y'all saw this, but last week Trump was supposed to release an executive order on AI that basically, it was pretty, you know, lukewarm, pretty milk toast. Basically, the gist of it was, if you're a little bit of, if you're a lot of, large tech company you're developing an AI platform. We asked that you voluntarily submit it to, like, Department of Treasury and all these other various agencies that the government can kind of have a role in looking at it. And, like, they wound up canceling this executive order at the last minute, apparently because David Sachs, like, freaked out and was, like, the tech industry is going to hate this.

And there was a big piece, or not a big piece, but there was an interesting thing in Politico today about how like there's these camps now in the what in the Trump administration on who is like more hardline on AI who really likes it who is scared of it who wants it and this kind of stuff um but i think that like the the larger theme that i'm sort of driving at with all these stories is that it is being presented to americans as if they have virtually no choice and that you must get on board with it and if you don't you will be uh at the very least labeled a political extremist and pushed out of polite society.

But like that's kind of is kind of amusing because as we've just pointed out no one's fucking with this shit. Like there are two issues that Americans broadly agree on and it's like fuck Israel and fuck AI. So I don't know. I don't know.

And yet. Yeah, they keep trying with both of them. So anyways, so Daniel, tell us a little bit about like the reporting you've done on this and like what was some of the findings that you've found? Well, I'll say like, because it's rare to have the opportunity to explain the genesis of a story. Like, this came about because I saw the warning flags going up in like the so-called

like counter-extremism centers. Like, I don't know where you guys all stand, but like my feeling I have very libertarian perspective on this, which is just like, like just our polarization, our heart. hostilities to one another as Americans. Like a lot of this has to do with the way that the FBI has successfully injected into civil society, this idea that we should all be surveilling each other. Yeah. Like this southern poverty law center running their own fucking feds into like neo-Nazi groups, the left, the right-wing guys surveilling Antifa members and like the Andy Ngo like undercover Project Veritas shit for like civil society political organizations. Like,

There is now a, it's not a cottage industry. It's an industrial industry of centers and think tanks and funding around this idea that our political views are extremism. And I think this is a really dangerous idea. I think like you get a lot more done debating some David Duke-ass fucking idiot and just shitting on him publicly and exposing how much of a fucking freak he is than working with the feds and doing. sneaky prosecutions with with fake setups and fake plots you know that just breeds a culture of paranoia and distrust and it doesn't air these things out and then people go deeper underground so all of that is a preamble to say I saw some of these groups starting to kind of edge themselves on this idea of anti-tech extremism pick cherry picking different you know events finding these

fucking in-cell losers on message boards talking about Ted Kaczynski and then trying to extrapolate new threat categories from that. And seeing those public civil society orgs, I was able to go in and kind of pinpoint inside the government through human sourcing and records requests, how it had moved from these external stakeholders in. Now, the one other thing I just would say is, like, it's not just civil society, of course,

it's also the companies themselves. They have direct lines through InfraGARD, okay? the FBI's NARC tip line that connects corporations to the Bureau. DSAC, which is Homeland Security's version of this, there's a couple of new groups that I'm going to report on for the first time in the coming weeks. So there is a two-way street between the AI companies and the feds. And of course they're going to label anyone standing in their way of progress as fucking terrorists. Because now you see that fucking guy, Liri coming out and saying, you know,

anyone who prevents this is a Chinese spy, you know, trying to help them win the new. the new arms race. So basically what my reporting showed is that this is happening. They're formulating anti-technology extremism categories inside the federal government with the executive orders that Trump has passed down NSPM 7. These are vast directives that kind of push the domestic intelligence apparatus to surveil people on the basis of political ideology in this presidential order commanding these intelligence agencies to go after people. He lists things like anti-Americanism anti-Christianity, anti-capitalism, as new threat categories. And as I'm sure you and your listeners can imagine,

literally anyone their mother could be shafted into those things, depending on an errant tweet or the discretion of the FBI case officer who's trying to get promoted. So, like I said, I'm going to do a lot more reporting, but basically what I tried to show is that there is a new category, the same way that left-wing extremism, right-wing extremism, black identity extremism, were developed out of the terrorism designations used to pursue real and alleged al-Qaeda affiliates in the aftermath of 9-11.

