Only Billionaires Benefit From New AI Action Plan & Criminalizing Homelessness

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

You’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Today I want to do what I love to do which is connect some insidious little dots for you across various seemingly unrelated headlines this week. First, as we discussed on Wednesday, a major merger is brewing between Paramount and Skydance, and the FCC just approved the 8 billion dollar bid to further conglomerate our available media in this country, so long as they promise to make sure there is NO pesky DEI BULLSHIT infecting Paramount or its news arm CBS. Second, the Trump regime just unveiled its AI Action Plan, promising deregulation and a “try first” mentality to AI innovation in America, basically move fast and break things to win the race to artificial superintelligence. And third, yesterday Trump signed an executive order that makes it easier to criminalize homelessness and mental illness. What does all of this have in common? Oh it’s a rabbit hole. Let’s get into it.

First, the Skydance and Paramount merger. See my video on Wednesday for more, but the basics are this: Skydance has been in talks to merge with Paramount but they needed permission from the FCC because of those pesky antitrust laws we never actually bother enforcing. Because of this, Paramount has been willing to dance with the Trump regime, giving him a $16 million dollar bribe earlier this year to settle his frivolous lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed was unfair. Now CBS’s Late Night with Stephen Colbert has been cancelled–allegedly because it was a money losing venture, which may be true but taken in the context of EVERYTHING ELSE, including Colbert’s long history of criticizing Trump and parent company Paramount’s attempt to play nice with the regime in order to get its sweet sweet merger, looks pretty suspicious. Though of course then you have the bombshell South Park episode that dropped Wednesday tearing Trump apart right after Paramount just signed a $1.5 billion dollar contract with South Park creators. The show depicts Trump in bed with Satan and includes a VERY convincing deepfake political ad featuring a naked Trump wandering through the desert. It’s satire though, free speech am I right?? I’m sure whatever legal team is stuck dealing with the fallout from South Park episodes is prepared for any potential litigation in the wake of the episode, though so far there have just been reports of Trump being mad and a spokesperson saying that South Park hasn’t been relevant for 20 years. So it’s unclear how much oversight Comedy Central parent company Paramount had over the episode as they have yet to comment on it. Despite this apparent hiccup, the FCC has agreed to allow the SkyDance Paramount merger to go forward.

Often, the way news outlets report on a story differs depending on the bias of the publication. And it’s hard to know how YOUR own perception of bias influences your interpretation of the news. This headline from The Associated Press caught my eye “The FCC approves Paramount’s $8B deal with Skydance after months of chaos and political intrigue.” Using the Ground News browser extension, I can see that in the US the Associated Press is considered “left leaning.” To get a fuller picture of the story on all sides of the political spectrum I can click on Full Coverage, which will show me coverage of the same story from publications across the political spectrum.

My partner on today’s video, Ground News, uses 3 independent monitoring organizations to assess the bias rating for each publication. Each news monitoring organization has their own methodology - including editorial reviews, blind bias surveys, independent reviews, and third party research. These are legit INDEPENDENT organizations, but they are limited by the data available to them: their analysis is done in the context of the U.S. political system. Our overton window has shifted so far right that THE ASSOCIATED PRESS is considered “left leaning.” That tells you a lot about the context within which the media you’re consuming operates. And thanks to Ground News, I get even more context, including how factual each publication is and who owns it, giving me a well-rounded idea of the motivations, biases, and accuracy of the news I’m consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in America had that much information about the news they consume??

Because depending on where you or your family members get the news, you’re going to get very different takes on the same story.

This is where Ground News comes in - and why I've been using them for over a year. Today’s partner Ground News is an app and website that offers tools to help you critically analyze the news you read, providing context to understand the full picture. I feel better equipped to make sense of what’s happening in the world without being influenced by just one perspective. And listen I’m not the only one who loves Ground News, the Nobel Peace Center even called it "an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview.”

I’m always really impressed with Ground News and genuinely think they’re a great resource. If you want to stay informed on US Politics and more Subscribe through this QR code or our link below at ground dot news slash leeja for 40% off this unlimited access Vantage Plan. It comes out to $5 a month for unlimited access to ALL the features I’ve mentioned. Thanks Ground News!

