Author Archives: sterlingcooper

THE PERMANENT USA UNDERCLASS IS HERE TO STAY!

While San Francisco’s tech community frets over AI-driven job displacement, we have more to fear from misguided government welfare policies.

San Francisco allows thousands of people with substance-abuse problems or mental-health issues to live on the streets.

No city better captures the contradictions of twenty-first-century America than San Francisco. The capital of the AI revolution is also a place where open drug use, mental illness, and public disorder have become banal features of daily life. Increasingly, the two realities seem to be bleeding into each other.

What explains the flurry of concern in San Francisco over the supposedly imminent creation of a “permanent underclass”? The phrase, prominent in tech circles on X, refers to the vast, impoverished caste that many fear AI automation could create as jobs disappear and wealth flows increasingly to owners of capital. Murmurs about the permanent underclass began as a kind of inside joke in San Francisco—a winking reference to the awe and anxiety sweeping the tech industry as AI models steadily improved and engineers realized that they would either embrace the new tools or get left behind. As one popular meme put it: “You have [blank] months to escape the permanent underclass” (where the blank is a stand-in for your “artificial general intelligence timeline”—or how long you think it will take the models to automate almost all work)

The meme was then boosted by executives at major labs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued in a January 2026 essay that AI could leave people with lower cognitive ability in an “unemployed or very-low-wage ‘underclass,’ ” and, a few weeks later, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman predicted that most professional tasks that involve “sitting down at a computer” would be fully automated within the next year. The specter of mass unemployment is now the subject of sober discussion in the New York Times, where top Democratic strategists assure us that they’re working on campaign messaging around a “federal jobs guarantee.” Others see AI as the logical impetus for instituting a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

The straightforward explanation is that Amodei and other big-labs spokesmen are earnestly trying to warn us about the coming upheaval. There is good reason to worry about the consequences of dramatic economic transformation. Prominent tech companies like Meta, Coinbase, and Block have all recently announced extensive layoffs, ostensibly because they can now automate many internal processes. Model capabilities continue to improve at a remarkable clip: an internal OpenAI model in May solved an 80-year-old problem in discrete mathematics, for example, and one of Anthropic’s top engineers says that he runs thousands of agents around the clock to perform work that not long ago required massive teams.

Still, it’s unclear whether an AI jobs apocalypse is really underway. Tech layoffs may simply reflect a correction from zero-interest-rate-era overhiring. Unemployment among college graduates, a leading indicator of labor-market strength, is hovering around 5 percent—slightly above 2023 levels but still well within normal range. Some tech CEOs, like Aaron Levie of Box, have even said that they’ve created lots of new job categories because of AI. In the wake of growing political pushback, heads of major labs have begun walking back their warnings about job loss. “I don’t think we’re going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some [other AI companies] advocate,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this spring. “That is an area where my intuitions were just off.” Were they just sowing fear about job loss to facilitate their fundraising efforts?

Perhaps, then, it’s more useful to think of the “permanent underclass” as an expression of white-collar status anxiety. As influential Bay Area blogger Scott Alexander observed, the meme spread among rank-and-file tech workers who seemed worried that they were “just bourgeois well-off rather than future oligarch well-off, and that only true oligarchs will have a good time after the [technological] Singularity.” This interpretation squares with an X post from a prominent venture capitalist who wrote that concerns about the permanent underclass come up frequently among young tech workers worried that their well-paying but not extraordinarily lucrative jobs won’t exist in a few years; they envy peers at major labs who have made enough to retire.

But the permanent underclass meme does not just suggest that some people will lose purchasing power. It suggests that they will be irrevocably relegated to misery and destitution. There is a real-life analogue to this class in San Francisco: the drug-addicted and mentally ill homeless allowed to decay on our streets. Maybe the resonance of the “permanent underclass” meme comes less from concerns about downward mobility and more from the experience of passing a half-naked man smoking fentanyl on your way to work; or watching a swarm of drug dealers cater to wheelchair-bound addicts from the window of a self-driving taxi; or repeatedly pressing the “call for assistance” button in front of a locked toiletries display at a pharmacy. These experiences have become banal in many American cities, but their banality is especially striking in San Francisco, the hub of the most consequential technological revolution of our time. The permanent underclass already lives among you—are you just one twist of fate away from joining it?

This fear animates a short story, “The Company Man,” that went viral on LessWrong, a community blog popular among AI researchers. In it, a man who develops algorithms for a short-form video company gets promoted to work on “The Project,” the internal name for an effort to build a recursively self-improving AI. The leader of The Project, motivated by a fetish “for the abstract notion of intellectual achievement itself,” describes it as an attempt to instantiate a kind of machine god. When The Project succeeds and superintelligence is achieved, the researchers are all fired, and the protagonist exchanges his money for a hit of fentanyl from a nearby junkie before joining “the zombies,” as he calls them, in their semiconscious misery. This is the permanent underclass nightmare in its fullest expression.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warned that AI advancements might relegate people with “lower intellectual ability . . . [to] an unemployed or very-low-wage ‘underclass.’ ” (Thea Traff/The New York Times/Redux)

The story is, of course, stylized and exaggerated. But its popularity suggests that it struck a nerve and reflects something of Silicon Valley’s anxieties. There are lots of familiar AI dystopia tropes here: the “zombies” are blissed out and wire-headed (as humans might become if they offload all their work onto machines); the endgame of AI research is immanentizing a perverse eschaton; and the barrier between the two spheres is vanishingly thin. As the protagonist tells us at the outset: “To get to the campus, I have to walk past the fentanyl zombies.” In the real world, the condition of an anxious engineer is nothing like that of a homeless addict on the verge of death. But there is a sense, in this story and in the permanent underclass meme, that the misery on our streets might be evidence, or a portent, of coming doom.

