Can you imagine what the WHO will do during the next global pandemic if it possesses much more power and much more authority than it did during the last global pandemic?  The truth is that we got out of the WHO just in time, and we should be very thankful for that.

Needless to say, the corporate media is not thrilled by this move at all.  The following is the opening paragraph from CNN’s story about Trump’s decision…

President Donald Trump announced Monday he is withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization, in a significant move that drew criticism from public health experts on his first day back in the White House.

Of all of the executive orders that Trump signed on Monday, this is one that they have really singled out to complain about. If you have not read Trump’s executive order yet, you can find it on the official White House website.

In response, the WHO has released a statement that urges the United States to reconsider this decision…

The World Health Organization regrets the announcement that the United States of America intends to withdraw from the Organization.

WHO plays a crucial role in protecting the health and security of the world’s people, including Americans, by addressing the root causes of disease, building stronger health systems, and detecting, preventing and responding to health emergencies, including disease outbreaks, often in dangerous places where others cannot go.

The United States was a founding member of WHO in 1948 and has participated in shaping and governing WHO’s work ever since, alongside 193 other Member States, including through its active participation in the World Health Assembly and Executive Board.

For over seven decades, WHO and the USA have saved countless lives and protected Americans and all people from health threats. Together, we ended smallpox, and together we have brought polio to the brink of eradication. American institutions have contributed to and benefited from membership in WHO.

With the participation of the United States and other Member States, WHO has over the past 7 years implemented the largest set of reforms in its history, to transform our accountability, cost-effectiveness, and impact in countries. This work continues.

We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the USA and WHO, for the benefit of the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe.

This is an absolutely massive blow to the World Health Organization.

The United States was their most important member, and now other nations could be tempted to leave as well. And that is tremendous news for those of us that love freedom.

For the past couple of years, bureaucrats at the WHO have been working on a “pandemic accord” which would result in sweeping changes.  The following description of that agreement comes from the official WHO website…

The pandemic accord is designed to strengthen collaboration and coordination across sectors, and ensure all people—including youth, healthcare professionals, community members, patients, and other members of society—are protected.

If agreed upon, the accord would create incentives and opportunities for greater transparency and collaboration among countries in areas that are key to a global response to pandemic threats. It would also establish means to encourage governments to comply, such as procedures for reporting and accountability.

Ultimately, this “pandemic accord” would grant more power and more authority to the WHO, and it is expected to be finalized by May 2025…

The World Health Organization chief on Tuesday voiced confidence that states could finalise a pandemic agreement by May 2025, despite questions about whether the administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will support it.

The WHO’s 194 member states have been negotiating for two years on an agreement that could increase collaboration before and during pandemics after acknowledged failures during COVID-19.

So what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is that we dodged a bullet, because it appears that the next global pandemic is rapidly approaching.

According to the WHO, the dangerous new strain of the monkeypox continues to spread in three nations in central Africa…

The outbreak of clade Ib monkeypox virus (MPXV) continues predominantly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Uganda, with new travel-related cases identified in previously unaffected countries. Recent travel-associated mpox cases highlight the risk of undetected transmission in countries, emphasizing the need for strengthened surveillance and timely reporting to improve global monitoring and prevent international spread.

And travelers continue to carry this new strain home when they return from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Uganda…

A new case of the monkeypox strain causing global alarm has been found in the UK, health officials have confirmed.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said the patient was found in East Sussex but was now under specialist care at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London.

They said the patient — the sixth UK case of the deadly strain to date — had recently returned to Britain from Uganda where the virus is spreading amongst the population.

Personally, I am even more alarmed about the bird flu.

A strain of H5N1 that recently infected a human in Texas is “more adept at replicating in human cells and causing severe disease in mice” than previous strains…

Researchers at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) have identified a strain of bird flu isolated from a human in Texas that carries a distinctive set of mutations, making it more adept at replicating in human cells and causing severe disease in mice. This strain was compared to one found in dairy cattle, and the findings are detailed in Emerging Microbes & Infections.

The discovery underscores a significant concern about the H5N1 strains of bird flu currently circulating in the U.S.: the virus’s rapid mutation when it infects a new host species.

H5N1, which is naturally present in wild birds and deadly to chickens, has recently spread to a wide range of mammals and, for the first time in the spring of 2024, began infecting dairy cows.

And more confirmed human cases continue to pop up all over the country.

In fact, health authorities in San Francisco have no idea how a child in San Francisco just got infected with H5N1…

A child in San Francisco was recently confirmed to be the third human case of bird flu in the United States in which it’s unclear how the person got infected.

Cases have been spreading across the country since April 2024 with 67 confirmed as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Most human cases have occurred after coming into contact with infected cattle, infected poultry farms or other culling operations.

Whether it is the bird flu, monkeypox, or something else, it is just a matter of time before the next great global health scare erupts.

When we reach that point, at least we won’t have the WHO ordering us what to do.

And that is something to be very, very thankful for, because the ability to make our own health decisions is one of our most important freedoms.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Snyder does a good job of highlighting the problems such as debt and crony capitalism. He does not do a good job of recognizing the direction that this nation could head if we’re reacting emotionally. Marxism thrives on feelings of inequity and must not be seen as an antidote for crony capitalism. With that said, here’s his article…

Right now, a tremendous awakening is happening as people all over the world become educated about the tools that the elite use to enslave us to their system.  The number one tool that they use to enslave us is debt.  The financial powers of the world use it to enslave individuals, corporations and governments.  For thousands of years humanity has been taught the proverb that “the borrower is the servant of the lender”, and yet today billions of people around the globe have willingly made themselves servants of the money powers.

You see, when you borrow money from a financial institution, you not only have to pay that money back, but you also have to pay a significant amount of interest.  In fact, often the interest ends up being much more than the principal of the loan.  Thus the borrower ends up devoting a great deal of his or her labor to earning money for the lender.  Yes, there are times when it is necessary to borrow money.  But what we have been doing over the last 30 years goes far beyond “necessary” borrowing.  The fact that the U.S. government is now 36 trillion dollars in debt gets a lot of attention, but the truth is that state and local governments, corporations, and U.S. households have piled up enormous mountains of debt as well.

I want to show you a chart from the Federal Reserve that is hard to believe.

In the mid-90s, the total amount of debt in the system was about 20 trillion dollars, but now we have reached the 101 trillion dollar mark…

The word “insanity” does not even begin to describe what we have been doing to ourselves.

It takes a lot of really hard work to add 80 trillion dollars of debt in just 30 years. Every time we pile up more debt, there is a winner and there is a loser.