This major merger is relevant to our discussion today because the owner of Skydance is David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison. Daddy Ellison is allegedly helping to fund this merger. Larry Ellison is the second richest man in the world and the founder of Oracle. After the merger, Oracle and the New Paramount have discussed a $100 million dollar per year cloud computing partnership. Oracle facilitates cloud computing and helps businesses and the government manage, store, and analyze data. So partnering with AI companies is a natural step for a company attempting to deal with vast swaths of data. Oracle also has billions of dollars of government contracts, including a $500 billion partnership with OpenAI to develop a 5 gigawatt stargate AI data center in the US. Specifically in Abilene Texas, located smack dab in the middle of the state, not far from Fort Worth and Dallas. In March, More Perfect Union did a piece covering the experience of residents living outside Mark Zuckerberg’s data center in Mansfield, Georgia. Residents there report almost zero water pressure and sediment contamination in what water they can get as a result of the data center’s environmental contamination and excessive power and water usage, not to mention the noise and light pollution they experience and the amount of dust and debris that was created during construction of the massive data center. Plus, the cost of the electrical usage often gets passed to everyday consumers in the form of higher electricity bills. Meanwhile, state lawmakers receive gobs of cash from data centers and energy companies in exchange for fast tracking data center creation. And Meta’s data center is 2 gigawatts. Now Oracle and OpenAI are building a 5 gigawatt center in Texas, a state known for having an abysmal, unstable electrical grid already.

And as More Perfect Union reported in that piece on the Meta Datacenter, tech billionaires are pissed at the amount of bureaucracy, regulation, and red tape they have to go through in order to create these massive data centers, which has been a problem for decades as data centers are necessary for cloud computing and the internet as well. In an attempt to appease silicon valley, Trump signed an executive order a few months ago moving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under control of the White House, declaring an “energy emergency” because you can turn anything into an “emergency” and then claim complete presidential authority over it, and vowing to move forward quickly with advancing AI.

Which then of course brings us to the AI Action Plan the Trump regime announced yesterday. This plan came out of an executive order Trump signed back in January called “REMOVING BARRIERS TO AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” which stated that “It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” and directed various agencies and leadership to come up with an action plan.

Specifically, the directive went to the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), Michael Kratsios and the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, David Sacks. Michael Kratsios served as the Chief Technology Officer of the United States under Trump’s first term and, prior to that, he worked as a principal at Thiel Capital and served as chief of staff to tech billionaire Peter Thiel. For more low down on Peter Thiel check out my episodes about who owns JD Vance and about Curtis Yarvin. Thiel is part of the silicon valley camp that believes that democracy actually gets in the way of freedom, monarchy or some elite tech oligarch ruling class would be better for everyone, and AI should be allowed to flourish without regulation because once we finally achieve peak AGI (artificial general intelligence–that is AI that is fully sentient equal to or beyond human intelligence) then humans will finally be able to flourish. These are billionaires who have reached truly incomprehensible levels of delusion. Thiel also funded JD Vance’s Senate election, gave him access to tech elite in California, spoke at the Republican national convention in favor of Trump, and became a major Trump donor. Thiel also co-founded Paypal with Elon Musk. David Sacks, remember, Trump’s special advisor for AI and Crypto in charge of this newly released AI Action Plan, David Sacks he was the first Chief Operating Officer of Paypal and has close ties with Thiel, Musk, and other of the libertarian silicon valley ilk. In fact, back in their Stanford days together, David Sacks and Peter Thiel worked together on the school newspaper, the Stanford Review, cute, except they did things like publish a “Rape Issue” in which Sacks authored an article calling into question the validity of statutory rape as a crime. This was in 1992. In 1995, Thiel and Sacks wrote a book together called “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus.” The book, according to the LA Times, quote “argued that multiculturalism in colleges was hurting education, and that some cases of alleged date rape were actually “seductions that are later regretted.”” For context, “multiculturalism” in the 90s was a favorite boogeyman the way “woke” is today, so naturally David Sacks has also evolved his rhetoric to scorn “woke ideology.” According to Sacks, as reported on by the New Republic, quote “everything is run by Democrats with college degrees, who enact “the tyranny of woke progressivism.” Even big corporations, Sacks tweeted, are run by Marxists, echoing the long-held belief of DeSantis that companies like Disney promote a “woke ideology.”” He, like many of his fellow tech oligarchs, claims to be “of the people” while having gone to STANFORD and being SO OUT OF TOUCH it actually boggles the mind. Sacks was a major supporter of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and deeply critical of what he saw as tech companies unfairly infringing on free speech rights.