That apparatus is now really being expanded to the entire American populace. It's something I learned from your story that I didn't even know about. I'm embarrassed to say this because at my age I was like an early teenager when 9-11 happened in the global war on terror began. and, you know, gradually watch the War on Terror expand and the surveillance state expand. But I didn't even know this until I read your piece literally yesterday that there are like, I don't remember the exact number,

but they're these fusion centers, I think is what they're called. Yeah, located all around the United States. I guess they like aggregate information on Americans and I don't know, what do they do? Like, how does that play into this? I mean, they're an anti, they, like, you couldn't really think of a more anti-constitutional, you know, anti-American concept. I mean, literally what these are is they are, they're nodes, their growths on state police forces where the feds just come in and just shoot information, intelligence reporting, threat reporting, down, every state police office and then those state police distribute that to all the local police

and it goes the other way too. So some fucking dumbass local cop whose nephew, you know, he's talking about, you know, whatever, smoking on that loud. Now loud becomes like a fucking, they're like, okay, we have to create a loud threat analysis group. They're like, what is the day? They're smoking too good. They're smoking too, like they're literally fucking idiots. And the, and the, the people look at the shit are always like, you know, their ex-military or their, or their, you know, law enforcement, like they're the worst possible people to be monitoring this shit. Right. Then those guys are sending that shit back up to the feds.

And the feds are saying, sir, we have a report here from Dayton talking about a new weapon, a WMD chronic. You know, we've got to sign a, get this to the WMD task force. It's like, this is literally the level of stupidity we're talking about here. Yeah. I had one that was like, I found, I had one report I posted on Substack that was. was like, like, kids were pretending to, like, piss. Like, they were putting water bottles in their pants and, like,

pretend and, like, doing, like, a little video of them, like, pissing on their high school sign. We've been doing that for years. Yeah, yeah. Now it's terrorist. That, they made it, they literally made a threat report on that shit. Where it was, like, serial, it was serial teenage mitrication. Calvin and Hobbs stuff.

And so, on the one hand, it's fucking hilarious. But in the other hand, it's like, they start doing some of these prosecutions. The other thing that people don't really understand is that, like, the really scary thing isn't that you're going to get arrested and jailed and prosecuted for like, like talking shit about blowing up a thing or whatever. It's really that like they'll start surveilling groups, you know, they can charge organizations with, um, with crimes that are like completely unrelated to terrorism. And one thing that people don't really understand is that like, we don't, we don't have a charge for terrorism.

Like you can be charged for making a threat. You can be charged with trespassing. You can be charged with aggravated assault. But you can't be charged with terrorism. You can be charged with a terrorism enhancement. But what this means is that oftentimes the statute allows for mass surveillance. It allows for open investigations into groups. But then people can get charged with all other kinds of random shit. You fucked up one of your tax filings seven years ago. And they come and they dig that up. And they say, okay, you owe the feds $150,000. We're going to put you in jail. or, you know, whatever, they find some, you've got a warrant out, you know, for parking ticket, they come arrest you. Like, these are the ways that it can come back to bite people who think they have nothing to, you know, nothing to hide. Yeah. I don't know if this is related, but I was once a city councilman, city of Wattsburg, Kentucky, about 1,500 people.

And I remember one time us getting a DHS report about a Somali family that had moved to Maysville, Kentucky, perhaps best known as George Clooney's hometown. several hours away from Weinsberg, mind you. So there's, it's not like, there's some sort of direct connection. But, like,

and how they had identified everybody, just like local business people that had had contact with this, like, four Somali people that opened up a grocery store there.

And how, like, we were alerted that this was, like, a high terror threat or something like that. You know what I mean?

I don't know. Yeah. If that's germane to this, but that's the kind of stuff that just, like, I saw, just in local.

Absolutely. And that's, like, it's going to scare the shit out of people, right? It's like then you then the people on the city council, the conservative people are like, watch out for those, watch out for that growth. Like it just has a it has a totally conspiratorial deleterious effect on the social bonds of our country.

It literally makes everyone into an enemy of everyone else. Yeah. And you know, I think about like one of the craziest, I hope that this goes into my book someday, but like one of the craziest conversations I ever had was with like a very senior FBI. official who was involved in the J6 prosecutions. And this guy was like a very left-wing, he was just very obviously a liberal guy, you know. And he was like, you know, it's so fucked up the way that that shit went down

because there was a handful of like people who wanted to kill and hang Nancy Pelosi. And there were people who wanted to like blow up the Capitol. He's like, and then there were a bunch of fucking rednecks who showed up at the Capitol and like wandered in there. He was like, and the Bureau fucking hunted those people. people down. They fucking, you know, prosecuted them in other states. And basically, like, they gave the right wing a bunch of fodder to delegitimize the real madness of January 6th by,