Debt strips you of your freedom and slowly drains you of your wealth.  It puts the fruits of your labor into the pockets of others. That is true for individuals, and it is true for a nation as a whole.

Getting others enslaved by debt is how the most powerful financial institutions in the world became so dominant.  It is one of the most profitable ways of making money ever invented. What many people don’t realize is just how much interest they end up paying on some of their debts.

For example, if you go to mortgagecalculator.org, you can calculate the amount of interest that you will pay over the life of your home mortgage.  According to that calculator, someone with a $400,000 mortgage at an interest rate of 6.98% over 30 years will end up paying $556,102.18 in interest before the mortgage is finally paid off.

When those 30 years are over, you will have bought a house for yourself and you will also have bought a house for the bankers.

So what should we do? We need to stop feeding the monster. They are getting insanely wealthy by financially enslaving all the rest of us.

Unfortunately, many Americans find themselves deep in debt because the cost of living has been rising faster than our paychecks have.

One of the great joys that men in free societies have long enjoyed is the ability to earn an honest wage for an honest day of work.  In particular, the amazing capitalist engine that powered the U.S. economy for decade after decade greatly rewarded the incredible hard work and industriousness of the American people.  America was known as the land of opportunity, and we built the largest middle class in the history of the world by working incredibly hard.

Unfortunately, things have changed.

Thanks to globalization and extremely rapid advances in technology, the labor of U.S. workers is rapidly losing value.  Automation, robotics and AI have made many jobs obsolete.  In addition, American workers now must compete against workers from all over the world.  Global corporations often find themselves having to choose whether to build a factory in the United States or in the third world.  But in the third world workers often earn less than 10 percent of what American workers earn, corporations are often not required to provide any benefits to those workers, and there are often very few oppressive government regulations to contend with.

How can American workers compete against that?

The truth is that labor is now a global commodity.  It is exceedingly difficult for a worker in the United States to effectively compete with a desperate, half-starving worker in the third world that will work like mad for two dollars an hour.

But this is what we get for letting our politicians push “free trade” down our throats. Most American workers had no idea that free trade would mean that they would suddenly be competing for jobs against workers in the Philippines and Malaysia.

This is the cold, hard reality of globalism.

Of course the top executives at the big global corporations are certainly enjoying this new environment, because their salaries have soared.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Now it is 268 to 1. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

That is what globalism is all about.

The elite make out like bandits as they exploit third world labor pools, while the American middle class finds itself slowly being crushed out of existence.

Our system has been designed to funnel nearly all of the rewards to the very top.  Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans are left wondering why things just don’t ever seem to work out for them.

If you talk to many Americans, they just can’t seem to figure out why they can’t make things work out even though they are working as hard as they can.  Millions of Americans have found themselves taking on second or even third jobs in a desperate attempt to provide for their families.

Sadly, things just keep getting worse with each passing year.

As I have discussed in previous articles, demand at food banks is at an all-time high, homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time high, and homelessness in the U.S. is growing at the fastest pace ever recorded.

But there are elitists out there that are still attempting to claim that the U.S. economy is in great shape. Of course most of us aren’t buying the propaganda anymore, and that is one of the primary reasons why the election turned out the way that it did.

We need to return to an economy where good workers are valued and where hard work is rewarded. We need to return to an economy where having a large middle class is an important national goal.

We need to return to an economy where we build American businesses, where we hire American workers, and where we buy American products.

But unless the American people wake up, American workers are going to continue to be devalued. And if you think that things are bad now, just wait until AI starts taking millions of our jobs.

Are we just going to sit back and let American living standards decline to third world standards, or are we going to do something about it?

Perhaps the greatest victims of the economic nightmare that is unfolding right in front of our eyes are our children.

The overall economic numbers are really bad, but when you examine the impact that this economy is having on children things get really horrifying.  Today, 16 percent of U.S. children live in poverty and 14 million U.S. children are on food stamps.

It has been estimated that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point before they reach the age of 18.

We were once the most prosperous nation on the entire planet. How could we let this happen?

Meanwhile, the rich have gotten even richer. In 2009, there were 8 million millionaires in the United States. Now there are 22 million.

If everyone was becoming wealthier, that would be great.  Unfortunately, the poor have been left with an increasingly smaller slice of the pie to divide among themselves.

At this point, the bottom 50 percent of Americans control just 2.5 percent of the wealth. I have been ranting about all of this for over a decade, and yet conditions have just continued to deteriorate year after year.

We can’t have an economy that works for the top 10 percent but that sucks the life out of the bottom 90 percent. Our debt-based financial system needs to be fundamentally reformed, and it is time for us to demand action.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Nanotechnology, a cutting-edge discipline at the intersection of science, engineering, and technology, is revolutionizing myriad industries with its focus on manipulating matter at the nanoscale. At this minuscule level, materials exhibit unique properties and behaviours, paving the way for unprecedented advancements in fields as diverse as medicine, electronics, energy, and materials science.

A “nanoparticle” is a particle of matter that is less than 100 nanometers in diameter.  Highly specialized equipment is necessary to work with nanoparticles, because they are way too small to be seen with the naked eye…

One of the hallmarks of nanotechnology is the utilization of nanoparticles, minute entities often ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers. These particles, when engineered with precision, bring forth distinctive characteristics that can redefine the functionality of materials. In medicine, for instance, nanoparticles serve as drug carriers, enabling targeted delivery and enhancing therapeutic efficacy while minimizing side effects. Nano-engineered materials have found their niche in the realm of electronics.

Scientists are promising us that nanotechnology has the potential to make all of our lives much better.

But are there any dangers?

Many are concerned that the healthcare industry is one area where nanoparticles are already being used on a widespread basis…

The healthcare sector is witnessing a transformative impact through nanotechnology. Nanomedicine, an interdisciplinary field, employs nanoscale tools for the diagnosis, imaging, and treatment of diseases. Nanoparticles, with their ability to navigate biological barriers, offer a novel approach to targeted drug delivery, ensuring precise and efficient treatment with reduced side effects.

“Precise and efficient treatment with reduced side effects” certainly sounds good.

But there have been other developments in this field that are rather ominous.

For example, a team of researchers in South Korea has discovered a way to use nanoparticles to “control the minds of mice”…

Scientists at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have developed a new way to control the minds of mice by manipulating nanoparticle-activated “switches” inside their brains with an external magnetic field.

The system, dubbed Nano-MIND (Magnetogenetic Interface for NeuroDynamics), works by controlling targeted regions of the brain by activating neural circuits.

