(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) – A federal appeals court upheld a law on Friday mandating that ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the social media platform TikTok, divest its operations in the United States by Jan. 19 or face a nationwide ban of the app.

The 92-page ruling, delivered by Judges Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao, and Douglas Ginsburg, marks a significant step in efforts to address national security concerns tied to TikTok’s Chinese ownership. The law, however, can be challenged in the Supreme Court or before the full appeals court panel.

The judges upheld the law, citing its enactment as a bipartisan effort by Congress and multiple administrations in an effort to target foreign adversaries such as China. They emphasized it was crafted to address a “well-substantiated national security threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.”

You’d better watch out you’d better not pout, you’d better not cry, I’m telling you why: This Christmas, it’s the Surveillance State that’s making a list and checking it twice, and it won’t matter whether you’ve been bad or good.

You’ll be on this list whether you like it or not.

Mass surveillance is the Deep State’s version of a “gift” that keeps on giving … back to the Deep State.

Geofencing dragnets. Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Drones. Contact tracing apps. License plate readers. Social media vetting. Surveillance towers.

What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother.

Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by a vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.

This creepy new era of government/corporate spying – in which we’re being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted – has been made possible by a global army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms.

Consider just a small sampling of the tools being used to track our movements, monitor our spending, and sniff out all the ways in which our thoughts, actions and social circles might land us on the government’s naughty list, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong.

Tracking you based on your phone and movements: Cellphones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users’ movements and travels. For instance, the FBI was able to use geofence data to identify more than 5,000 mobile devices (and their owners) in a 4-acre area around the Capitol on January 6.

Tracking you based on your DNA. DNA technology in the hands of government officials completes our transition to a Surveillance State. By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. It’s only a matter of time before the police state’s pursuit of criminals expands into genetic profiling and a preemptive hunt for criminals of the future.

Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded in real-time as they go about their daily business. Similarly, biometric software, which relies on one’s unique identifiers (fingerprints, irises, voice prints), is becoming the standard for navigating security lines, as well as bypassing digital locks and gaining access to phones, computers, office buildings. Scientists are also developing lasers that can identify and surveil individuals based on their heartbeats, scent and microbiome.

Tracking you based on your behavior: Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one’s behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations.

Tracking you based on your spending and consumer activities: Consumer surveillance, by which your activities and data in the physical and online realms are tracked and shared with advertisers, has become big business, a $300 billion industry that routinely harvests your data for profit.

Tracking you based on your public activities: Private corporations in conjunction with police agencies throughout the country have created a web of surveillance that encompasses all major cities in order to monitor large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.”

Tracking you based on your social media activities: As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are increasingly investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

Tracking you based on your social network: Not content to merely spy on individuals through their online activity, government agencies are now using surveillance technology to track one’s social network, the people you might connect with by phone, text message, email or through social message, in order to ferret out possible criminals. What this creates is a “guilt by association” society in which we are all as guilty as the most culpable person in our address book.

Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from these mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t believe it.

The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

As I make clear in my book “Battlefield America: The War on the American People” and in its fictional counterpart, “The Erik Blair Diaries,” surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people – weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands – haven’t made America any safer. And they certainly aren’t helping to preserve our freedoms.

Indeed, America will never be safe as long as the U.S. government is allowed to shred the Constitution.

A Category 5 hurricane barrels toward the Gulf Coast. Unlike Helene and Milton, this time AI leads our response.

Within hours, it precisely predicts the storm’s path, identifies vulnerable areas, and optimizes evacuation routes. Emergency responders are deployed with unprecedented efficiency. Lives are saved. Damage is minimized. This isn’t just better disaster management—it’s a revolution in saving lives.

On today’s battlefield, commanders need AI-powered tools to process vast amounts of data and make split-second decisions. From processing sensor data to coordinating multi-domain operations, military leaders require unprecedented computing power at the tactical edge.

But to make this vision a reality, we need to act now. Three years ago, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy proposed a National Strategic Computing Reserve—a coalition ready to contribute massive computational power in times of national need. It was a good idea then. Today, it’s an urgent necessity.

Why? Because in those three years, our need for compute power—the raw processing capability that drives our digital world—has exploded. AI has evolved at a blistering pace, turning once-futuristic capabilities like real-time language translation and complex strategic decision-making into everyday realities.

The numbers are staggering. Since 2018, the computational requirements for training large language models have doubled every six months. By 2023, the largest AI training runs were using over a million times more compute than a decade ago. And that’s just for training. Running these models across countless real-time applications pushes demand even higher, straining our computational infrastructure to its limits.

This isn’t just about keeping Silicon Valley on the cutting edge. It’s about our national capacity to respond to crises. Imagine AI rapidly identifying treatments during a pandemic, neutralizing cyber threats in real-time, or simulating economic policies to stabilize markets during a shock. These capabilities could save lives and protect our nation—but only if we have the necessary compute power ready to deploy across the full spectrum of operations, from enterprise data centers to tactical edge environments.