you know, extend, like, just creating this threat category that wasn't even real. There was plenty of real terrorists there. You know, there were plenty of people who were trying to fucking... I mean, the gods with the government. Right. Right. But, but the machine said, we're going to make an example out of these, we are going to make these people. And look at what it did. It mobilized the entire right wing to look at these people as heroes. And in a sense, some of them were completely unjustly prostit. They should have been charged with, you know, trespassing, not fucking insurrection or terrorism enhancements. And I just think the left a lot of times doesn't see how this shit is going to come back and bite it in the ass. You know, it's like there's been all this money dumped into right-wing

extremism monitoring. You have all these liberal groups like, you know, doing this Nazi hunter or cosplay shit and they don't get that like it all feeds the same deep state machine of surveillance which the goal is not keeping people safe it's not rooting out extremism it's it's fucking building that net as big as possible to just snare everyone left right and center yeah we we actually i remember during the biden years you remember when the fbi i basically uh egg does guys on to try to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer? Yeah. You know what I mean?

Sort of the same. I mean, I know we're talking about sort of different things, but it is also like, when we're talking about like AI data centers, this is something that's like broadly unpopular. And so you're going to get a lot of opposition to it from people who are not leftists. And those people will be targeted by the, you know, tools and mechanisms. of the state, just like anyone on the left will be. I mean, I guess it depends on, like, this kind of gets into one of those things. It's like, you know, what is the role of liberals and the two-party system?

Like, this kind of gets into one of those things like, well, you know, the Republicans, when they're in power, I guess, like, maybe they will bail out their right-wing rank and and file that, you know, try to storm the capital or, like, try to get that. us in or shut down. I don't know. I don't know how that really shakes out, but I think we know for a fact that the liberals won't lift a finger to help out anyone to the left of their position. So it's like I don't know, but they will use the same, like you said, precedents, you know, tools, borders, legislation put in place by conservatives and vice versa to essentially like push the same agenda. And I think that like, you know,

what I keep coming back to over and over again is just the degree to which this has just been pushed on everyone, and you're just supposed to accept it. And I think that, like, this is not quite the same thing, although it's definitely in the same wheelhouse. But there is a editorial board, Washington Post editorial board editorial from just yesterday that, like, I read this morning, and I had to read like 10 times to make sure I was reading this correctly. But just this kind of like sums up the ideology kind of behind this. This is from the Washington Post editorial board. Unions are on a role blocking driverless cars.

How long will Americans be deprived the fruits of progress simply to protect special interests? Autonomous vehicles have the potential to revolutionize the transportation industry and make U.S. roads safer, yet unions are doing everything they can to keep them off the road. It's just this idea that like this is what progress is. You have to get on board. Like you cannot resist it. If you do, you will be prosecuted to the furthest extent of the law. I don't know.

It's just like this kind of this is the sort of like breathlessness or but like also just like boosterism. The idea that like this is all inevitable and that there is no other way. other society like this is just what it is and you cannot um you cannot go against that and like classifying like tech anti-tech uh activism as a sort of like terrorist designation or political extremist designation is really astonishing because as i alluded to earlier like kentucky has currently two data center projects that are causing a lot of controversy one's outside of louisville and one just got proposed for Eastern Kentucky. And the one in Eastern Kentucky will be the largest one in the state

if they wind up building it. But the opposition to this thing is insane. Literally, there's like six people who support it. And they're all like on some economic development board in, you know, on a county in Eastern Kentucky. No one fucking wants it. Left, right, whatever. But I don't know.

I'm kind of like just, you know, just this theme of like how the concept surveillance, it is kind of the movie Eddington. It's like the constant surveillance as implied by the data center itself is kind of what drives everyone apart and keeps them from being able to. The data center that will collect data that will, that you've been spied upon, you know, all that data is being collected and they put it right back in your community, you know. Yeah. The guy that Green lived at data center, and I got a call from my college roommate a few days ago

and he lives four houses down from this guy. And he goes, man, he's like, two weeks ago, this guy could do no wrong in this community. He, like, brought this, whatever thing here. Everybody loved it. He brought this here. Everybody loved it in this thing. He's like, he made a misstep.

Giving them 220-something acres to build this thing. And he said, now there's people in my yard. There's so many people protesting in front of his house and shit that they're like spilling over into his yard, four houses down. I mean, it's beautiful. I mean, I don't, I don't. I don't know. I can't think of anything else like this.