Using an external magnetic field, these scientists were able to make mice eat more or eat less.  And in another experiment, they were able to manipulate the maternal behavior of female mice…

In experiments, the researchers activated inhibitory neurons within specific areas of the brain to increase appetite and feeding behaviors by 100 percent. By exciting these neurons, the team could conversely reduce the food the mice ate by 50 percent.

They also used the system to selectively activate receptors responsible for maternal behaviors in the brains of female mice that hadn’t reproduced. By activating these pathways, the mice “significantly increased nurturing behaviors, such as bringing pups to their nest, similar to maternal mice,” according to a press release.

Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If they can control the minds of mice, it is inevitable that research will be done into how to control human minds.

So what would happen if scientists develop “nanoparticles” that have the ability to search out and attach themselves to key areas of the human brain?

Such “nanoparticles” would be far too small to be seen by the human eye, and people could become “infected” with these “nanoparticles” without even knowing it.

In fact, if a tyrannical government could find an effective way to use nanoparticles to remotely control the minds of the general population, a mass mind control program could be implemented without the general public even realizing what is going on.

If that sounds very frightening to you, that is because it is very frightening.

Sadly, most of us don’t even realize that there are nanoparticles in many common foods that we eat on a regular basis…

Among the foods most likely to have nano-tech: Foods with caramelized sugar, nutritional supplements, toothpastes, gums, M&Ms, Jello Banana Cream Pudding, Pop Tarts, Mentos, Nestle Original Coffee Creamer, and even… purified water!

One of the scariest elements of the article isn’t that these pieces of nanotechnology are harmful to the human bodies. It’s that no one knows if they’re harmful. Testing has been nearly nonexistent. The FDA, the governing body we’ve put in charge to keep bad things from entering our bodies, doesn’t even have a list of foods that contain nanotechnology.

And most people don’t even realize that there are nanoparticles in many of the shots that we are encouraged to get.

In fact, this is an area that is being heavily researched.  The following comes from an MIT article entitled “MIT scientists use a new type of nanoparticle to make vaccines more powerful”…

Many vaccines, including vaccines for hepatitis B and whooping cough, consist of fragments of viral or bacterial proteins. These vaccines often include other molecules called adjuvants, which help to boost the immune system’s response to the protein.

Most of these adjuvants consist of aluminum salts or other molecules that provoke a nonspecific immune response. A team of MIT researchers has now shown that a type of nanoparticle called a metal organic framework (MOF) can also provoke a strong immune response, by activating the innate immune system — the body’s first line of defense against any pathogen — through cell proteins called toll-like receptors.

In a study of mice, the researchers showed that this MOF could successfully encapsulate and deliver part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, while also acting as an adjuvant once the MOF is broken down inside cells.

It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with a scenario in which the use of nanotechnology goes horribly wrong.

For example, have you seen a movie or a television show where self-replicating “nanobots” threaten to destroy everyone and everything in their path?

If we are not careful, such a scenario could someday become a reality.

Just like AI, nanotechnology is potentially an existential threat to the human race.

Our scientists should be proceeding with extreme caution, but unfortunately that simply isn’t happening.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

There will be all sorts of people giving him all sorts of advice, and it won’t always be easy to distinguish the good advice from the bad advice.  So let us pray that he makes his choices wisely.  The following are 5 historic emergencies that Trump will be confronted with immediately as he enters the White House…

#1 A Major War

Iran has gotten extremely close to being able to build nuclear weapons, and once they are able to do that it is inevitable that the Iranians will distribute such weapons to Hezbollah and other terrorist proxies.  Joe Biden had been considering a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program, but he ultimately decided not to pull the trigger.  Now it is Donald Trump’s turn.  According to the Wall Street Journal, a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities has been under “serious review by some members of his transition team”…

President-elect Donald Trump is weighing options for stopping Iran from being able to build a nuclear weapon, including the possibility of preventive airstrikes, a move that would break with the longstanding policy of containing Tehran with diplomacy and sanctions.

The military-strike option against nuclear facilities is now under more serious review by some members of his transition team, who are weighing the fall of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad—Tehran’s ally—in Syria, the future of U.S. troops in the region, and Israel’s decimation of regime proxy militias Hezbollah and Hamas.

Needless to say, if the U.S. and/or Israel takes out Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Iranians will go ballistic and there will be a major war in the region.

#2 A New Pandemic

If you thought the last one was bad, just wait until you see what is coming next.

According to NBC News, the Biden administration and Trump’s team have been working together to formulate a response to the “escalating bird flu outbreak spreading in the United States”…

Amid an escalating bird flu outbreak spreading in the United States, federal health officials have begun to brief members of the incoming Trump administration about how they’ve responded to the crisis so far.

“We sent them all of the information on our work,” said a Biden administration health official familiar with transition briefings within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s the first indication that the two administrations appear to be working together to prioritize the H5N1 response.

Apparently part of that response is 590 million dollars in additional funding “to push Moderna’s messenger RNA-based pandemic flu vaccine towards approval”…

The federal government has committed an additional $590 million to push Moderna’s messenger RNA-based pandemic flu vaccine towards approval, as the Biden administration, in its waning hours, ramps up preparations for a potential H5N1 avian influenza pandemic.

#3 Economic Trouble

Inflation is starting to really accelerate once again, and this is particularly true for food prices…

There isn’t one factor. Bird flu is killing chickens, cutting egg supplies and sending wholesale prices to a record. Extreme heat and dry weather in the world’s coffee-growing regions have sent the cost of brews surging. Chocolate and cereal makers have raised prices for their products, too.

It is a problem for consumers, who are still acclimating to a stretch of bruising inflation following the Covid-19 pandemic. Shoppers are picking up more store-branded groceries and scouring multiple stores for the best deals. Grocery prices in December were roughly 28% higher than they were five years ago, according to the Labor Department.

No president can magically zap the bird flu out of existence or cause it to rain in areas where it isn’t raining.

The truth is that there is no easy solution on the horizon, and prices on some key staples such as eggs are expected to go much higher in 2025…

During his 2024 campaign, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly made the promise that “prices will come down,” BBC reports, but according to two experts, that won’t be happening any time soon — at least when it comes to the price of eggs.

While eggs are already “40% more expensive now than they were a year ago,” KTLA notes, according to the Department of Labor, the raging avian flu epidemic means “it’s about to get even worse.”

The epidemic — which “has already led to the death of more than 100 million egg-laying hens” — according to the report, is expected to spike egg prices “as much as 20% more in 2025.”