Yet the United States lacks a coordinated strategy to ensure sufficient compute power when it matters most. As AI becomes integral to our national infrastructure and defense systems, having this capacity isn’t just an economic advantage—it’s a strategic imperative.

A National Strategic Computing Reserve would solve this. Think of it as a digital-age parallel to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In peacetime, it would accelerate scientific research and drive innovation. During crises, it could be rapidly mobilized to address urgent national needs.

The Department of Defense understands this imperative. At the tactical level, military units are already developing AI-enabled decision support tools that can function in denied or disrupted environments. These initiatives demonstrate how a strategic compute reserve could work: standardized platforms, interoperable systems, and computing power available when and where it’s needed most.

What would this reserve look like? Imagine a network of high-performance computing centers across the country, with both cloud-based and edge computing capabilities, ready to support multi-domain operations and be redirected to national priorities in times of crisis.

Partnerships with leading tech companies could provide cloud computing resources on demand. We’d need to invest in next-generation AI chips and quantum computing technologies to stay ahead of the curve. And crucially, we’d need training programs to ensure a skilled workforce capable of leveraging these resources effectively.

Critics might argue that the private sector can meet our computing needs. But national emergencies demand a dedicated, rapidly deployable infrastructure. Relying solely on private companies—with their potentially conflicting global interests—could leave us vulnerable in a crisis.

Concerns about energy consumption are valid, but the strategic value of this computing power far outweighs these issues. In fact, this initiative could drive innovations in energy-efficient computing and accelerate our shift to renewables.

The cost of creating a National Strategic Computing Reserve might seem high, but the price of inaction is far steeper. This isn’t just about keeping pace; it’s about maintaining our lead in a high-stakes global race. Being computationally outgunned could have dire consequences for our national security and economic future.

The global AI race has reached a critical juncture. China now leads in AI research output, with five of its institutions topping worldwide rankings. While the U.S. maintains an edge in research quality, China’s AI patent filings quadrupled ours in 2022. Even Russia is ramping up its capabilities. The stakes are clear: whoever leads in AI will shape its future development.

Three years have passed since this idea was first proposed, and our advantage in compute resources has narrowed daily. We can’t afford to lose more time. The invisible arms race of the 21st century is well underway, and the victors will be those who can harness AI at unprecedented scale and speed.

America has always thrived when it thinks big and acts boldly, and now is the time for such action. A National Strategic Computing Reserve is exactly the kind of forward-thinking initiative we need to secure our place in the AI-driven future. But we must move swiftly; the next crisis—or the next AI breakthrough—won’t wait for us to catch up.

The choice before us is clear: lead in the age of AI, or risk being left behind. The military’s current digital transformation efforts show us the way forward. By embedding technical expertise at every level and ensuring access to sufficient compute power, we can enable rapid, informed decision-making in even the most challenging scenarios. A National Strategic Computing Reserve would extend these capabilities across our entire national security infrastructure.

Ben Van Roo is the co-founder and CEO of Yurts, a generative AI company partnering with the US Department of Defense to advance mission-critical systems. He holds a PhD in Operations Research and has significant experience developing AI solutions for defense and national security applications.

The Biden-Harris administration announced a multi-billion dollar loan for electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian Monday as the company continues to hemorrhage cash.

Rivian lost $1.1 billion and saw its revenue fall nearly $500 million in the third quarter of 2024 as a slackening of consumer demand for EVs hampered the industry’s growth. Now, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has agreed to a conditional commitment to loan the automaker roughly $6.6 billion to help finance the construction of its manufacturing facility in Georgia, according to a press release from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO).

“This loan will help create thousands of new American jobs and further strengthen U.S. leadership in EV manufacturing and technology,” RJ Scaringe, Rivian founder and CEO, wrote in a press release Monday. “A robust ecosystem of U.S. companies developing and manufacturing EVs is critical for the U.S. to maintain its long-term leadership in transportation.”

Big news for Rivian: a conditional $6.6 billion DOE loan could supercharge production of the R2 and R3 at a new Georgia plant, creating thousands of jobs. Learn more about what this means for Rivian: https://t.co/KJ8NGlZL0f pic.twitter.com/EVjvRHIYAw

— RivianTrackr (@RivianTrackr) November 26, 2024

The Georgia factory will augment Rivian’s factory in Normal, Illinois, and will produce sport utility vehicles that sell for roughly $45,000, significantly less than the company’s current fleet of consumer vehicles which start at around $70,000.

“This loan would enable Rivian to more aggressively scale our U.S. manufacturing footprint for our competitively priced R2 and R3 vehicles that emphasize both capability and affordability,” Scaringe said in the release.

The financing agreement is part of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which has deployed nearly $700 billion in taxpayer dollars to infrastructure, semiconductor and green energy projects. Many of the White House subsidies have gone to the EV industry specifically, including a $7,500 federal tax credit for certain EV purchases and $12 billion in taxpayer funds for car manufacturers to retrofit their plants for EV production.