I mean, I don't, you know, there's, you can think of like people protesting environmental shit, power plants, nuclear,

but there's always a argument there of like, these are jobs for the community. Right. Like that's always going to be the divisive, divisive community issue. Here,

they can't, even the fucking building trades union guys that are building these things out, they're not from around here. They're not fucking locals. They can't fucking find the locals in some of these fucking desert-ass, you know, tiny ass towns with the skills to put these up.

So there is zero economic incentive. They've always got to build these fucking power plants. I mean, it's just, it's a beautiful, it is beautiful to see the way it brings people together. Just these just fucking freak show city council meetings where every type of person is there. I mean, I find that beautiful. I honestly find that like a moving, just incredible thing. I don't know. It's like to see just different people coming together just be like, fucking, like we fucking hate this machine.

That rocks. I don't know. It's like the Matrix. You know? It's safe. There was, in your reporting, there's a specific case that you mentioned that I've heard a lot of people talk about. I think we may have even mentioned it on the show. But I've not really been able to fully wrap my head around it, but it seems like this case was kind of really what scared the federal government to kind of hone in on this. Well, first of all, there is the fact that they're still haunted by Ted Kaczynski. the Unabomber.

Like, it's like, that they, you know, and you mentioned that your piece, like, they're still, like, haunted by people

who are inspired by the unabomber. But, like, I think specifically the case I'm talking about is this group called the Zizians, right? Like, didn't they murder somebody? Yeah. And, like, that's kind of why,

um, this is one reason why the feds are so kind of worked up over this. Yeah, I mean, because it, like, gives them a structure, right? sudden, it's kind of like al-Qaeda, right? It's kind of like the jihadi threat, right? Like, if,

if we understand counterterrorism, counter-extremism as largely descended from that, and it's like, anytime they can see a kind of religious or ideological package, all of a sudden, it's like, okay, this is great. We can put our analysts on this. We can put our academics on this. And, you know, something I try to say often, which people on the left often are repulsed by, I talk to people inside the IC. You know, I want to know how they think. And, you know, honestly, I would say it's the same even with the Bush administration with a lot of people in there when 9-11 happened. Like, these people actually like do, like these aren't like McCarthyite Hoover people necessarily, J. Edgar people.

You know, like a lot of these guys are just kind of like right when guys are from conservative rural places and like they don't really understand the disconnect between what. this kind of machine, this autonomous machine targeting people is telling them to do and how baseless, you know, so many of these groups and ideologies are. But yes, the Zizian thing, this idea that these people were concerned about Roku's basilisk, this idea that, you know, AI is going to become autonomous and kill people. And that definitely was a big catalyst. You know, there's also a cell, right? It was like a couple of different people. So it had these kind of hallmarks, even though it was just, you know, a couple of nut jobs. And, you know, the argument I always try to make against this is like, you know, look at the economic crimes, look at the health care crimes, look at the

environmental crimes that kill so many, so many people. And our FBI used to try to pursue some of those things. You know, we had an environmental division. The FBI had a powerful white collar enforcement division up until 9-11 when it was fucking gutted and everyone was requisitioned to counter terrorism. So, I don't know, when people say, well, aren't you worried about terrorism? Yeah, I am to some extent. I don't want my fucking plane getting blown up while I'm on it or people poisoning my parents, you know, a suburban water supply. But at the same time, it's just like these threats are marginal and we have a, we have an out of control machine, an apparatus, a counterterrorism apparatus that is not even human. It's talked about AI. This machine is is completely out of control. And it's

not even the people's fault working in it necessarily. It's just how it chugs along. Yeah, the, the portrait that you sort of painted a second ago with the fusion centers I think that the average American is probably unaware that there has been this since 9-11 this

thorough and vast interconnectedness between local municipal state law enforcement with federal law enforcement and the effects of that are plainly seen in

a place like eastern kentucky are you familiar with a congressman hal rogers daniel have you ever heard of him i feel like maybe wait he's eastern kentucky yeah he's been ahead of house appropriations yeah he may still be he's called he's dean of the house now and he's fucking old as shit but um okay yeah yeah yeah uh actually i don't fucking know if i'm being honest um it's it's the thing like a lot of people don't know much about him but he was handpicked by the bush administration to oversee the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And at the same time that they launched the Iraq War, they launched this program called Operation United in Eastern Kentucky

about pursuing what they said was these drug kingpins selling opioids, but really it was just like street-level dealers. But they like, you know, gave these like drug users and dealers like the same sort of basically social designation that they gave political extremists and terrorists, like that they were, they're terrorists, like, sewing, you know, discord and evil in the community through drugs. And I think that, like, Howe Rogers is a perfect example of how, like, the drug war just kind of became gradually enmeshed with the war on terror. And this is because it was a very convenient and very efficient way to easily integrate local