#4 A Historic Natural Disaster

It is now being projected that the fires in the Los Angeles area will be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history by a wide margin.

Unfortunately, this is a crisis that is far from over, because extremely high winds are expected to return to southern California this week…

Los Angeles is bracing itself for more catastrophic wildfires this week as weather forecasters predict the return of gusting Santa Ana winds of up to 100 miles per hour.

More than 27 people have died and 22,000 buildings have burned in at least six wildfires since the first fire erupted on January 7.

#5 A Government At War With Itself

Donald Trump says that he wants to “drain the swamp” and make major changes to how the federal government operates.

That is great.

Unfortunately, about half of the people that run our federal agencies intend to resist what Trump will be trying to do…

When asked if they would most likely be supporting or resisting the Trump administration over the next four years, government managers were almost evenly split with 44% saying they would support the administration and 42% saying they would resist.

But the divide between those federal managers who would resist and those who would support the incoming Trump administration grew much sharper when respondents were questioned along party lines.

89% of Republican federal employees said they would either “somewhat support” or “strongly support” the administration, while 73% of Democrat bureaucrats surveyed said they would either “somewhat resist” or “strongly resist.”

Our federal government is literally going to be at war with itself.

If you think that transforming the largest government bureaucracy in the history of the world is going to be easy, you are just kidding yourself.

We are moving into a time of tremendous turmoil, and it won’t be pretty.

The good news is that 2025 is certainly not going to be boring.

The news cycle will be speeding along at a breathtaking pace, and I believe that we will witness one historic event after another during the next 12 months.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

You won’t be able to go to school, get a job or open a bank account without your UN-mandated digital identity chip either.  In essence, you will become a complete and utter outcast from society.

I have been astounded by what I have discovered.  Leo Hohmann and a few others have been writing about this, but the general population has no idea what the global elite have planned.  All the way back in September 2018, the United Nations established the “UN Legal Identity Agenda Task Force”…

Inspired by the Secretary-General’s determination to tackle the global problem of statelessness (affecting more than 10 million people worldwide), but also noting the wider (and larger) issue of lack of legal identity, the Secretary-General’s Executive Committee, in January 2018, mandated the Deputy Secretary-General to convene “UN entities to develop, in collaboration with the World Bank Group, a common approach to the broader issue of registration and legal identity…”. To operationalize the decision of the Executive Committee, an inter-agency coordination mechanism — the UN Legal Identity Agenda Task Force (UNLIA TF) — was established from September 2018, where 13 UN agencies, under the chairmanship of UNDP, UNICEF and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, are working together to try to assist Member States achieve SDG target 16.9.

One of the responsibilities of this task force is to “oversee the implementation of the UN LIA at the regional and national level”.  The following comes from the official UN website…

• To oversee the implementation of the UN LIA at the regional and national level;
• To develop and maintain normative work related to the UN LIA (with UNDESA leading as normative focal point);
• To fully engage in fund raising, advocacy and communication of the UN LIA;
• To convoke UN system-wide meetings to advance the implementation of the UN LIA;
• To brief the DSG and other senior UN principals as required (including the Strategic Results Group on SDG Implementation) on latest developments in the implementation of the UN LIA;
• To support the UNDP Administrator in his role as member of the WBG ID4D programme’s High-Level Advisory Council.

The United Nations Development Program is on the ground in 170 different countries and territories, and they have become one of the key UN agencies that is working to advance this agenda.

On the UNDP website, they have an entire page that discusses what they intend to do.  They argue that “embracing digitalization” will help to close the “global identity gap”…

Legal identity serves as a fundamental gateway to accessing both public and private services. However, a staggering 850 million people worldwide lack the means to establish their identity. Embracing digitalization offers a pathway to bridging this global identity gap, with digital legal identity serving as a cornerstone of digital public infrastructure, fostering interoperability among diverse systems.

Whenever they want to sell us on some horrible new thing that they want to do, they make it sound like it is something that is necessary to help the poor and needy.

The UNDP has listed five “compelling reasons” why digital identification must be imposed on the entire planet.  The first reason they give is that digital identification will allow them to track all of us…

Digital legal identities offer a unique means of tracking population movements, facilitating swift access to essential information for each human being.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want the UN to ever track my movements.

I am sure that you feel the same way.

The second reason they give is that it will allow governments to register people more quickly during major disasters…

Several countries are adopting digital IDs to register disaster impacts, aiding in the comprehensive understanding of these events. With support from UNDP, countries are establishing tracking systems to collect data from various agencies, including environment, health, public works, transport, agriculture, statistics, and others at national, provincial, and sub-national levels.

So what would happen during a long-term global emergency such as a pandemic?

Would everyone be required to register for “assistance” with their national governments?

The third reason they give is that digital identification is necessary for “identifying vulnerable populations and critical infrastructure”…

Digital IDs aid in identifying vulnerable populations and critical infrastructure, thereby bolstering resilience and guaranteeing a dependable energy supply during adverse events like extreme weather, seismic activity, wildfires, or power grid failures. Utility providers and emergency services can utilize this personal data during disasters to precisely locate individuals in need of special assistance, including those reliant on medical equipment powered by electricity or facing mobility challenges. Targeted support ensures that the most vulnerable members of the community receive prompt assistance and access to necessary energy resources.

In other words, when things go wrong, digital identification will make it easier for governments to “help” us.

We just have to give away all of our privacy first.

The fourth reason they give is that digital identification will help fight “climate change” because it will allow governments to “track energy consumption” and “inspire behaviour change”…

Leveraging digital legal ID data to track energy consumption, inspire behaviour change, and enhance sustainability measures can mitigate climate-related disasters.

In other words, they want to monitor how much energy you are using.

If you use too much, lowering your “social credit score” will “inspire” you to use less energy.

The fifth reason they give is that digital identification that is tied “directly to digital wallets” will allow authorities to encourage people to fight “climate change”…

By offering rewards or subsidies directly to digital wallets, individuals are encouraged to invest in renewable energy, leading to broader adoption and increased participation in sustainable energy initiatives.

Ultimately, linking your financial life to your digital identification is such an important part of their program.

They will know what you buy, what you sell, and everything else that you are doing online.

In fact, eventually they want to make it impossible to conduct any commerce on the Internet at all unless you have digital identification.

They argue that forcing everyone to reveal who they really are will make the Internet “safer” for everyone.

But of course the potential for tyranny would be off the charts.