Despite the subsidies, the EV industry has seen a slackening of consumer demand, with sales growing just 31% in the first half of 2024 — far less than the 71% increase in the first half of 2022. Meanwhile, a June poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found 46% of respondents were unlikely or very unlikely to purchase an EV compared with just 21% of respondents who said they were “very” or “extremely” likely to make the change.

“Even after throwing money at EVs hand over fist, basically paying people tax dollars to drive these cars off the lots, you have a dire spiral of (1) not enough demand to support the number of cars being produced, and (2) the people you paid to buy them now wanting to go back to what they had before,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers and the former solicitor general of Arizona, previously told the DCNF.

Rivian and the DOE did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Our grandson Connor made a very interesting comment when he was a little boy. His parents (our daughter and son-in-law) were praying for him when he was fighting some minor illness, asking God to heal him. When nothing happened, he said, “Jesus doesn’t have enough hands to heal everyone.” That was his childlike way of explaining why he wasn’t healed. Jesus only had so many hands with which He could touch the sick. He couldn’t get to everyone.

As much as we can smile at his childlike and innocent faith, we too can limit God in our thinking. After all, isn’t it difficult for us to comprehend the fact that right now, all around the world, God is listening intently to every single one of His children praying in a host of different languages, giving full attention to each one? We may affirm with our heads that we believe this to be true, but do we really grasp the reality?

Do we really believe that, as I write these words and as you read them, God knows every thought that every human being is thinking (and has ever thought), that He knows every single thing that every human being (and angel and demon) is doing (and has ever done), and that He is interacting with our words and thoughts according to His plan at this very moment?

It is truly mind-boggling, completely beyond our understanding. But isn’t that the very essence of omniscience, which is literally “the state of knowing everything”?

Recently, while using AI, I got the tiniest glimpse into the vastness of the mind of God.

In short, we know that we can ask our AI bot a complex question in almost any language, and we get a virtually instant, detailed response. (AI has to be checked because it can be unreliable, but when it is accurate, it is stunning.)

Since my Ph.D. from New York University was in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (with a focus on ancient languages), I have enjoyed asking Claude, my most frequently used AI bot, some very technical Semitic language questions.

Then, I’ve asked Claude to translate his answer into another ancient dialect, and voila, a second later, there it is. I am always incredibly impressed.

The knowledge base of these AI bots is incomprehensibly large, their ability to flow from language to language absolutely stunning, and their speed in responding truly breathtaking. What’s more, 1 million of us could ask 1 million questions to the same AI bot at the same time and we would each get a personalized, instant answer.

How much more, then, does this apply to the mind of God?

How much more does this apply to the one of whom Paul wrote, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?’ For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:33–36)

As human beings, we can be impressed with the size of a really big person (“He’s more than 7-feet tall!”) or a really big building (“It’s 200 stories high!”) or a really big mountain (“Everest is massive!”).

How different is God’s perspective!

“Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust. Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings. Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.” (Isaiah 40:15–17)

Yet at the same time, He knows the number of the hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30) and before a word is even on our tongue, He already knows it (Psalm 139:4).

And as massive as planet earth is to us, it is less than a grain of sand in the scope of our galaxy, which itself is unfathomably large. Yet scientists have discovered more than 2 trillion galaxies so far. We cannot begin to comprehend what this really means.

Yet God knows every star in every galaxy (in fact, He created them) as well as the tiniest, nearly invisible microbe that the world’s most powerful microscope can barely see.

What’s more, this infinite, transcendent God cares about us deeply, even telling the people of Israel in the Old Testament that when they suffered, He suffered with them (see Isaiah 63:9). (At this point, all comparisons to AI cease.)

More remarkably still, He came into our world in the person of His Son to die for our sins – how unimaginable! – and through His Son He says to us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

How mind-boggling is that?

Earlier this year, in one of the most absurd court rulings in modern times, federal Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated U.S. antitrust law by gaining a monopoly in the search engine markets.

In the days or weeks ahead, the courts will decide whether to break up one of America’s most iconic companies or to sell off some of its activities and products. The latest reports are that the courts may require Google to sell off its popular Chrome browser. (To whom? China?) It may also require Google to surrender other products to help erase its market lead.

With a market cap of roughly $2 trillion, Google is one of the five most profitable companies in the world. It got there by offering a search engine service FOR FREE to hundreds of millions of customers. This may be the largest benefit to consumers of any company in world history.

Yet the courts ruled that: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” It was found guilty of violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Yet the Sherman Act was meant to protect against companies that use their size and scope to RAISE prices. Google’s sin is that it produces superior products at prices that are TOO LOW. One statistic was cited as evidence of monopoly behavior: Back in 2009, Google controlled 80% of the search engine market, and today it is closer to 90%.

What was remarkable and dangerous about this decision is that the courts openly conceded that Google gained this dominant market share by making the best search engine and that it is made easily available to almost all consumers at very low costs.