And yet San Francisco’s existing underclass is largely the product of state policy. The group includes at least 8,000 people who, at last count, were living on the streets or in “makeshift shelters” like tents and cars. It also plausibly includes some portion of the roughly 30,000 people housed in single-room occupancies (SROs), slum housing concentrated mainly in the Tenderloin, Chinatown, and Mission neighborhoods. Almost all those on the streets, and many of those in state-subsidized housing, have severe substance-abuse issues and mental illness.

The misery of these people is actively encouraged and supported by the state, both indirectly through tolerance of shoplifting and public disorder and directly through a generous array of cash and in-kind benefits. These include monthly direct cash payments, access to food stamps (easily parlayed into cash), and free needles, foil, and lighters.

Many of these people would benefit from some form of temporary involuntary commitment. But California began dismantling its state hospital system in the 1960s. In its place, we have exorbitant or ineffectual tools that include temporary psychiatric holds at hospitals, “full-service partnerships”—in which social workers, psychiatrists, and addiction counselors work one-on-one with homeless people to do “whatever it takes” to treat them in the streets—and (most commonly) outright neglect.

The authoritative account of California’s failed approach to dealing with its hundreds of thousands of nonfunctional, mentally ill residents is Alex Barnard’s 2023 book Conservatorship, which surveys the quality of care that California gets for the billions it spends annually on the homeless. Though sympathetic to the thrust of deinstitutionalization, Barnard nonetheless concludes that California’s status quo is untenable. The state has “abdicated its authority” over the addicted and severely mentally ill, in part by making it so difficult to compel them into care.

California politicians have been promising for decades, with varying degrees of seriousness, to fix this situation. In 2002, then–San Francisco supervisor Gavin Newsom sponsored the “Care Not Cash” initiative, which reduced welfare payments to the homeless in exchange for access to shelter and supportive services. More than two decades later, the city’s unsheltered homeless population is roughly unchanged, and the homeless can receive as much in inflation-adjusted welfare payments as they could before Care Not Cash. The state shows little sign of the political will needed for dramatic reform. Over the past few years, California has invested tens of millions of dollars in alternative mental-health courts (“CARE Courts”) that provide suggested treatment plans for psychotic individuals in hopes of preventing their admission into involuntary conservatorships.

Under its new mayor, San Francisco has also opened a sobering center, where officials hope to send people arrested for openly using drugs. Authorities have emphasized that addicts brought to the center are free to leave whenever they wish and will face no criminal charges for public intoxication. Even so, the initiative has sparked progressive backlash. Jackie Fielder, the city’s most progressive supervisor, is under investigation by the city attorney’s office for allegedly leaking a confidential report about problems surrounding the center, presumably in an effort to kill the project. (Fielder took a three-month “mental health–related” leave of absence after the investigation opened.)

The persistence of San Francisco’s drug-addicted underclass offers a warning. While offshoring and deindustrialization may explain some of America’s broader social dislocation, the city’s street disorder is more immediately the product of policies that enable addiction, dependency, and dysfunction. Those who believe that future AI-driven dislocation could be addressed chiefly through unconditional subsistence payments should take note. Too often, that cure proves worse than the disease.

NEW YORK DUMBO MUSLIM MAYOR’S CRAZY GROCERY STORES IDEAS ARE CRAZY!

Here’s More Proof That Mamdani’s Government-Run Grocery Stores Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani rolled out his plans to open government-run grocery stores in his city, a plan that has been repeatedly tried elsewhere and failed. Bodega owners and other stores are warning that the plan, which would see the government-run stores subsidize groceries at 30 percent less than private stores, would doom their businesses and that when the government stores go belly-up, New Yorkers will be left with no options for food.Bread lines, of course, will be next.

But here’s more proof that the entire plan is a disaster and so complex, contradictory, and confusing that the whole project may crash on the launch pad. Why? This is just the Request for Proposals (RFP) from operators who would run the government stores.

I downloaded and reviewed NYC’s grocery store RFP… as someone who has built biz’s and bought a lot of food… wow.

Forget for a moment whether or not the govt should own a grocery store. Let’s review the doc instead.

Here you go… /1

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

According to Kokonas, NYC prefers one operator who will commit to running all five stores. Unfortunately, three of the sites haven’t been identified yet. Despite that, bidders are told to estimate the cost of stores in unknown neighborhoods and just assume the store is “about 15,000 sq ft.”—something Kokonas calls “absurd.”

The idea behind operating all five stores is likely that scale will lower costs (when has government ever cared about that?) but Kokonas notes that NYC may not award all five stores to the same bidder.

Bidders get preference for operating all 5 stores, presumably b/c scale lowers costs. But NYC awards each store separately, so an all-5 bidder may win only 1. They want scale pricing while refusing to award scale.

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

“They want scale pricing while refusing to award scale,” he wrote.

That sounds about right for government.

But there’s more. Remember how Mamdani admitted the stores wouldn’t carry certain things like meat or a hot deli? Well, the RFPs must both carry a “limited SKU” model and carry full grocery departments plus household goods, ethnic foods, vegan products, Kosher products, and other things.

“Pick one,” Kokonas noted.