law enforcement with federal law enforcement. And so, like, when you're talking about, like, these data center buildouts in the opposition to them, like all the infrastructure is already in place to basically monitor every single person that even makes a Facebook post about something, like even makes a Facebook post about how much they don't like this data center. Like I think that you had pointed out in your story,

like the organization more perfect union got put into like a terrorist designation. Yeah, and I'm going to actually, next week I'm going to publish some of those documents I thought they were going to get published with Wired, but that story got set up on a long weekend and like, well in behold, none of the documents made it into the story. So next week, I will be publishing the documents and they show exactly what you're talking about. They show Fusion Center, open source monitoring of constitutionally protected speech and assembly, and then that getting packaged and circulating to the feds. I mean, it's, and I think it's important for people to really look at that.

You know, I think any normal American on either side of the political spectrum knows that that's fine. fucking wrong and anti-constitutional. Well, okay, so I have two questions then before we start wrapping up. The first question is why? Like, genuinely, why is it so important that there be no opposition to this? Why is it so important at these data centers? And that AI must be, I mean, this might be a pretty obvious answer, but I kind of just wanted to pull the panel here.

Like, why is it so important that this is inevitable and it must be pushed through at all costs, even if it requires, uh, tearing apart your community, um, you know, I mean, like, we're even like, leftist centrist and, you know, all those centers probably like the data centers, but leftists and like right wingers, you know, don't want these things. Like, why, why is it worth the cost of that? You know what I mean? Why is this so imperative that we do this? This is something, and I have another question that's correlated to that, but like, I don't know what do y'all think like why is it like so market you know fallacy of certain to me part of it is tied to me part of it's tied up and just did like sort of like what we're

talking about last week terence with the investment tools and how like they can just pull off all these like hundreds of thousands of trades in nanoseconds and like you just can't even like invest how you used to i think part of it is that for like you know a certain strata but as far as like i've always confused on what what the value ad is just for people like us like what are they trying to sell us on. You know what I mean? They've not made a compelling case about that. I like what you just said a lot.

I was struggling to figure out an answer, but I feel like this is the clearest cut physical manifestation of financialization maybe, right? Like these fucking things don't generate any fucking profit. They don't create any jobs. They're way overvalued, right? Because all the shit utility they're supposed to do is going to come down the line when we still don't know how they're going to make money. And so in a sense, it's like, this is financialization entering into the real world.

It is a made up fucking thing that doesn't generate any fucking profit. It's a net sink. And maybe that's why people are pissed because it's like finally, it's like the, it's, it's like the matrix. It's like Mr. Smith, you know, climbing out of the matrix into the real world. It's like, okay, fine. You're now penetry. You're injecting your Wall Street bullshit into our grid. And it just has no value.

It has no actual generative capacity. of any kind. Like the only alternative they've been able to articulate is like it can string line rope task and not even reliably, you know, if you've ever like looked at chat GPT or anything, you know, it's just doesn't make sense. Yeah. Well, and that's my second question. I think you hinted at it, Daniel, was like, why do so many people oppose it?

Right? I think that that's an interesting question in and of itself. I mean, I think that for a lot of people, it's probably. the prospect that their jobs could be mechanized out of existence. But also like to cross. It is antichrist. There's a metaphysical component to it that I find. There is.

I think, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's like a material component, a sort of metaphysical component. I also just like, the fact that they're willing to like start treating this at the same level of, at the same level of like, political agitation as any other, you know, form of extremism or terrorism is very, I guess what I'm saying is like the fact that they're, this adamant about clamping down on it is very interesting in and of itself. And, again, a lot of that, what I hope to show is that, you know, a lot of that is coming from the industry. There is the counterterrorism machine, right, that's always going. But then you also just have an unprecedented integration of,

the AI companies at the seat of the table, right? They're running tests for Anthropic. They're running tests for DoD at all the national labs. The Times just reported they just got $9 billion in appropriated funds to integrate more AI into all their systems. So they have a close relationship with the intelligence community and law enforcement and closer than almost any other industry may be at this point. Yeah, that's actually another good thing.