How weird is this? Keeping prices low and relentlessly improving product performance is illegal because it is unfair to a company’s competitors? This is doubly absurd given that we have the Biden administration accusing companies like grocery stores of RAISING their prices. So in America today, if you raise your prices, you are a greedy profiteer, and if you lower your prices, you’re a monopolist that has to pay restitution to your less efficient competitors.

The argument for breaking up Google gets even more nonsensical when you listen to the Biden administration’s cockeyed excuses for punishing Google. The Department of Justice’s chief antitrust officer says: “This landmark decision … paves the path for innovation for generations to come and protects access to information for all Americans.”

This is a preposterous statement. Few if any companies spend more money on product innovation and refinement than Google does. And as far as “protecting access to information for all Americans,” no company in history has opened up more access to information than Google. No other company even comes close. It has brought the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress to the fingertips of everyone with a laptop computer in a matter of a few seconds. That’s not an antitrust violation. It is a miracle of innovation that deserves our deepest appreciation.

Even worse, this lawsuit piggybacks off the hostile actions by America’s European and Chinese tech rivals, whose inferior search engines can’t compete with Google. As recourse, they want to loot tens of millions of American shareholders who invest in Google. Instead of defending an American company against foreign raiders, we have the U.S. Justice Department and federal courts giving aid to those hostile lawsuits and bolstering their legitimacy.

Can anyone imagine for a moment that a German or a Japanese or a Chinese court would be stupid enough to rule against their own domestic company that has come to dominate a globally strategic industry and has created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs for its citizens while making hundreds of billions of dollars for its own citizen shareholders? Only in America.

Many conservatives moan that Google has developed algorithms that discriminate against viewpoints and studies that have a right-leaning perspective. That’s definitely a problem, but there are many other search engines available, like Bing and DuckDuckGo, that consumers can use as alternatives to Google. We certainly don’t want the government or politicians like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren regulating what can and can’t be accessed on a private search engine platform. Even worse would be handing more business over to Chinese browsers that will clearly serve up misinformation.

Several years ago, a landmark study by economists Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and Avinash Collis of Carnegie Mellon University estimated that the median U.S. user values search engines at $17,500 per year. Today, that number is easily more than $20,000 of value added for the average person with a laptop computer or a smartphone – which is nearly all of us.

This is the very definition of a gift horse to nearly all Americans. And our own government and its throng of lawyers with goofy legal theories are risking killing it.

Social media companies have become a “cartel” for suppressing information with which they disagree, and that agenda now is going to be getting the attention of Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

It was social media companies who played a role in promoting the wild and now-debunked claims of “Russia collusion” created by Democrats during Trump’s first campaign. They also were part of the suppression campaign that left Americans in the dark during the 2020 race about Biden family scandals documented in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.

During the 2024 race they amplified false claims by Democrats like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton that Trump was a “Hitler” and democracy would die on the day he was elected.

Now there may come a reckoning.

The New York Post reports that Carr has labeled Big Tech corporations a “censorship cartel” to eliminate speech of which they do not approve.

Trump has described Carr as a “warrior for free speech” and announced him as his pick to lead the agency.

Carr, only days before the decision announcement, had sent letters to Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Tim Cook of Apple, demanding information about how the firms have dealt with NewsGuard, a for-profit “fact-checking” scheme that routinely claims that conservative outlets are more “risky” than those outlets that promote a leftist agenda.

Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel.

The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with “fact checking” groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives.

The censorship cartel must be dismantled. pic.twitter.com/Xf0sEYOUfv

— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) November 15, 2024

Carr explained, “Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel. The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with ‘fact checking’ groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives.”

The tech chieftains were told to respond to the FCC by Dec. 10 on which of their products or services “partner with NewsGuard and whether they require online customers to rely on NewsGuard while using their services,” the report explained.

At issue could be Section 230 of federal law, which right now protects those corporations from liability over statements their users post on the tech sites.

Carr specifically points out that those protections apply only if companies are operating in “good faith.”

Further, he referenced an ongoing review of those tech site ideologies and agendas by the House Oversight Committee.

At least one member of NewsGuard’s “advisory committee” was among those who signed the “infamous October 2020 letter” from former intelligence community officials that falsely claimed details in Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.

NewsGuard has claimed it has nothing to do with blocking of speech.

But Zuckerberg already has admitted to Congress his company was pressured by the Biden administration into censoring content.

He told the House Judiciary Committee that Biden administration officials, including the White House, repeatedly “pressured” Meta to suppress information it disliked.

“This censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled,” Carr’s letter charged. “Americans must be able to reclaim their right to free speech.”

A report from Just the News noted that Carr also promised to work to end the agency’s advocacy for the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” agenda.

He explained, “The FCC’s most recent budget request said that promoting DEI was the agency’s second-highest strategic goal. Starting next year, the FCC will end its promotion of DEI.”

What if you knew the next big market China will dominate?

And what if you could act right now to prevent losing it to China?