David Sacks is also a donor to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, of course, and was introduced to Donald Trump Jr, according to the New York Times, through his friend JD Vance. Sacks later hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his $20 million dollar home on San Francisco’s billionaire’s row, where tickets started at $50,000 per plate and the event raised $12 million dollars for Trump’s re-election campaign. And then, just a few months later, David Sacks was named Trump’s crypto and AI czar. You see since leaving Paypal, Sacks went on to found a variety of companies, including Geni dot com, later acquired by MyHeritage dot com, Yammer, later acquired by Microsoft, and Callin, a podcast hosting platform later acquired by conservative video platform Rumble. And he founded a Venture Capital firm called Craft Ventures. Craft Ventures has significant investments in AI and crypto. Sacks still has a stake in Craft Ventures while also overseeing AI and Crypto regulations in his special government employee position as AI and Crypto czar. But since he’s a special little employee, just like Musk was, he didn’t have to go through the formal vetting and confirmation process. And in March, Trump issued an ethics waiver to David Sacks, basically saying there’s no conflict of interest to see here. Though prior to joining the Trump administration, Sacks DID sell off $200 million dollars worth of crypto investments, a sell off that just HAPPENED to coincide with a massive surge in crypto value after Trump won re-election.

So we’ve got David Sacks collabing with Michael Kratsios to come up with the US’s AI Action Plan, both of whom have DEEP ties to the AI private sector, including top dog evil billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, all of whom stand to gain a FUCK TON of money and power the more AI grows and the fewer regulations getting in the way. And that is precisely what this AI Action Plan calls for. The intro compares the AI revolution to the space race, calling it an industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance all in one. It then lays out three pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international diplomacy and security. To innovate, the US must remove pesky regulations. The plan also calls for limiting federal funds to any state that tries to pass laws that get in the way of AI innovation. Basically: the big beautiful bill ended up not barring states from passing AI regulations, which Congress decided was probably a bad idea, so instead we’re recommending that states be denied funding if they dare to pass AI regulations. It also recommends that AI should be programmed to avoid mentioning DEI or climate change and the federal government should only partner with AI companies that can ensure their AI is “free from ideological bias.” It then basically calls on the government to do everything it can to ensure rapid, move fast and break things style adoption of AI across all levels of society, from the private sector to the federal government. Under the infrastructure pillar it calls for “streamlined” permitting for data centers, meaning removing regulations, including for pesky things like the clean air and clean water acts. It also calls on the government to make federal land available for data center build sites. And internationally, it calls for exporting US AI innovation to our partners and allies, attempting to break China’s AI dominance and advocate for global AI regulations that are as loose and flimsy as the ones we’re developing here in the US.

Tech CEOs are of course applauding Trump’s “visionary” AI action plan, which is a major win for anyone with financial stakes in the AI industry. An article just published in the MIT Technology Review lays out the contradictions in this flashy new AI plan. It says quote “while the tech industry cheered these announcements (which will swell their coffers), they obscured the fact that the administration is currently decimating the very policies that enabled America to become the world leader in AI in the first place.” Those policies are federal investment in research and development, which is being slashed under Trump, whose budget recommends a 36% cut to nondefense R&D spending. Trump supporters claim that the R&D budget will be made up by private sector investment in R&D. The problem is that the private sector will only invest in R&D that furthers its bottom line, which often isn’t the same as the kind of R&D that will benefit the public or even the national security of the US. Federal investment in R&D is essential to create technological advancements long before they’re profitable to private enterprise.