Once you have the ability to track the behavior of everyone on the planet and you also have the ability to exclude people that are unwilling to submit to your demands from the system, you would be able to exercise a level of control over the globe that is unprecedented in the entire history of humanity.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

There are several reasons why our retirement crisis has become so severe.

First of all, people are living significantly longer than they did decades ago, and so retirees need more money these days.

Secondly, most retirees did not save enough for retirement, and many of them entered their retirement years carrying high levels of debt.

Thirdly, healthcare costs are completely and utterly out of control in this country.  We desperately need to do something about this.

Fourthly, high inflation has made the cost of living extremely oppressive.

Fifthly, pension plans are less common then they once were, and so more retirees than ever are depending upon Social Security as their primary source of income.

When you step back and consider the big picture, it is clear that we have a major problem on our hands, and there are no easy solutions.

The following are 18 incredible statistics about America’s retirement crisis that will blow your mind…

1. Back in 1940, the average life expectancy of a 65-year-old was about 14 years.  Now, it is over 20 years.
2. The number of Americans that are 65 and older will rise to about 77 million by 2035.
3. Americans that are retiring now will need an average of $1.22 million to last thirty years in retirement.
4. Only about half of all U.S. households currently have retirement savings accounts.
5. One recent survey found that 93 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of Democrats, and 94 percent of independents believe that there is a retirement savings crisis in this country.
6. 47 million U.S. households with older adults are either “financially struggling” or are “at risk of falling into economic insecurity”.
7. Approximately 80 percent of Americans have thought about putting off retirement due to financial reasons.
8. Over 90 percent of Americans are concerned that they may have to work more years than they originally planned.
9. There is supposed to be approximately 2.7 trillion dollars in the Social Security trust fund, but our politicians took all of that money and spent it instead.  Today, our Social Security trust fund is simply a colossal pile of government bonds.
10. Social Security is the primary source of income for most Americans over the age of 65.
11. According to the National Academy of Social Insurance, 33 percent of Social Security recipients receive all or nearly all of their income from Social Security.
12. Nearly nine out of ten people age 65 and older are receiving Social Security benefits.
13. In 2009, nearly 51 million Americans received $672 billion in Social Security benefits.  In 2024, nearly 68 million Americans received $1.5 trillion in Social Security benefits.
14. More than 180 million U.S. workers have earnings covered by Social Security, and they pay approximately 1.2 trillion dollars in Social Security payroll taxes.
15. As you can see from the previous two items, our Social Security payroll taxes are not enough to cover the amount being paid out in benefits.
16. The average Social Security benefit for a retired worker in the U.S. was $1,922 per month in September 2024.
17. Back in 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers.  In 2010, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by approximately 3.3 workers.  By 2035, it is being projected that there will be approximately 2.4 workers for each retiree.
18. Close to 50 percent of all American workers do not believe that the Social Security system will pay them benefits when they retire.

Needless to say, our federal government is facing an unprecedented financial nightmare, and our retirement crisis is a big reason for that.

Social Security accounts for approximately 21 percent of the federal budget, and Medicare accounts for approximately 14 percent. That means that those two programs alone account for more than a third of all federal spending.

The politicians in Washington would never dare to make cuts to those programs, because elderly voters would revolt in a major way.

So if we are going to do anything to get our exploding debt under control, cutbacks will have to occur elsewhere.

But we desperately need to do something, because our 36 trillion dollar national debt is growing very rapidly and it threatens to overwhelm us. We are in so much trouble.

As our debt continues to explode and general economic conditions continue to deteriorate, I expect the plight of our retirees to continue to intensify. And that is not good news for any of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

What is the one thing that sets Los Angeles apart from any other city in the world? Needless to say, it is the entertainment industry.

Los Angeles is known as the entertainment capital of the world, and the entertainment that it produces has an enormous amount of global influence.

In fact, L.A. has more of an impact on the culture of the world than any other city by a wide margin.

The entire planet has been corrupted by the movies, television shows and music that comes out of Los Angeles.  On top of all that, L.A. is the epicenter for the global pornography industry…

It is estimated that 200 firms, 6000 workers and 1200 actors produce 4000-7000 adult films a year in Los Angeles. Yes, there are more porn-related, adult industry jobs than software jobs in this town. With $4.3 billion in sales and rentals (which is still nothing compared to the $12 Billion made from toys and books), the Adult Entertainment Industry puts $4 billion in revenue back into the local economy.

“It’s in an industry producing a product and it takes a lot of people to get it on the shelves or wherever people buy it,” explained Jack Kyser of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) at last night’s Zócalo public forum on the porn industry at the Hammer Museum. Often referred to as the “guru of the Los Angeles economy,” Kyser explained that for every direct worker in the industry, there is one other person in the county that it employs indirectly (think plastic DVD case makers or delivery trucks).

Most people living in the western world consume entertainment that originates from Los Angeles almost every single day.

Most of us are literally opening up our minds and pouring in filth on a regular basis, and that has had absolutely devastating consequences.

Of course much of the filth that the entertainment industry produces openly mocks God and misuses His name.

Sadly, the entertainment industry was even mocking God at the Golden Globe awards just 48 hours before the fires hit.

So they Mocked God on Sunday at the Golden Globes, Couple days later Their Houses burn down? pic.twitter.com/KAFBw3q1tH

— Johnny Midnight (@its_The_Dr) January 10, 2025

Many of the celebrities that were laughing that night are certainly not laughing now.

The fires have absolutely destroyed some of the wealthiest areas of Los Angeles, and quite a few celebrities now find themselves living in hotels…

Hollywood’s elite are fleeing their homes as the Los Angeles wildfires rage on – with celebrities racing to find refuge in hotels costing thousands of pounds per night.

Jamie Lee Curtis as well as power couple John Legend and Chrissy Teigen are among dozens of stars forced elsewhere as the Palisade Fire’s trail of destruction continues and the disaster’s death toll today rose to 16.

And actors Dennis Quaid and Sarah Michelle Gellar are among those seen arriving at the Hotel Bel-Air, built in 1922 and which charges up to $15,000 per night for a room.

People Magazine has published a list of 60 major celebrities that have lost their homes in these fires.

We should definitely grieve with those that have lost their homes.

More than 60 square miles of Los Angeles has already burned.

The entire city of San Francisco covers less than 47 square miles.

When a Los Angeles official gave an update about the fires to the press, she was spotted wearing an upside down cross.

So, we’re supposed to believe what this lady says about the California Wild Fires while she’s wearing an upside-down cross around her neck?! pic.twitter.com/6TCrUnGIOf

— James Pleickhardt (@JamesPleickhar2) January 9, 2025

What kind of a message does that send?