The next big thing is droids. There are two key drivers for droids. The first is artificial intelligence (AI),  where the U.S. leads in research, chip and systems design, and software applications. AI turns dumb robots into intelligent actors able to perform simple and even complex tasks. Droids will transform our lives and businesses.

The second driver is a problem: Droids require scale-efficient manufacturing of the type the U.S. no longer does. Droids are the natural evolution of robots, both consumer and industrial, and drones which the U.S. also does not make at scale.

Robots, drones, and droids (DRD) exist on a continuum of size, complexity, and capability with similar inputs. They will be critical to defense, manufacturing, and consumer goods and services with China supporting the industry with significant funding of at least $2.8 billion. These products have similar inputs, the need for scale manufacturing, and the lowest possible cost. China’s early humanoid droids from companies worldwide showcase vim and vigor among startups and established companies for creating functional and useful robots. So far, these are “dumb” robots compared to expected capabilities from embedding recent advances in AI; a few examples and Tesla’s.

Twitter highlights how far China’s deep supply chain drives a robust industry across a gaggle of companies as seen from the list at the recent 2024 China Robot Show. Holiday drone shows display advance swarming capability. Robot policemen roll. Per Tphuang, “we are really entering new territory here and here.”

Just imagine the unreleased, classified stuff.

The U.S. must quickly create a set of sticks and carrots to make investing in drones, robots, and droids and their supply chains easy and attractive. Free market investment, targeted government policy, DoD programs and Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Acts) monies, which can be allocated to serve dual use supply chains, to serve the needs of our military-industrial complex and help revitalize our industrial base. These efforts should include nearshore/friendshore options since the U.S. may not be the best place for every input. Any policy would naturally cut across multiple government departments, including Defense, Energy, Commerce, Homeland Security, and the EPA. Luckily, many, if not all, of the supply chain components for drones, robots, and droids are also used in part or whole in the initiatives funded by the Acts. As the new Administration and Congress reassess the Acts, increasing the attractiveness of investing in these supply chains should be top-of-mind rather than picking EV “winners.”

For drones, the urgent DoD Replicator Initiative effort accelerates the demand side with the Drone Security Act (and the Countering CCP Drones and Supporting Drones for Law Enforcement Act)  limiting Chinese imports.  However, the U.S. is behind on making the parts that go inside DRD, and executing the scale manufacturing required to produce these goods efficiently. China excels in all these areas.  And, China is now preventing the export of dual-use drone components. Almost all drone components are made in China with Taiwan supplying many of the semiconductors.

Despite its impressive Replicator Initiative, the DoD is shooting behind, not ahead of the “drone” duck.

What boggles the mind is not jumping on the four million drone demand signal sent from Ukraine.  As Ukraine entrepenuers and fighters rapidly evolve warfare in real time, the U.S. appears to be missing the opportunity to drive its own supply chain to supply parts, gain experience, and drive the scale needed for low cost production. Building capability to serve Ukraine is a golden opportunity to stand up scale U.S. and allied suppliers for consumer, commercial, and military markets.

Initially via DIU contracts, a number of new defense companies now or soon will supply advanced technology platforms to the DoD, including Anduril, Dzyne, Shield AI, and Saraonic. These companies are likely still dependent on China and, according to an industry leader of a drone company, “no more dependent on computer chips / GPUs from Taiwan than any other common military system.” The DoD Replicator project, plus the real-world experience of Ukraine and Israel, highlight the importance of scale drone production at low cost. What will drive future advantage in the droid market overlaps with what drives advantage in drones, all types, and robots, used for manufacturing at scale and proliferating across commercial, industrial, and consumer applications.

China is currently using robots to manufacture missiles, and the U.S. is in the process of adopting robots in missile production, but it is apparently behind. U.S. manufacturing overall is less robot-intensive than China’s manufacturing. Following its “import, build, and then replace” model of industrial policy, China foreign imports of robots is now declining. Robot adoption is not driven by the relationship of employee cost and robot cost. Based on manufacturing wages, China has 12.5x more robots than expected; the U.S. has 70% of expected.

Beyond its broad supply chain enabling companies small and large to manufacuter drones, robots, and droids, China has already released industry-wide standard definitions, a data sharing initiative, and sponsored innovation centers promoting responsible humanoid robot development. The IEEE, representing the U.S. effort, launched a study group in June with the goal to “develop a standards roadmap that Standards Development Organizations can follow that both address the gaps as well as mitigate the potential roadblocks.”  As evident with 6G standards development, the country with the manufacturing wins.

The “free market,” represented by our current state of affairs, is not on a path to produce scale and cost-competitive drones, robots, or droids. For success, the U.S. requires research, workplace skills, parts, commodity and specialty components, scale manufacturing capabilities, and inputs, including rare earths, magnets, batteries, semiconductors, motors, actuators, materials, sensors, and many more, including and especially scale manufacturing. Capabilities in these areas at scale are key to rebuilding the U.S. defense and industrial base.