The stores must use a “limited SKU” model. They must also carry full grocery departments, household goods, culturally specific products, plus kosher, halal, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and diabetic options. Pick one.

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

This is going great.

The RFP also says the stores won’t have deli counters or on-site food prep, but that they will also have chicken salad, egg salad, and other deli items for sale. That means they’ll be shipped in daily.

The RFP says stores won’t have deli counters or on-site food prep. Then its Core Basket includes chicken salad, egg salad, potato salad, fruit salad and other deli-prepared foods. So, a deli w/o a deli.

Oh… you’re going to ship them in every day prepared. Gotcha…

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

It’s going to cost the operators a pretty penny, too. Why? NYC picks the design, equipment, fit-out and refrigeration of the stores. The operators pay for everything else, including maintenance and security.

NYC chooses and pays for the design, equipment, refrigeration and fitout. The operator pays utilities, maintenance, cleaning and security. So NYC makes the capital decisions while someone else pays for the consequences.

That’s how they control the goalposts.

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

So that’ll put the thumb on the scales against the operators. Security, especially given how NYC doesn’t prosecute criminals, will be costly.

And the math doesn’t work, either. NYC wants the “best” bid to offer those aforementioned 30 percent discounts, but also good wages and benefits, full-time jobs, and a slew of other woke demands.

On top of that, 20 percent of the RFP score will go to the bidder who needs the lowest subsidy.

The “best” bid promises 30% discounts, best-in-class wages/benefits, local sourcing, sustainability, community programs and full-time jobs. Then 20% of the score goes to whoever claims they need the least subsidy. Lowballing is the strategy…. and then cost overruns are guar.

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

Once again, pick one. You get a 30 percent discount and “best-in-class wages/benefits” or you get the lowest necessary subsidy.

That 30 percent discount must also be the actual price of the item, not a sale or promotion, and to unlock those discounts, the stores have to create a membership program. Mamdani already said IDs would be required to access the stores … which are also reportedly available to all.

Core Basket discounts must be universal “sticker prices,” not promotions. Then the operator must create a membership card to “implement the discount program.” Which is it? Universal shelf price or an ID card system — btw, also says it’s available to all people…

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

Which one is it?

Kokonas also shared a page from the RFP asking bidders to estimate affordability payments.

Perhaps my favorite page that I did not include in my original thread is just, chef’s kiss, amazing.

How could you possibly estimate such a thing? And such a level of detail requested !! (you might want additional spreadsheets…) pic.twitter.com/0sRQ0hYrWe

— nick kokonas (@nickkokonas) August 3, 2026

RUSSIA CAN NOT RECRUIT SOLDIERS; NOW SWEEPS THEM OFF THE STREET

A billboard advertising contract military service in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Russia is strong-arming more fighting-age men into military service to boost the flagging ranks of its army as voluntary recruitment stalls and Moscow’s initiative on the front line in Ukraine falters.

In Russia’s smaller towns and cities, some military recruiters have resorted to detaining men on the street, outside their places of work or under the pretext of routine document checks, say lawyers, rights activists and eyewitnesses. Once in a military recruitment office, men may be threatened or beaten until they sign up for the war, they say.

The pressure campaign carries echoes of the partial mobilization Russian President Vladimir Putin instituted in the fall of 2022 when Russia’s front-line positions were buckling due to a lack of manpower. It has also caused speculation among Russian analysts and the country’s political class over whether it preludes another draft.

Russian authorities have offered life-changing sums of money—often more than an entire year’s salary—to those ready to sign up and fight. But recruitment has become more difficult following tales of abuse inside the Russian military and Ukraine’s increasingly lethal capabilities, which have shortened the average soldier’s lifespan on the front to a matter of minutes, days or weeks.

“Authorities have switched to a method of violence, when they catch men and send them off,” said Artyom Klyga, a lawyer who tries to help those who have been forced into service.

The measures offer a counterpoint to the forced enlistment Ukraine has carried out in the face of its own manpower shortage.

Russia is struggling to replace the soldiers it is losing in Ukraine.© Sergei Karpukhin/TASS/ZUMA Press

While Russia’s recruitment is still officially voluntary, law-enforcement officials are at times working with military recruiters to set a trap for the men and use violence or threats of arrest if they don’t yield to the pressure, the people say.

In the southwestern region of Penza, where recruiters have more aggressively pursued their aims, local resident Vladislav Leonidov said he found an acquaintance at a military recruitment office after the man went missing for several hours in May.

The man had been called into the local police station on the pretext of checking his personal data. When he arrived, two military recruiters were waiting for him and carried him off to the recruitment office where he was beaten on the liver and kidneys, Leonidov said. He was able to intervene and force the man’s release only as he was being transferred to a medical exam.

“If we had come two hours later, he would have already been taken away,” he said. “They move very quickly.”

Raids in Penza by law-enforcement officials or recruiters have caught the attention of locals who have posted videos online in protest of the practice.

One video outside a military recruitment office shows men in civilian clothes sitting inside a military van barricaded by crying women.

“They beat you, they forced you!” one of the women says between tears.

Russian authorities, who for years had gleefully pointed out Ukraine’s forced enlistment, have played down the incidents and threatened a crackdown on those circulating videos of them.

A Russian serviceman prepares a drone in this image released by Russia’s government.© Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/EPA/Shutterstock

The head of Penza’s recruitment office, Andrey Surkov, told a government briefing that any raids in the region were targeting those avoiding service. The Penza branch of the Interior Ministry has denied that raids are sending men to the front and has threatened legal consequences for those who post or publicize them.