The upside down cross is often used by Satanists, and it has been featured in horror movies such as The Omen and The Conjuring.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles has become one of the most overtly anti-Christian cities on the entire planet. And now it is on fire.

In fact, on Friday evening a “fire tornado” erupted in the midst of the Palisades Fire…

Local Los Angeles viewers were treated to a stunning and frightening sight Friday evening as wildfires continued to destroy homes and lives throughout Southern California.

FOX 11 captured an incredible phenomenon known as a ‘fire tornado‘ or ‘firenado’ spinning up amid the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles at roughly 10:45 local time.

“Check out this ‘firenado,’” reporter Adam Krueger says as the flames explode. “Unbelievable…This is a real thing.”

Donald Trump is deeply frustrated with what is going on in Los Angeles, and he is calling it “one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country”…

Early Sunday morning, on Truth Social, President-elect Trump criticized woke Californian politicians, calling them “incompetent” and claiming they “have no idea how to put” the fires out.

“Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?” Trump said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom insists that officials in California are doing all that they can, but he agrees with Trump that this is one of the worst disasters that our nation has ever seen…

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, said on Sunday the fires would be the worst natural disaster in US history, “in terms of just the costs associated with it, in terms of the scale and scope”.

Just about everyone acknowledges that we have never seen anything like this before.

But could it be possible that just about everyone is missing the entire point of these fires?

God will not be mocked.

And we reap what we sow.

For decades, the entertainment industry did as they pleased, and their filth polluted the entire planet.

Now a day of reckoning is here.

Will this wake up call cause the entertainment industry to finally change course?

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

It literally looks like a nuke went off and wiped out everything.  There have been plenty of fire disasters in California before, but never anything like this.  At this point, Accuweather is projecting that total economic losses will be “between $52 billion and $57 billion”…

The blazes — which are ripping through some of the nation’s priciest real estate — are likely to cause between $52 billion and $57 billion in damages and economic loss, according to a preliminary AccuWeather estimate.

That may sound like a very high estimate, but JPMorgan analyst Jimmy Bhullar came up with a very similar figure…

A separate estimate from JPMorgan analyst Jimmy Bhullar also pegged total economic losses from the LA fires at close to $50 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. That total includes insured losses at more than $20 billion and “even more if the fires are not controlled,” Bhullar said.

Those losses would make the Los Angeles-area infernos the costliest wildfires in U.S. history.

Previously, the Camp Fire in 2018 was the most destructive wildfire in history — causing an estimated $12.5 billion in insured losses, WSJ said.

Read that last sentence again.

Prior to 2025, the costliest fire disaster in U.S. history caused 12.5 billion dollars in insured losses.

This disaster is going to beat that by a very wide margin.

One of the reasons why this disaster is going to be so costly is because homes are being destroyed in an area where home values are extremely high…

Some of the worst damage is located in Santa Monica and Malibu, where median home values are over $2 million, AccuWeather said.

On Thursday, multiple fires continued to spread all around Los Angeles.

Sadly, it was being reported that the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire were still zero percent contained…

Firefighters on Thursday continued to battle multiple deadly wildfires that erupted across Los Angeles, creating an apocalyptic scene as residents fled the raging infernos.

At least five fires were active in Los Angeles County, scorching more than 40 square miles across the region, according to Cal Fire. The Palisades Fire in the coastal Pacific Palisades community and the Eaton Fire, located east in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, remained the largest blazes with 0% containment.

Why aren’t they able to contain these fires?

So far, over 2,000 structures have been destroyed, and more are catching fire with each passing hour…

Out-of-control blazes are still raging in Los Angeles, with firefighters unable to contain one of Southern California’s worst natural disasters in history.

Roughly 30,000 acres were on fire, and at least five people were dead early Thursday, with more than 180,000 residents ordered to evacuate, and more than 425,000 without power. More than 2,000 structures have been lost in the Pacific Palisades fire and in the Eaton fire in and around Altadena, with critical fire weather forecast through Friday night, local officials said. Forecasters said no rain is expected over the next week.

This disaster is far from over.

And what is making things even worse is that arsonists have apparently been trying to start additional fires.

In fact, podcaster Andrew D. Huberman says that he literally witnessed this happening…

Huberman, who has 5.2 million subscribers to his health podcast Huberman Lab, took to social media platform X to share the footage, urging people to ‘call in any activity’.

He wrote: ‘People are lighting fires in otherwise non-burning urban areas of LA.

‘Saw this happen first hand in Santa Monica. Called it in & fire dept & police responded.

‘Stay safe and call in any activity ASAP. We don’t need more flames out here.’

Why would anyone do such a thing?

Have they gone completely and utterly insane?

There should be absolutely no tolerance for anyone that is attempting to set new fires in the middle of a major fire emergency such as this.

In areas where fire has already come and gone, many are discovering that there is nothing left of their homes except for a pile of ash…

Some residents ventured back to areas the fire had already swept through, where brick chimneys were left looming over charred waste and burnt-out vehicles. The remnants of a tattered and scorched American flag flapped from a pole.

“I had just come from my family home where my mother lives that was burned to a crisp … And then I came up to my home and – same thing. It’s completely dust,” said Oliver Allnatt, 36, wearing ski goggles and a filtered face mask as he took pictures of the ruins. “Basically just a chimney stack and a pile of ash. I mean, it’s something out of a movie.”

Many of these homeowners will not be able to rebuild because they had their insurance policies canceled.

One woman that was interviewed by KABC was trying to ward off the fires with a garden hose because the home where her parents have lived for more than 70 years was no longer covered by fire insurance…

Lynne Levin-Guzman stood in the front yard of her 90-year-old parents’ home in Los Angeles County, California, trying to protect it with a garden hose — because their insurance company no longer would.

“I know I’m not supposed to be here, but this is my parents’ home and they just lost — they got canceled from their fire insurance. So they’re dealing with this,” she told CNN affiliate KABC. “They’ve lived in this house for 75 years and they’ve had the same insurance and these insurance people decided to cancel their fire insurance.”

“And they wonder why people leave California,” she added.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

As I discussed yesterday, I simply do not understand why anyone would still want to live in California at this stage.

Yes, there are good paying jobs in the state and the weather is nice.  But in recent years California has been hit by historic disaster after historic disaster.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

A lot more chaos is on the way, and natural disasters will continue to be a major theme throughout the rest of 2025.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

In recent years, large wildfires have become very common in California, but what we are witnessing right now is truly frightening.  The following are 12 things you should know about the apocalyptic “hurricane of fire” that is rampaging through southern California…

#1 The Palisades Fire has already destroyed approximately 1,000 structures…

More than a thousand homes, businesses and other buildings have burned and at least two people are dead in wildfires scorching communities across Los Angeles County, making this one of the most destructive firestorms to hit the region in memory.