Additionally, supporting immigration is a major piece of ensuring innovation, as highly skilled immigrants make up a large percentage of the researchers and scientists that are behind our technological breakthroughs. According to the article, quote “Today’s generative AI is based on the transformer model (the T in ChatGPT), first described by a team at Google in 2017. Six of the eight researchers on that team were born outside the US, and the other two are children of immigrants.” Further moves by the Trump regime that actually hinder innovation also include blocking a nationwide ban on noncompetes. California’s ban on noncompetes has meant that former employees at major tech firms have been able to go on and found more firms, allowing for greater innovation, as opposed to other states where onerous noncompetes bar former employees from working in the same industry for a period of time. Trump moved to block a proposed nationwide ban on noncompetes, which can stifle innovation. And then there’s the FTC, tasked with overseeing anti-trust investigations. Trump has called for the loosening of FTC restrictions and settlements that he claims “hinder” AI innovation, when in reality a lack of anti-trust enforcement means less competition and less innovation. An inconvenient reality when you’re friends with and being advised by people who have made their fortunes off an increasingly monopolized tech sector and who are intent on making as much money as humanly possible while also allowing AI to grow unchecked by pesky laws that are worried about “the common good” or whatever stupid shit. Because these tech megalomaniacs have zero grasp on reality and are fully sold on the idea that technological innovation, no matter the cost, is always going to be in the best interests of humanity. No matter the human cost in the form of environmental devastation, inequality, and deepening poverty, among so many other things. And in fact the increasing turn towards fascism in this country can be directly linked to the tech oligarchy that has sprung up especially in the wake of deregulation and the 21st century technology boom.

Journalist Abbie Richards has been screaming about the dystopian reality that AI will bring for years. She has drawn direct lines between the creation and flourishing of AI and the spread of fascism. [insert clip]. AI is the ultimate misinformation slop disseminator, and the more you can convince the people that everything around them is terrifying and you don’t know WHAT you can believe, even your very own eyes, the more control you can have over them. Convincing people that their lives are at risk because of outsiders through the creation of violent racist propaganda at a scale unprecedented in human history is a really great way to maintain control.

And one major way that fascists love to do that, with or without the help of AI, is through fearmongering about cities. [insert clip].

And what is the most obvious and visual representation of the danger and decay of our cities? Homelessness. Enter our final piece of the puzzle of major headlines this week: yesterday Trump signed an executive order called “ENDING CRIME AND DISORDER ON AMERICA’S STREETS.” In it, he claims “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.” The order calls for, among many other things, an end to “housing first” models that emphasize getting people housed first and then, once their living situation is more stable, providing resources for substance abuse and mental health issues. Housing first models are promoted by practitioners and professionals who actually work in the field with people experiencing homelessness, but have become vilified as not punitive enough. The order also calls for an end to harm reduction and safe consumption sites. The order also bars federal funding for states that do not adequately enforce anti-encampment laws, and provides MORE funding to law enforcement to tear down encampment sites and collect data on people experiencing homelessness. It also calls for moving homeless individuals off the streets, out of public programs, and into privatized institutions. This includes involuntary commitment for those who are quote “a threat to themselves or others.” And it calls for prioritizing federal funding for programs that require sobriety and treatment as a prerequisite for housing.

Basically, the Trump regime acknowledges that homelessness is an issue but believes that the best way to deal with it is to round people up and put them away so that we no longer have to look at them anymore. It provides zero actual services to the unhoused and merely aims at making the problem disappear. It claims to want to deal with the “underlying issue” of homelessness but the entire Trump regime has been hard at work making underlying causes of mental health disorders and homelessness even worse–gutting social services, increasing the wealth gap, and doing away with civil rights protections that attempt to undo centuries of oppression, all of which have been proven to lead to increased incidents of mental illness, drug use, and homelessness.

According to NPR quote “Critics said the sweeping action does nothing to solve homelessness, and could make it worse.

"This executive order is forcing people to choose between compassionate data driven approaches like housing, or treating it like a crime to have a mental illness or be homeless," said Jesse Rabinowitz with the National Homelessness Law Center.

"Institutionalizing people with mental illness, including those experiencing homelessness, is not a dignified, safe, or evidence-based way to serve people's needs," Ann Oliva with the National Alliance to End Homelessness said in a statement.”