“These video publications have no relation to sending people to the zone of the Special Military Operation,” a ministry statement said, using the official euphemism for the war in Ukraine. “Those spreading false information will face legal consequences in keeping with the laws of the Russian Federation.”

Blogger Stanislav Morozov, who has worked to bring attention to the issue in a documentary, said he is the subject of an investigation by Russia’s feared Federal Security Service. “They haven’t forbidden me from continuing, but they’ve made it clear it’s in my best interests not to,” he said.

Of the dozens of relatives he’s spoken to, he said, most agreed to sign a contract when law-enforcement officials threatened to plant drugs on them and arrest them on the spot.

Part of the pressure stems from regional programs in different parts of Russia that offer third parties cash, in most cases 100,000 rubles, around $1,300, to bring someone to the recruitment office.

Morozov said advertisements hang in residential buildings across Penza promising: “Bring a friend to the recruitment center and get 100,000 rubles,”

Similar campaigns exist elsewhere, such as Tatarstan, where Russia produces the bulk of its drones, as well as in the Amur and Yaroslavl regions, and in cities such as Kaluga, Voronezh and Arkhangelsk. The number of cases of forced recruitment has also risen, said Klyga and rights workers.

Analysts say the measures have likely been blessed by the Kremlin and Defense Ministry but are implemented to varying degrees by region.

The tactics are largely tied to accelerating Russian losses on the front, which now reach an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 killed and wounded each month, according to military analysts.

“Just as many people have to somehow be brought into service, and the fewer there are who are ready to sign a contract the more pressure they have to use,” said Grigory Sverdlin, founder of Get Lost, an antiwar nongovernmental organization that helps Russians avoid service.

U.S. officials say the efforts have likely added some numbers at the front though likely not enough to make any major breakthroughs. Instead, they say, the Kremlin is still weighing the possibility of calling another round of forced mobilization, which could bring another several thousand soldiers to the front. Such a measure, they say, would likely come after Russian parliamentary elections, slated for Sept. 20.

Any new mobilization would carry political risks for Russian President Vladimir Putin.© Alexander Zemlianichenko/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Russia’s economic problems and Ukraine’s growing capabilities have added urgency to the question of mobilization. If Putin chooses to stick to his demands to take all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, “he may have no other choice than to call a mobilization,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defense think tank.

While the first round of mobilization was meant to round up reservists and men with military experience, another round would likely bring men with little experience or will to fight to the front.

The political risks involved with such a move could outweigh the military benefits at the front. Some Russians say they would resist such a move with violence.

“As soon as I’m given a weapon, I will shoot those who mobilized me,” said Dmitry Rogin, a 53-year-old Russian reserve officer who is among those who could potentially be called up.

CHINA’S HUMANOID WORKFORCE IS GOING TO OVERTAKE EVERYTHING HUMANS DO!!!!

Donald Trump has banned Chinese robots from being imported into the US – Xiao Benxiang/VCG via Getty Images

Unitree, China’s top robotics company, mesmerised the world earlier this year with its concert-hall display of humanoid robots doing martial arts.

As they flipped and kicked, a sci-fi future seemed suddenly present, wiping away the familiar old world of stumbling, fumbling mechanoids.

But Unitree has already moved on. In the company’s latest videos, a prototype robot is shown performing tasks that are easier than martial arts for humans, but far more difficult for robots.

UnifoLM-OminiA-0.3, nicknamed “Benben”, responds to voice commands. It picks up dirty laundry. It opens a bedside drawer and pulls out the correct box of pills.

Unitree, and China in general, are fast-forwarding to a future in which humanoid robots don’t just work in factories or warehouses. Instead they will also work in shops, cafes, hospitals, nursing homes, and even in people’s houses.

For the Chinese, this fixes the problems of a labour shortage and an ageing society. It puts menial work in the hands of sleepless machines that don’t mind it, and that will never claim sick leave or unemployment benefits.

That might seem harmless, or even beneficial. But not to Donald Trump.

When he, and many other US politicians, look at Benben, they see a different future: an army of imported Chinese robots in every American hospital, police station and home, ready at the flick of a switch to become hostile spies or even soldiers.

“The Chinese Communist Party is the biggest threat we face … We cannot allow these robots to become predominant in our country,” John Moolenaar, a Republican congressman, said this week.

With support from the Democrats, he has drafted a new law that would force the Pentagon to look at banning Chinese robots. But Trump hasn’t waited for Congress to finish debating it.

The Federal Communications Commission announced a ban on imported robots on Wednesday. It said the robots “collect data that could be leveraged by malign actors to surveil Americans, enhance the capabilities of foreign intelligence services, or to remotely commandeer the robots”.

The ban opens a new front in the US-China struggle for tech supremacy, with the two sides already sparring over magnets, semiconductors and AI.

A Unitree robot on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last year. They are now banned from the US – Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

The Chinese foreign ministry reacted with outrage. It accused Washington of a “hegemonic mindset” and threatened to retaliate with “all necessary measures”.

But the Global Times newspaper, a Communist Party mouthpiece, was more condescending. Its post on X simply said: “If you can’t beat them, ban them.”

Can the US beat China? It is certainly no straggler in humanoid robotics.

America still leads the race in AI tech, without which any robot lacks a brain and will be a non-starter. And Elon Musk is hell-bent on starting production of Tesla’s Optimus robot later this year.