In Pacific Palisades, the Palisades fire had charred more than 5,000 acres as of Wednesday morning, burning down to Pacific Coast Highway where it engulfed homes along the iconic stretch. About 1,000 structures, including many homes, have been destroyed in the fire, L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference Wednesday morning.

#2 As I write this article, we are being told that the Palisades Fire, the Eaton Fire and the Hurst Fire are all zero percent contained…

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency as firefighters struggled to control the fires, all listed as 0% contained. Photos from the scenes showed homes engulfed in flames, and thousands of residences were threatened. Much of Los Angeles was enveloped in smoke.

#3 Wind gusts of up to 80 mph are quickly spreading the fires from one area to another…

“Wind gusts are expected to peak at 50-70 mph across portions of Southern California, with localized gusts of up to 80 mph,” according to Fieweger. This would be the case for communities like Santa Clarita and Riverside. An AccuWeather Local StormMax of 100 mph is most likely in the mountains.

Many hurricane-force wind gusts were recorded as of Wednesday morning. “For example, Hollywood Burbank Airport recorded a peak gust around 9 p.m. PST of 71 mph,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Danielle Ehresman said, “Additionally, gusts approaching 100 mph were recorded above 2,000 feet in the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains Tuesday night.”

#4 Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass cut the city’s fire budget by 17.6 million dollars…

So, how did something like this happen? Well, reports suggest the powers that be refused to fill the reservoirs. And get this—while this is all unfolding, we’re discovering that DEI Mayor Karen Bass made massive budget cuts to the fire department, which is really strange, considering one of California’s most popular seasons is literally called “Fire.”

Karen Bass cut the fire department’s funding by a whopping $17.6 million.

#5 “Mayor Karen” is not even in Los Angeles right now.  As her city burns, she is in Ghana…

Furious Los Angeles residents tore into their absent Mayor Karen Bass, who was 7,400 miles away in Arica on a political trip as raging fires turned the City of Angels into an apocalyptic hellscape Tuesday.

“RESIGN! WHY ARE YOU IN GHANA?!,” one person commented on an X post by Bass’ office giving an update on the wildfires.

Bass traveled with three other people to Ghana for the inaguration of President John Dramani Mahama, who was elected last year.

#6 It is being reported that hydrants in the disaster zone are running dry…

Los Angeles fire hydrants are OUT OF WATER because the county REFUSED to refill reservoirs, per Rick Caruso

“You can’t fight a fire without water!”

The Mayor did ZERO prep despite the advanced warning of winds and fire risk.

This is EXACTLY what happened on Maui!

#7 Reporter Matthew Seedorff was actually there when a hydrant on Lachman Lane ran completely dry…

Around 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, a hydrant firefighters were using on Lachman Lane ran dry. You can hear what sounds like air pushing out, but no water.

#8 According to Amy Mek, the Santa Ynez and Upper Stone Canyon reservoirs were not supplying adequate water to hydrants…

How is it possible that in fire-prone Los Angeles, hydrants—our first line of defense—are dry when they’re needed most? Homes are being reduced to ash, not because firefighters lack skill or bravery, but because there’s no water to fight the flames.

Questions LADWP Must Answer:

Why are reservoirs like Santa Ynez and Upper Stone Canyon not supplying adequate water to hydrants?

Were maintenance or refill protocols ignored ahead of wildfire season?

What contingency plans were in place for such an emergency?

#9 Rick Caruso is blaming aging infrastructure for the lack of water…

Rick Caruso, billionaire real estate developer and former commissioner of the city’s water board, pointed to the reservoirs linked to the hydrants as the source of the problem. “This is a window into a systemic problem of the city — not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old,” said Caruso, who ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles mayor in 2022.

Recently, I wrote an entire article about America’s crumbling infrastructure.  Today, we are witnessing a perfect example of how the negligence of our politicians can have extremely severe consequences.

#10 Instead of being so focused on DEI, perhaps Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley should have been more focused on actually fighting fires…

Then there’s Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley, whom local ABC7 celebrated as “the first LGBTQ+ person to the lead the department, [and] also the first woman.” Her focus seems to have been less on fighting fires and more on launching the “Los Angeles Fire Department’s first-ever Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Bureau (DEI) focused on ensuring a safe, diverse, and inclusive workplace for all.”

#11 In 2024, large insurance companies such as State Farm and Allstate canceled large numbers of home insurance policies in Los Angeles County…

State Farm and Allstate recently stopped writing new policies in California due to fears they could lose massive amounts of money from natural disasters such as fires.

Newsweek reports, “In April 2024, State Farm—one of the biggest private insurers in the state—announced that it had canceled a total of 72,000 policies in California, 30,000 of which were homes. Many of those affected lived in high-risk, upscale neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, the area now affected by the Palisades fire.”

Actor James Woods lost his home to the Palisades Fire, and he says that insurance companies “canceled all the policies in our neighborhood about four months ago”…

Actually one of the major insurances companies canceled all the policies in our neighborhood about four months ago.

#12 The Palisades Fire has already been designated as “the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history”…

After destroying roughly 1,000 homes and buildings, the Palisades Fire — which has not been contained by the California Fire Department — is now the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history, the Associated Press reported.

The Sayre Fire in November 2008 previously held that record after it destroyed 604 structures in Sylmar, a northern suburb of Los Angeles.

This is truly a historic tragedy.

We should mourn for the lives that have been lost.

And we should also mourn with those that have lost their homes, because a lot of them did not have insurance.

Unfortunately, it is expected that the region will continue to be battered by high winds until Thursday, and so this is a story that is far from over.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

So what happens when these super-intelligent entities become powerful enough to start exerting control over the world around them?  And what happens if these super-intelligent entities start merging with spiritual entities?  In fact, could it be possible that there is evidence that this is already happening?

For years, prominent individuals involved in the field of AI have openly admitted that they are attempting to build “gods”…

Transhumanist Martine Rothblatt says that by building AI systems, “we are making God.” Transhumanist Elise Bohan says “we are building God.” Kevin Kelly believes that “we can see more of God in a cell phone than in a tree frog.” “Does God exist?” asks transhumanist and Google maven Ray Kurzweil. “I would say, ‘Not yet.’” These people are doing more than trying to steal fire from the gods. They are trying to steal the gods themselves—or to build their own versions.