Oh and Trump also gutted the US Interagency Council on Homelessness earlier this year. Ending housing first and other programs aimed at ending homelessness that have had bipartisan support for decades was a key component in the recommendations in Project 2025. Again, because fascists love to hate on cities, and ever since COVID, homelessness has been on the rise. But instead of addressing actual underlying causes, like increased poverty, lack of funding for social safety nets especially for children, or an increasingly brutal housing crisis caused by a major housing shortage which is only going to get worse as we deport more and more construction workers and slap tariffs on more and more construction materials, the Trump regime’s solution is to forcibly institutionalize unhoused people and penalize any state or city that doesn’t comply with its draconian demands. Again, this plays into the fascist worldview that cities are dangerous cesspools that need greater policing and control. Because god forbid we gained empathy, lowered our racial biases, or gained class consciousness by having to interact with people who don’t look exactly like us.

And I can talk from my experience living in Minneapolis for most of the last decade. The city has ABSOLUTELY changed in that time, in many ways for the worse. COVID led to the shuttering of businesses, the unrest in the wake of the George Floyd murder only made it worse, with many businesses still boarded up and buildings remaining vacant 5 years later. Homelessness is absolutely on the rise, we have seen the creation and destruction of numerous tent cities over the last five years, crime including car jackings and robberies spiked around 2021. There are parts of the city you can go to and see people openly shooting up at any time of night or day. It is not pleasant to live in a city where you are bombarded, everyday, by the suffering of the people around you. We absolutely need to support the creation of affordable housing, mental health services, and other social safety nets for people experiencing homelessness, hunger, and poverty. We need to redistribute the vast amounts of wealth in this state, home to numerous fortunate 500 companies, and tons of multimillionaires who benefit from living in such an amazing state, where people are homeless and starving on the streets of Minneapolis while less than a mile a way millionaires enjoy their lakefront properties. And while I have conservative in-laws who refuse to come into the city, big scary Murderapolis, people love living here, in Minneapolis. And I sure as shit wouldn’t trade it for the suburbs. Sorry, I enjoy fun! I enjoy being where things are happening. There are ways to make this city better for everyone that don’t play into the fascist worldview that it’s the immigrants, the mentally ill, the poor, and the drug addled who are making everything worse. I will not be convinced to hate the woman who asked me for bus fare outside a coffee shop this morning. Not when absolute fucking creeps like David Sacks, and Michael Kratsios, and Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and all the other tech millionaires and billionaires you’ve never heard of but who have been funding the right wing fascist takeover of this country laugh and laugh at how easily we are all distracted by hating immigrants and poor people instead of directing our hate and blame at the actual culprits of our suffering, the people who make money off absolutely fucking over our environemnt, the people who buy out our politicians in order to hoard more and more wealth for themselves while people starve, the people who will giddily watch the fall of democracy if it means more power, control, and wealth for them. They don’t give two shits whether any of us lives or dies. They don’t give a fuck about “humane” treatment of people experiencing mental health crises and homelessness. They want to do the same to them as they’re doing to immigrants and black people in this country: criminalize the fuck out of them and then lock them up in privately controlled prisons where under the 13th Amendment they can extract their labor for free and funnel federal money, our tax dollars, into private prison enterprises who, in turn, will use AI to create databases of our names and any other data they can collect about us so that if they can’t imprison us at least they can more effectively advertise to us. I’m sorry this has turned into a tirade but I can already hear the trolls in the comments talking about how homeless people should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and take accountability for the suffering they likely have experienced throughout their lives either directly or indirectly because of the millionaires and billionaires now pushing their fascist tech oligarchy wet dreams on the masses. It’s fucking disgusting, and the headlines this week–major mergers, AI proliferation, and forced institutionalization of people experiencing homelessness are all symptoms of the same disgusting festering illness of capitalist greed in this country. This is WHY people like Zohran Mamdani are gaining momentum, this is why the Minnesota democratic party just endorsed democratic socialist Omar Fateh for major of Minneapolis, no matter what our big-business loving, cop loving piece of shit mayor Jacob Frey claims in his complaints that the endorsement vote was rigged. And this is why I consider it my solemn duty to continue connecting these dots for you, week after week, to ensure that we all see what’s really going on, behind the scenes, beyond the chaos of the 24 hour news cycle. And I’ll continue to be here week after week to continue to do just that.

If you want to support my work, all my videos are completely ad free and uncensored over on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Wednesday about how the Trump regime is eroding the media.

Leeja Miller
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The Media Is Eroding Under Trump