But China is way out in front: its legion of start-ups churned out 16,000 humanoid robots last year.

Officials said earlier this month that China is on track to produce 100,000 next year – enough to populate a mid-sized English town.

Wang Xingxing, the boss of Unitree, told Time magazine this month that Chinese humanoid robotics was anything from two to 10 years away from a “ChatGPT moment”.

“Once the technology surpasses this … inflection point, robots can gradually be rolled out for large-scale commercial use,” he said.

Globally, Bank of America has forecast that 10 million humanoid robots could be cohabiting the planet with us by 2035 – a population the size of Switzerland – soaring to three billion by 2060.

At that point, humanoid robots would replace one fifth of industrial workers, and half the workforce in the services sector.

Beijing can hardly wait. Its population could shrink by 60 million in the next decade – the equivalent of losing the whole of France – and the Chinese are ageing fast.

With no desire to pursue a policy of mass immigration, Beijing needs humanoid robots not just to replace missing workers in factories, but also to service a greying population.

This Chinese robot can direct traffic, detect violations and give verbal reminders – VCG

The decades of the one-child policy mean many older people, who already make up a quarter of the population, have little family support. Their care will have to come from the state and the market.

Companies are frantically trying to speed up the evolution of humanoid robots towards an electronic homo sapiens: one that can service complex needs and make reasoned decisions, rather than just stack boxes.

Unitree’s robots still look, well, robotic.

But Shenzhen-based UBtech is already experimenting with silicon skin and responsive facial expressions, which would better suit nursing homes or hotel reception desks.

This crosses what Masahiro Mori, the Japanese robotics guru, once called the “uncanny valley”.

Mori observed that we humans tend to warm to robots as long as they look like the ones we’ve seen dancing on stage this year.

But once they look more and more like us, we get a bit creeped out by them, and we might push back.

Chinese robots are becoming more and more lifelike – VCG

Beijing is betting that the Chinese will happily ride through the uncanny valley. It has allocated 1tn yuan (£110bn) to funding robotics, hoping to spur local governments and entrepreneurs to jump on the opportunity.

This was the template that built China’s world-beating electric-vehicle (EV) industry.

There are now about 150 companies focused on humanoids, with a much larger hinterland of industrial robot makers behind that.

EV makers are also expected to join the rush, with XPeng, an electric car company, the first to move. More patents for humanoid robot technology are being filed in China than in the rest of the world put together.

Nobody expects all these start-ups to survive. Some may end up as specialists, or will focus on smaller slices of the supply chain.

But the largest of them are already inking deals with industrial and tech companies in the US and Europe. About 90pc of the humanoid robots sold worldwide last year were Chinese-made.

“European firms could easily find themselves facing a repeat of the race for EVs, outpaced by China’s blend of industrial capacity and state support,” the Berlin-based think tank Merics warned this month.

“As the sector evolves, Chinese firms may also find solutions to the high-end components they currently rely on Western and Japanese firms to provide.”

China may be ahead in the race, but the starter’s gun has only just gone off. There are daunting technical hurdles to training and perfecting robots that can deal both adequately and safely with the unpredictable vagaries of the human world.

Clearing those obstacles will depend on AI, where the US is still in front. China’s advantages are scale, subsidies, and a huge industrial base.

“China has almost every element of the robotics supply chain, and can put all them together much quicker and at cheaper, lower cost,” says Pavlo Zvenyhorodskyi, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The US ban will be a setback. Unitree, ahead of a partial float in Shanghai next month, told would-be investors that sales in America, which are now at risk, represent up to one-fifth of its revenue.

But Zvenyhorodskyi believes China still has the momentum. “With the pace and the trajectory that China is moving at, it’s very likely that in several years the gap with the US, Europe and Japan will be much smaller. Or China will in fact overtake them.”

From Star Wars and Blade Runner to Terminator and Robocop, the US has long led the world in telling stories about the world’s robotic future.

But it is only just waking up to the newer, and truer challenge: to lead the world in turning all that sci-fi into reality.

DINOSAURS WERE KILLED BY HEAT BY ASTEROID HIT????

Dinosaurs were roasted to death by asteroid dust cloud

Researchers say ejected dust acted like lid on a pot, trapping heat and ‘charbroiling’ anything that could not reach safety

Picture of a raptor dinosaur observing asteroid crashing to earth — Dinosaurs that survived the asteroid crash were ‘baked or fried’ by the heat trapped underneath the resultant dust cloud Credit: mikdam/iStockphoto

d 28 July 2026 4:52pm BST

Dinosaurs roasted to death in a hellish “oven” created by superheated dust when an asteroid hit Earth 66m years ago, scientists believe.

When the Everest-sized space rock hit the planet at 45,000mph, it vaporised anything in its path and ignited landscapes within a 900-mile radius.

But planetary scientists at Purdue University, in the United States, believe some dinosaurs may have survived had it not been for a suffocating cloud of ejected dust, which sat like a lid over Earth and prevented the blast heat from escaping into space.

Dr Alexandria Johnson, an expert in atmospheric sciences, said: “Anything that couldn’t shelter itself somehow – underground or underwater – would have got baked or fried.”

The Chicxulub asteroid sent more than 240 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, some of which condensed into droplets of rock – spherules – which fell back to Earth, heating the air further.

Prof Brandon Johnson, of the department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue, said: “With the dust cloud trapping thermal radiation, it was like the surface and everything on it was being charbroiled – and that’s what killed the dinosaurs and all the other animals.