While Japan, the EU, India, and others all have roles to play, only the U.S. has the wherewithal to lead this effort. The inputs and manufacturing capabilities for drones, robots, and droids support the development of multiple adjacent markets, consumer goods, phones, EVs, and many climate solutions. Without action both different and beyond what is currently underway, the U.S. will fail in the drone market, not be competitive in robots, miss the droid market, and continue to lose international goods competitiveness, limited by high-cost manufacturing and our relative inability to integrate software/AI leadership into scale manufactured products, which China is already doing at scale.

Addressing the scope of effort requires rethinking how industrial policy is executed, including who, what, where, and how. Current industrial policy occurs across multiple departments with limited authorities and without apparent coordination. Federal departments lead narrow efforts, focused on specific inputs or outputs, with limited authorities. Policies and efforts do not cover the scope of effort required to generate investment across the full value chain to build world-competitive industries. Encouraging free market investment with broad government policy is required to support the needs of our military-industrial complex and revitalize our industrial base. These efforts should include nearshore and friendshore options since the U.S. may not be the best place for every input.

Any policy would naturally cut across multiple government departments, including Defense, Energy, Commerce, Homeland Security, and the EPA. It could include carrots such as tax credits, tax rebates, purchase incentives, capital gains relief, grants, loans, tariffs, minimum purchase prices (for when China lowers price to put competitors out of business)[1], workforce training credits, and sticks such as restrictions on buybacks, dividends, and excessive ROI.

The DoD has shown an inability to reduce its dependence on China and does not appear to be acting with urgency today. Despite much talk and funding for Replicator, recipients of funds are the drone makers, not the upstream supply chain companies, many of which are in China or Taiwan.  Further, DoD authorities extend only grants, loans, and purchase agreements, not a wider scope of incentives such as tax credits, R&D incentives, minimum purchase prices for China affected commodities, and the like. The Chips Act, overseen by the Commerce Department, addresses only a narrow slice of the manufacturing chain, likewise the DOE’s and DoD’s efforts on the rare earth supply chain. A single government group with broad authorities reporting directly to the President is needed to define and execute policy to develop the put in place broad incentives for the development of a drone, robot, and droid industrial base and further areas, such as communications.

Drones, robots, and droids should urgently become the backbone of a major U.S. effort. Our defense depends on it. Our manufacturing depends on it. And, in the not-far future, droids will likely be a market larger than displays, solar, wind, and EVs combined. The U.S. should create a set of sticks and carrots to make investing in drones, robots, and droids and their supply chains monetarily attractive.

Without significant change, the U.S. will be unable to stop importing Chinese drones. And the U.S. will miss the next large market, droids.

Mark Rosenblatt runs Rationalwave Capital Partners, which invests in public and private technology companies.

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(BUSINESS INSIDER) — “Cathy, what should I do about my social anxiety?”

An acronym for Churchy Answers That Help You, Cathy is a new AI chatbot that answers faith-based questions from the perspective of a friendly, knowledgeable Episcopalian. Despite its feminine name, the “priestbot,” as Cathy sometimes calls itself, is genderless. There are no ornate flowing robes or croziers, either. But like a wise cleric, Cathy jumped right in with an answer.

“Dealing with social anxiety can be challenging, but there are several approaches that might help,” the bot responded. “Practice relaxation techniques” and “challenge your negative thoughts,” Cathy suggested.

As our adversaries across the globe become increasingly emboldened, it has never been more critical that America maintain its technological edge by investing in quantum computing. Air Force Research Lab’s Information Directorate in Rome, New York, has long been the epicenter of the Air Force’s quantum information science research and development efforts. For years, the lab has worked diligently to conduct critical applied research across many quantum technologies and drive the Air Force’s ability to maintain superior information technological advantage against our adversaries. It is time the Department of Defense (DoD) did the same. As quantum advantage approaches, we must prepare for it by ensuring our quantum computers are industrially useful and able to solve critical operational problems for the DoD.

In pursuit of this goal, the DoD must execute three critical lines of effort. First, it must fully embrace, and Congress must fully fund, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) program. This program, in partnership with AFRL-Rome’s systems engineering and broad quantum expertise will benchmark industrial efforts to build a useful quantum computer. This novel effort has yet to be conducted anywhere else across government. DARPA’s innovative approach to running the QBI program is the most significant federal work done in quantum computing to date and must be fully supported within the DoD and by Congress.

Second, the DoD must craft and execute a strategic framework to guide its approach to follow DARPA’s effort. If quantum technologies are to become an integral component of our defense arsenal, the DoD must develop a deliberate approach to the development, prototyping, and scaling of quantum capabilities to solve operational problems. My language in this year’s House-passed  National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), would accomplish this by requiring the DoD to develop such a strategy in pursuit of this goal. It will be critical for the Senate to support this language and ensure it is included in this year’s final NDAA.