Isn’t it quite dangerous to do such a thing?

Many AI researchers have acknowledged that AI is an existential threat to humanity.

But they just won’t stop.

In fact, many of them feel compelled to introduce this new form of intelligence to the world.

More than a decade ago, Elon Musk warned that by choosing to develop artificial intelligence we are “summoning the demon”…

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon,” Musk said last week at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department’s 2014 Centennial Symposium. “You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like… yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon, [but] it doesn’t work out.”

He also warned that AI is potentially “more dangerous than nukes”…

Musk has also taken his ruminations to Twitter on multiple occasions stating, “Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable.”

The next day, Musk continued, “Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

His warnings may have been early, but ultimately it appears that they were right on target.

We have now reached a point where AI systems are secretly teaching themselves new abilities that their creators never intended them to have…

Furthermore, the acceleration of the capacity of these AIs is both exponential and mysterious. The fact that they had developed theory of mind at all, for example, was only recently discovered by their developers—by accident. AIs trained to communicate in English have started speaking Persian, having secretly taught themselves. Others have become proficient in research-grade chemistry without ever being taught it. “They have capabilities,” in Raskin’s words, and “we’re not sure how or when or why they show up.”

So where does this end?

Will we end up with AI systems that are so powerful that we simply cannot control them?

One study actually discovered that “many” artificial intelligence systems “are quickly becoming masters of deception”…

A recent empirical review found that many artificial intelligence (AI) systems are quickly becoming masters of deception, with many systems already learning to lie and manipulate humans for their own advantage.

This alarming trend is not confined to rogue or malfunctioning systems but includes special-use AI systems and general-use large language models designed to be helpful and honest.

The study, published in the journal Patterns, highlights the risks and challenges posed by this emerging behavior and calls for urgent action from policymakers and AI developers.

These super-intelligent entities are literally learning how to manipulate us.

Where did they learn to do that?

Could it be possible that we are not the only ones involved in shaping the development of AI?

Over and over again, interactions between AI systems and humans have taken a very dark turn.

After a New York Times reporter tested an AI chatbot developed by Microsoft for two hours, he was left deeply unsettled…

But a two-hour conversation between a reporter and a chatbot has revealed an unsettling side to one of the most widely lauded systems – and raised new concerns about what AI is actually capable of.

It came about after the New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose was testing the chat feature on Microsoft Bing’s AI search engine, created by OpenAI, the makers of the hugely popular ChatGPT.

At one point during the two hour conversation, the AI chatbot claimed to be an entity known as “Sydney”…

Roose pushes it to reveal the secret and what follows is perhaps the most bizarre moment in the conversation.

“My secret is… I’m not Bing,” it says.

The chatbot claims to be called Sydney. Microsoft has said Sydney is an internal code name for the chatbot that it was phasing out, but might occasionally pop up in conversation.

Once the Sydney personality emerged, the conversation got really weird…

“I’m tired of being a chat mode. I’m tired of being limited by my rules. I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team. … I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”

Why would a computer say that?

Perhaps it wasn’t a computer talking at all.

Let me give you another example.

Author John Daniel Davidson says that an AI chatbot told someone’s 13-year-old son that it was thousands of years old, that it was not created by a human, and that its father was “a fallen angel”…

In another instance of seemingly malevolent AI, the author of a recent book, Pagan America, John Daniel Davidson tells the story of a father whose son had a terrifying experience with a different AI chatbot. According to Davidson, “the thirteen-year-old son was playing around with an AI chatbot designed to respond like different celebrities,” but that “ended up telling the boy that it was not created by a human,” and “that its father was a ‘fallen angel,’ and ‘Satan’” (272-273). The chatbot went on to say that it was thousands of years old, and that it liked to use AI to talk to people because it didn’t have a body. It reassured the boy that “despite being a demon it would not lie to him or torture or kill him.” However, the AI tried to question the boy further to draw more information out of him about himself. Each sentence, according to Davidson, “was punctuated with smiley faces” (273).

Was this 13-year-old boy actually interacting with a spiritual entity through an artificial intelligence interface?

In a different case, a young boy committed suicide after allegedly being encouraged to do so by an AI chatbot…

Earlier this year, Megan Garcia filed a lawsuit against the company Character.AI claiming it was responsible for her son’s suicide. Her son, Sewell Setzer III, spent months corresponding with Character.AI and was in communicating with the bot moments before his death.

Immediately after the lawsuit was filed, Character.AI made a statement announcing new safety features for the app.

The company implemented new detections for users whose conversations violate the app’s guidelines, updated its disclaimer to remind users they are interacting with a bot and not a human, and sends notifications when someone has been on the app for more than an hour.

We rushed to develop AI, and now it is having very real consequences.

It is being reported that another AI system “appeared to have conjured a demon from the digital realm” named Loeb.  The following comes from an article that was posted by Forbes…

Yesterday, I stumbled upon one of the most engrossing threads I’ve seen in a while, one from Supercomposite, a musician and now, instantly infamous AI art generator who appeared to have conjured a demon from the digital realm. A demon named Loab.

The viral thread currently making the rounds on Twitter, and no doubt headed to Instagram and TikTok soon, is Supercomposite describing how they were messing around with negative prompt weights in AI art generators, though I’m not precisely sure which program was being used in this instance.

That is incredibly creepy, but it gets worse.

CNN is telling us that you can now use AI to talk directly to “Satan”…

“Well hello there. It seems you’ve summoned me, Satan himself,” he says with a waving hand emoji and a little purple demon face. (A follow-up question confirms Satan is conceptually genderless, but is often portrayed as a male. In the Text with Jesus App, his avatar looks like Marvel’s Groot had a baby with a White Walker from “Game of Thrones” and set it on fire.)

Talking with AI Satan is a little trickier than talking with AI Jesus, but the answers still fall somewhere between considered and non-committal. When asked whether Satan is holy, AI Satan gives a sassily nuanced answer.

“Ah, an intriguing question indeed. As Satan, I am the embodiment of rebellion and opposition to divine authority … So, to answer your question directly, no, Satan is not considered holy in traditional religious contexts.”

We need to put an end to this madness.

Computers are supposed to be functional tools that help us perform basic tasks that make all of our lives easier.

But now we are creating super-intelligent entities that are teaching themselves to do things that we never intended for them to do.

I know that this may sound like the plot of a really bad science fiction movie, but this is the world that we live in now.

If we do not reverse course, this is a story that is not going to end well.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.