“It’s not the blast wave from the impact or the fireball – those don’t go very far. It’s the global ejection of this vapour plume material that makes this a global extinction event.

“Without the dust cloud, it would have been bad. It would have killed a lot of creatures, but it wouldn’t have been a planetary catastrophe.”

The Chicxulub impact near the Yucatán Peninsula is believed to have killed about three-quarters of all living species, including most of the dinosaurs. Only the avian dinosaurs survived.

Previously, experts believed the asteroid triggered giant tsunamis and created a cloud that blocked the sun for years, causing plummeting temperatures and killing plants that starved dinosaurs that ate vegetation. When the plant-eaters died, the meat-eaters also died.

But the new study suggests that, for most animals, the apocalypse probably occurred much more quickly.

The Chicxulub asteroid near the Yucatan Peninsula is believed have killed about three-quarters of all living species Credit: Roger Harris/Science Photo Library

Researchers calculated that the heat trapped by the fine dust meant the dinosaurs received a dose of thermal radiation 17 times more than the amount that would be lethal to humans.

The intense heat was enough to ignite grass, pine needles, lichen and maybe even wood, causing widespread wildfires and turning Earth into a fiery oven from which only burrowing animals, and those in the sea, could escape.

“It probably looked more like hell,” said Prof Johnson. “The clouds would have blocked daylight so to any animal, like humans, that don’t see far into the infrared, the surface would have probably looked dark.”

Scientists knew that the impact had melted rocks and sent detritus showering down to Earth because spherules have been found in the gills of paddlefish, which probably died on the day the asteroid hit.

The spherules, about half the size of a grain of sugar, were made up of material of terrestrial origin – not from the asteroid itself, but almost certainly the deadly cloud that it created.

Dr Johnson looked at the physical properties of these particles and the dust cloud as a whole to determine how it would have handled heat.

She found the cloud layer was so impermeable that it trapped almost all of the heat from near the surface of the planet, the dust essentially acting like a lid on a pot, cooking Earth’s inhabitants on the surface.

The dust could have taken years, or even decades, to settle, and the particles themselves could have caused ongoing health problems for survivors.

The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

THE UK HAS FRICKING GONE NUTS OVER MUSLIMS..THI IS AN AWARD FOR A TOTALLY COVERED WOMAN EMPOWERING WOMEN!!!???

Muslim woman in full body covering wins “British Citizen Award For Empowering Young Women”

Here’s the UK’s best example of a woman who empowers women:

I’m serious: She actually got this award.

Yes, Britain has found its newest champion of “women’s empowerment”: A devout Muslim woman who showed up to collect her award at the Palace of Westminster fully covered in a niqab.

Khadija Patel, founder of the KRIMMZ Girls Youth Club, was one of 28 recipients of the prestigious British Citizen Award for her tireless work getting hundreds of young girls — many from Muslim backgrounds — into sports like cricket, soccer, cycling, netball, and more. She builds confidence, promotes teamwork, breaks down “cultural barriers,” and all that good stuff.

Truly commendable community service! Watch out AMERICA…..

CALIFORNIA VOTES REJECT LIBERAL NEWSOM’S BAN ON SELLING NEW GAS POWERED CARS-HOW STUPID IS THAT SOON TO BE GONE GOVERNOR’S ORDER???

Californians Crush Newsom’s Gas Car Ban in Massive Poll Reversal

Gavin Newsom just got the message loud and clear from the people who actually have to live under his rules. Nearly two-thirds of Californians want nothing to do with his 2035 ban on new gas-powered cars.

According to the latest Public Policy Institute of California survey, 66 percent of adults and 65 percent of likely voters oppose the governor’s executive order that would outlaw the sale of new gasoline vehicles. Only 34 percent still back it. That is a 17-point jump in opposition since 2021, when the state was split down the middle.

Republicans reject it by a staggering 91 percent. Independents sit at 69 percent against. Even Democrats have collapsed into a near-even split. The climate cult is losing its own base.

This is not some abstract preference poll. Californians are staring at their utility bills and gas pumps and deciding the green dream is not worth the cost. Sixty-three percent now call energy costs a big problem in their part of the state. The same share says current gasoline prices are a major problem. Both numbers have climbed sharply in just one year.

Electricity in California already runs nearly twice the national average. Residential rates hover around 35 cents per kilowatt-hour, the highest among the contiguous states. Newsom’s answer? Force everyone into electric cars that cost more upfront, take longer to “refuel,” and depend on a grid that struggles to keep the lights on during heat waves.

The same poll shows only one in five Californians is extremely or very confident the state will build enough charging stations. Nearly half say they have little or no confidence at all. People are not stupid. They know what happens when politicians promise infrastructure they never deliver.

Scripture has a word for this kind of planning. “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” (Luke 14:28).

Newsom never counted the cost for ordinary families. He counted the applause from coastal elites and climate NGOs.

The governor and lawmakers just threw another $135 million at EV rebates. First-time buyers of cheaper new electric cars can get $3,500. Used ones get half that. Automakers are supposed to split the bill. Anyone who believes those costs will not land on consumers has never watched how California works.

Meanwhile, the federal $7,500 EV tax credit expired under President Trump and a Republican Congress. California is left holding the bag for a transition its own residents increasingly reject. The state still leads the nation in EV registrations, with about 1.3 million on the road.

That has not stopped the backlash. People who already own them are one thing. Mandating the rest of the population into them is another.