It's like, or another good point to make another good thing to point out. is that like they this is very a very efficient tool very useful tool for you know investments the financialization of the economy but it is also an extremely efficient tool for law enforcement I mean that's that's what an LLM does essentially it's like aggregates information detects patterns detects a sequence of patterns it's really nothing more than that it's um I heard someone describe it as like basically if someone took the hippocampus out of your brain and just ran it by itself. Like there's no, it has no practical application outside of that. But if your goal is turning the society you live in into just say a all-encompassing police state, like AI is very useful in that sense.

Predictive policing. Predictive policing. You're very good at that as well. And they've done such a good job at ceding it in society without like a proper referendum amongst the people like it's already kind of like already like you know out of the barn you know before we've anybody's ever had a say in it you know that's that's actually such a good point because I was thinking about um earlier turns when you were talking about these self-driving cars in Atlanta you have a lot of these waymos now because let's guess Atlanta is

one of the pilot cities where you see this new technology and I just keep thinking about like what what public debate you know or or regular about regulation even right was had before these things started like driving down people's streets, you know. And I don't know, I think part of it, too, and maybe this is like less of a kind of concrete answer, but I feel like there's this assumption that we're barreling into the future, you know, and that in order, there are these hallmarks that we have to have to have, right? I think whether it was the nuclear age or the space age, this was like, okay, this is going to be a future that everyone can be joined in, right? And you don't, you don't, it's not even that you don't have a choice, but why wouldn't you

want this, you know. But I've even heard people try to compare this. I mean, we've talked about it before, comparing AI to like the first moon landing, right? Like the next step and next evolution, right, in human society and technology. But like we're talking about here, none of these, I mean, at least with AI, it doesn't seem to have any practical benefits in people's lives, you know. And also we even talk about the environmental damage. I think a lot of people are aware that these data centers are poisoning their communities too, you know. Yeah, and you don't get any trade off from it. I mean, it's like you said, Daniel, it's like with like a coal power plant or a, even with like a, I don't know, I had to use this example. To me, like a very good, um, analog would be

prisons because prisons also aren't usually built by the people like there, but, um, prisons have a kind of culture war application that like, you know, certain people in a community will be like, oh, we need prisons. We need law and order and stuff. But like, AI just has. hasn't been around long enough to like really be it hasn't really like gone through the gauntlet of like the culture wars you know what i mean so it doesn't have any of the signifiers attached to it doesn't it doesn't even have crypto you know like even crypto it was like you could it was still like being hoarded by people coastal lead and silicon valley guys right but you could sell it right you could sell that dream to to all kinds of americans promising them you know quick riches and these

companies are not even fucking publicly traded. There's no fucking value of any kind that they're promising anyone. They're just promising a fucking brain damaged robot to fuck up their homework assignments. I think that from what I understand, particularly people in rural Kentucky, is like what, what, what, why a lot of people that don't even, like, probably don't even understand the dimensions of this and like the way we're talking about it. But they see something like, oh, you could power New York for a year for what it's going to cost this one facility. to run itself for a year and like people see their power bills going up and they haven't like you know

and if you're going to piss off hillbillies just raise their rates after they dug coal for fucking 200 years it's kind of like it's kind of coming in at the exact wrong time it's like of all the times to like develop AI like don't like and push it on the public is probably

why they're pushing it on the public it's because like we're entering like a sort of in game fossil fuel scenario but like of all the times that like energy has never been more expensive. Fossil fuel resources have never been harder to get and to, you know, sell. Like, now you're making that pitch.

With the straight of Hormuz closed? Come on. Yeah. I don't know. It's just like wrong place, wrong time type situation. But maybe that partially also accounts for why it's like you will accept this. Like you'll, you know, this will be the future and you will accept it in your community. Well, speaking of wrong place, wrong time, I do have to get to my Lance Armstrong surgery appointment.

God's paid, Fran. Yes. We'll be praying for you, Daniel. I would like to just thank you for coming on the show. And hopefully this has been a, like I said, in the DM, a good little pregame for your appointment. But if people would like to read more of your reporting or. find more of your reporting where where should they go?

Check me out on substack. My substack is called Deeper States with Daniel Boguslaw. I'm going to be posting some crazy shit on there next week. So get up on there. And that's basically it and Twitter.

Hell yeah. Well, thanks again, Daniel. And if you would like to go support us, we have a Patreon, obviously. The link for that will be in the show notes. I'm hearing rumors that there's another lost episode that may wind up on the Patreon soon.

So go subscribe there and go check out Daniel's work. And thanks for listening, everybody. I hope you have a great weekend. And we'll see you on Monday. Peace. Adios. Daniel, thanks, man. Oh, thanks, ma'am.

All right. Thank you, Daniel.