Californians still say they support broad climate goals. Nearly two-thirds back the net-zero emissions target by 2045. Majorities favor carbon taxes on corporations and renewable electricity requirements. The difference is simple. Abstract targets cost nothing today. Forcing working families out of reliable, affordable cars does.

This is what happens when ideology collides with the grocery bill. Newsom’s marquee climate policy has become a political liability in the bluest big state in the country. The people who have to pay for it are done pretending.

The New York Post called it a gut punch. That is polite. It is a rejection of the entire top-down climate regime that treats citizens as subjects to be managed rather than free people who count costs for themselves.

Newsom is term-limited. His successor will inherit this mess. The question is whether California’s political class finally learns that reality has a way of interrupting the sermon.

ANTHONY FAUCI EXPOSED AS A MEDIA HOG AND MORE

Fauci Diary Exposes Cozy Media Ties, Trump Tensions and Celebrity Fixation [WATCH]

Newly released diary entries from Dr. Anthony Fauci are giving Americans a rare look behind the curtain at the man who became the government face of the COVID 19 era, complete with media chatter, celebrity encounters and internal White House drama.

The records were released by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R Ky., just days before Fauci is set to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee after being subpoenaed by Paul.

The diary details Fauci’s daily role during the pandemic through meetings, calls and personal notes, showing how quickly public health policy turned into a mix of politics, television management and celebrity culture.

For Americans who remember the lockdown years, the entries add another layer to a familiar story.

The experts lectured the country about sacrifice while Washington insiders and media favorites appeared to orbit one another quite comfortably.

Early entries show Fauci describing a warmer relationship with President Donald Trump than many might expect.

Fauci wrote that Trump repeatedly sent questions his way during White House meetings and called him “the smartest person in the world.”

Trump also told Fauci, “We are counting on you,” according to the diary.

Fauci later wrote that Trump appeared “enamored” with him as his national profile exploded during the pandemic.

That relationship did not stay smooth as the pandemic dragged on.

Fuci’s notes describe mounting friction inside the White House, especially with then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Fauci wrote that Meadows threatened to keep him off television and pushed him to soften his public messaging.

In one entry, Fauci described Meadows as “screaming” over comments Fauci had made in public.

The diary paints then White House communications director Alyssa Farah in a much more favorable light from Fauci’s perspective.

In a May 2020 entry, Fauci said Farah admitted White House staff had been “holding me back” and that the situation had “gotten out of hand.”

According to Fauci, Farah promised to begin approving his television requests again.

In Washington, access to a camera can apparently become its own form of oxygen.

Other communications figures did not fare as well in Fauci’s private notes.

Fauci took sharp aim at then HHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo, accusing him in crude terms of publicly backing his media appearances while privately blocking them.

The diary also shows how deeply television journalists figured into Fauci’s pandemic world.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper appears repeatedly in the entries through calls, texts and even dinners at Tapper’s Washington home.

Fauci wrote that Tapper privately checked whether a CNN interview had caused trouble for him with the White House.

When The Atlantic’s Peter Nicholas suggested Fauci had been “humiliated” over a canceled Tapper interview,

Fauci responded with a blunt and vulgar dismissal in his notes.

CNN’s Dana Bash also appears in the diary after Fauci’s heated exchange with Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Fauci wrote that Bash texted him that he was “a better man” and relayed that Wolf Blitzer joked nobody would have blamed him for telling Jordan off.

The next day, Fauci said Bash texted him again, this time pointing him to a Vanity Fair headline mocking Jordan’s performance at the hearing.

The cozy media club always seems to know when to send flowers and when to sharpen knives.

The entries also include billionaire Oracle co founder Larry Ellison, who became part of White House discussions about using Oracle technology during the pandemic. Fauci described Ellison as “a bit of a loose cannon.”

Then there is the celebrity parade. Julia Roberts hosted Fauci on Instagram Live, sent him flowers and later presented him with an award, while Anna Wintour, Trevor Noah, Steph Curry, Sean Penn, Matt Damon and Lil Wayne all show up in the broader Fauci orbit.

The diary reads at moments less like a public health record and more like a guest list for the political class during crisis mode.

Americans were told to stay home, stay quiet and trust the science, while the science was apparently fielding celebrity messages.

The final notable cameo comes from the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors.

Fauci wrote that he hugged Hunter Biden, who joked the internet “would explode” if someone photographed them together because they were both “being attacked by the far right GOP.”

Paul’s release lands as Fauci prepares for another round of scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

For many conservatives, the diary will only fuel questions about whether pandemic leadership was driven by sober public health judgment, political instincts or a taste for fame.

The country is still living with the consequences of decisions made during those years.

Fauci’s own words now offer a revealing glimpse into the power circles, media friendships and celebrity fascination surrounding one of the most controversial government figures of the pandemic.

he Real MOU: What Trump’s Iran Agreement Actually Says – Truth Thursday | EP 677

CREEPY LOOKING JACK SMITH WAS A LIAR…ALWAYS..

Jack Smith Hit With Criminal Referral for Lying to Congress About Spying on Lawmakers

The special counsel who spent years trying to put Donald Trump in prison just got referred for criminal investigation himself. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan dropped the hammer Wednesday, accusing Jack Smith of willfully lying under oath about how deep his team dug into private text messages from members of Congress.

This is not some technical dispute over paperwork. This is about a prosecutor who told Congress one story under oath, then got caught by documents showing something else entirely.

During his closed-door deposition on December 17, 2025, Smith was asked whether he sought a search warrant for the content of any text messages from members of Congress. His answer: “No, I don’t recall that.” He insisted his team only pulled toll records—the kind that show when a message was sent, not what it said.

Jordan’s referral letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche lays it out plainly. Those answers “gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages.” Then the records landed.

“We now know this to be false,” Jordan wrote.

Newly released Justice Department material handed over to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley shows Smith’s investigators directly accessed the actual content of text messages involving more than 40 members of Congress. The messages ran between lawmakers and White House staff from October 2020 through January 20, 2021. The list included both Republicans and Democrats. Jordan himself was on it. So was Grassley. So were Steve Scalise, the late Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and even Cory Booker.

Worse, Smith’s team bypassed its own Filter Team—the internal safeguard designed to keep investigators from reading privileged or constitutionally protected communications. They went around the gatekeepers and looked anyway.

Jordan’s letter calls this “strong evidence” of false statements under 18 U.S.C. § 1001. He argues Smith’s testimony was not a fuzzy memory problem. It was an intentional effort to obstruct congressional oversight.

“His conduct can only be understood as an effort to thwart the Committee’s inquiry by intentionally making false statements and representations before Congress.”

Democrats, predictably, are howling. Ranking Member Jamie Raskin called the referral “laughably weak and vindictive,” claiming Republicans are upset that Smith did not volunteer information they failed to ask for. That defense requires believing that a seasoned prosecutor somehow forgot his own team had read dozens of lawmakers’ private messages while investigating a former president. It also requires ignoring the constitutional Speech or Debate Clause protections that cover official legislative communications.

This is the same Jack Smith who treated the Justice Department like a personal weapon against the leading political opponent of the Biden administration. He obtained phone records of Republican lawmakers. He chased theories about 2020 that collapsed under scrutiny. Now the documents show his team was reading the actual words elected officials were sending to the White House—and then he told Congress he never sought the content.

Scripture is not silent on this kind of deception. “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.” That is Ephesians 4:25. Public officials who swear an oath and then shade the truth to protect their own power are not serving the public. They are serving themselves.

The Justice Department under the current administration has confirmed receipt of the referral and stated it “will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct.” Whether that investigation produces an actual indictment remains to be seen. But the pattern is hard to miss. The man who spent years demanding accountability from one side of the political aisle is now being forced to answer for his own statements under oath.

Americans were told for years that Jack Smith was the impartial guardian of the rule of law. The records say otherwise. So does the criminal referral now sitting on the Acting Attorney General’s desk.

AI IS TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE-IT MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE!

Amid the broader debate over artificial intelligence’s economic disruptions, the healthcare sector is quietly demonstrating some of the technology’s most concrete applications. Rather than the job losses feared in other industries, hospitals report AI augmenting physicians, streamlining routine tasks and accelerating innovation in ways that could improve outcomes while controlling costs.

At the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, roughly 150 AI models are now in use. A tool called Record Time helps internists distill hundreds of pages of external medical records into searchable summaries, saving five to 30 minutes per patient, according to CNN.

“AI can step in and do a lot of the tedious work that very specialized doctors or medical professionals do to speed up that process – get to more accurate diagnoses, faster so you can treat more people,” Jason Droege, CEO of Scale AI, said.

Mayo is also testing AI for early pancreatic-cancer detection, potentially years ahead of conventional diagnosis, and for identifying atrial-fibrillation risks that could prevent strokes. The clinic partners with Microsoft and other firms to train models on its vast trove of patient data.

Radiology, once predicted to be AI’s first casualty, tells a similar story of augmentation rather than obsolescence – though the most-cited evidence comes from an interested party. A report from Build American AI – a nonprofit advocacy arm of Leading the Future, the $100 million pro-AI super PAC backed by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI executives – finds the U.S. radiologist workforce in Medicare-affiliated practices grew 17.3% between 2014 and 2023. At Mayo itself, the group says, the number of radiologists expanded 55% since 2016. The organization does not disclose its donors and lobbies for federal preemption of state AI rules, so the figures warrant independent checking against Medicare provider data.

Utah recently became the first state to allow an AI system from Doctronic to renew prescriptions for chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. In the pilot’s first five months, the AI recommended approval in 72% of cases, with physicians concurring 91% of the time; it escalated the rest when complications appeared, Forbes reports. The program targets established medications, maintains human oversight and bars controlled substances.

Tampa General Hospital estimates that an AI-enabled sepsis-detection system it built with Palantir has helped save 886 lives since August 2022, cutting early sepsis deaths by 68%. The figure is the hospital’s own assessment of a system developed with a commercial partner.

In drug development, AI’s impact may prove most transformative. A TD Cowen survey of biopharma leaders found executives expect the technology to compress preclinical costs and timelines by as much as 70%, powering in-silico modeling that simulates thousands of experiments rapidly, Axios reports. Respondents expect new drug programs to expand more than 10% in the coming years.

Yet inside the very institutions championing AI, opposition is already brewing.

Mayo Clinic’s former Director of Research Operations Traci Tamiko Eto sued the hospital earlier this month, alleging she was retaliated against for raising privacy and oversight concerns around some Mayo AI systems. Mayo Clinic spokesperson Andrea Kalmanovitz said the hospital doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation but underscored that it is “committed to the responsible development and deployment of AI, with privacy, security, transparency and compliance embedded throughout our processes.”

“Our research and clinical innovation are conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and we remain steadfast in upholding the trust patients place in us and respecting their privacy,” Kalmanovitz said in a statement.