Third, it is imperative the DoD holistically engage with the quantum industrial ecosystem, academia, and interagency. Formed between AFRL-Rome, Brookhaven National Lab, industry partners large and small, and a robust system of universities and community colleges, the Empire State Quantum Network being formed in Upstate New York is a model for DoD to engage partners of all types to fully embrace quantum technologies.

Through the incredible work being done by DARPA, AFRL-Rome, and the U.S. quantum innovation ecosystem, we are getting closer to reaching that goal. By developing a ready quantum workforce, software applications, algorithms, and other capabilities in addition to hardware, we will fast-track the building of an industrially useful fault-tolerant quantum computer and maintain technological advantage over our adversaries.

By Congresswoman and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

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Someday, it may end up being one of those hoary old philosophical saws: “If the lease on a government agency’s headquarters expires, but nobody actually works there, do the taxpayers’ sighs of relief make a sound?”

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) may have the honor of being the first federal agency to find out. Heavily redacted communications obtained by the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) show that the lease on NASA’s headquarters expires in 2028. An email from an official at the General Services Administration, which manages offices and properties for the federal government, said, “The agency is starting the process of evaluating options including leasing, buying a different building, or construction of a new headquarters building, all within the Washington area and close to public transportation.” There was one big problem: knowing how many workers a new HQ will have to house, because nobody at the agency seems to know how many workers show up at the office now.

NASA email chains reflect the confusion. One staffer involved in the discussion asked, “Are enterprise organizations on remote work agreements counted in their analysis of under 50% work being performed on-site?” Another had to explain that “100% telework … that is not a thing!” Apparently “Telework Coordinators” are doing a review of each pay period to determine who coded to 100% telework, the reason why, and conducting education and counseling when needed. The last alternative is the employee is not reporting onsite on a regular basis without approval and in contradiction to the regulation.

(Ironically, we know of two NASA employees who would dearly love to work from home but can’t. Rest assured, NASA’s doing everything that can be done while in PJs and bunny slippers to get its astronauts home. In the meantime, it’s good to know the SpaceX offices are rocking.)

Of course, it’s not only NASA. In spring 2023, the House Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce asked 25 agencies to report on the status of their telework arrangements. On November 29, 2023, Subcommittee Chairman Pete Sessions told a hearing, “I want to be clear, of the 25 agencies we wrote last spring, many responses were not, in fact, responsive. Eleven of the 25 did not include any figures at all regarding how many of their employees were currently teleworking—either in the Washington, D.C. area or agency-wide.” On the other side of the Capitol, Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa) has been aggressive in her push for transparency in telework and waste from mostly empty federal buildings.

Federal workers don’t much seem to miss the watercooler banter of yesteryear. They haven’t exactly been sprinting back to their offices in the two-plus years since the COVID-19 pandemic ended, and getting them back in hasn’t been a priority for the Biden-Harris administration. Despite demands from Congress and an order from President Biden, the trickle of returning workers hasn’t become a flood.

At NASA, with its “analysis of under 50% work being performed on-site,” it apparently took until February of 2024 to finally notice the tumbleweeds rolling through HQ and announce to staff it would significantly condense its space: “With daily occupancy in the building so low, people are spread out, which is a waste of space, can be tough on employees and is not the best use of taxpayer dollars.”

It’s nice that somebody’s thinking of the taxpayers. But while HQ was being rehabbed, NASA was going to 100% telework until “perhaps May.” And if the agency does move to a new building, the goal seems to be to have people in the office 90% of the time. So that “close to public transportation” feature will be handy. Some day.

To recap: the agency is considering a shiny new HQ building but can’t confidently say how many workers it will need to house, and managers don’t seem to know where everyone is. And their only answer is more telework. Meanwhile, the agency is conspicuously failing in the “Aeronautics and Space” mission it was created for and being bailed out by private enterprise. This is classic government dysfunction.

But it’s worse. It’s more proof – as though more were needed – that in the federal bureaucracy there’s little accountability and even less concern about what the people who pay the bills think about it.

Pete McGinnis is director of communications at the Functional Government Initiative.

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It was only days ago that twice-failed White House wannabe Hillary Clinton was discussing how Democrats must control the information Americans have, through the press and social media.

Now one of her compatriots-in-arms in the agenda to make America over into the “just and equal society” they want has confirmed that agenda, with actions that including her ownership of The Atlantic, a far-left publication that repeatedly has done hit pieces on President Donald Trump, and her expressed interest in ownership of the New York Times: “Is it for sale?”

That person is Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and the inheritor of his billions.

She recently was on stage, talking about what she wants in America, and said:

“It was pretty obvious to me that we could build, we cou… you know we’d we’d build out in a very cross-disciplinary way, um our work capitol investing, policy and philanthropy. And we could do this work forever and ever and we could have the narrative overtaken by you know by someone who has a lot of power that’s complete contrary to us. And we could never get to the place where we could think we’re part of a more just and equal society and so it was obvious that if we could be part of the the creation of cultural narrative uh, that would that would enhance and amplify all the work that we’re doing.”

She continued, “These are early days for us but that’s the idea behind it. We want to inspire the kind of stories that we’d like to see told.”

Billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs sitting next to Kamala Harris, talking about why she purchased The Atlantic.

To create narratives that she thinks will build a more just and equal society. pic.twitter.com/laoXx8mv7Z

— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 23, 2024

She was sitting next to Kamala Harris when she described her agenda to control what information to which people have access.

WND previously has reported on Clinton’s related agenda.

Hillary Clinton says the quiet part out loud, the Dems control the press. “The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses.” pic.twitter.com/YYpMKmIyMe

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) September 30, 2024

She said, “Well I do think that, uhm, the, the press needs a consistent narr … I mean the, the press is not supporting Trump, blatantly, very persistently. The press is trying to be the press, be objective, reporting the facts… uhm. The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses, because you know people may still look at the dangers and say ‘I don’t care, doesn’t you know doesn’t affect me I’m going to vote for him, for X Y or Z’ but ok … But at least people need to be woken up and given the facts about what he has done, is saying and would do.”

Then the Daily Mail reported she wants control of social media, too.

She said in an interview on CNN that “we” could “lose control” if they don’t do enough to censor digital content.

Her agenda drew a backlash online, in fact.

“Democrats see the internet as a propaganda tool rather than a medium for the open exchange of information!!” warned Tom Callahan on social media.

The report explained, “Clinton called for the federal government to imitate states like California and New York to place more controls on social media.”

She charged, “We need national action and sadly our Congress has been dysfunctional when it comes to addressing these threats to our children.”

She continued, “[I]f the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter/X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.:”

Another social media participate said, “Who is ‘we’?”

“KAMALA’S AMERICA,” WorldNetDaily’s electrifying 88-page Special Report is now available FREE for IMMEDIATE DOWNLOAD! Featuring courageous federal whistleblowers, exclusive research, shocking video clips and eye-opening analysis from Tucker Carlson, Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Shapiro, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Michele Bachmann and many others, it paints a truly mind-boggling picture of exactly what “KAMALA’S AMERICA” will look like if Harris becomes president. Download it NOW – for FREE … and share it widely before it’s too late!

Her earlier comments about control of the press pointed out she believes, “This is dangerous stuff! It starts online often on the dark web. It migrates. It’s picked up by the pro-Trump media. It’s then reported on by everybody which makes sure it has about 100% coverage and people believe it! So I don’t know what it’s going to be but it will be something and we will have to work very hard to make sure that it is exposed as the lie that it is.””

Of course, what Clinton and other leftists repeatedly have claimed is misinformation, disinformation and malinformation – with their demands that it be suppressed, is nothing more than a political opinion that contradicts her own political opinion.

“I anticipate there will be a full-court press in October,” @HillaryClinton says, warning of both domestic and foreign disinformation.

“There will be concerted efforts to distort and pervert @KamalaHarris, who she is, what she stands for, what she’s done.” pic.twitter.com/o3ZfApJWao

— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) September 27, 2024

Early voting for the 2024 presidential race already has started in multiple states, and that means reports of voting machines flipping votes from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris already have begun arriving.

It’s a complaint that has surfaced in multiple elections already, voters choosing on screen the Republican candidate, but the machine recording it as a vote for the Democrat, a scenario that often is difficult to document because of the inability to take screen shots of a voting machine and more.

Voting-machine makers continue to stand by the functioning of their devices.

But multiple reports already have been documented in this election.

Today at 3:29pm I was notified of reports that voters were experiencing problems. Reports were that people who selected Trump on the screen were seeing Harris on the printed ballot. This was reported to the Election Judge and in at least one case the voter was issued a new ballot… pic.twitter.com/idKTSgm3qS

— Bo French (@Bo_French_TX) October 21, 2024

For those doubting this happened here is a text from Tarrant County Elections Administrator. pic.twitter.com/kYdXCeKHgk

— Bo French (@Bo_French_TX) October 21, 2024

CHECK YOUR BALLOTS GEORGIA!

Reports from Whitfield County, GA that Dominion machines are flipping votes.

This is exactly the kind of fraud we saw in 2020 and it cannot be tolerated.

I will be working to investigate this issue and ensure the integrity of our elections in… https://t.co/1rYyQAhE6E pic.twitter.com/0yaBBINPC3

— Marjorie Taylor Greene (@mtgreenee) October 18, 2024

It is the Gateway Pundit that assembled the information.

At the head of the list reporting such fraud was Bo French, the Tarrant County, Texas, chairman of the Republican Party.

The report noted he “was notified that voters who selected Trump on the screen of the voting machine were seeing Kamala Harris on the final printed ballot.”

“Today at 3:29pm I was notified of reports that voters were experiencing problems. Reports were that people who selected Trump on the screen were seeing Harris on the printed ballot. This was reported to the Election Judge and in at least one case the voter was issued a new ballot to vote again. I immediately reported this to the TC Elections Administrator,” French confirmed.

He warned voter to check their ballots.

“I voted for one president, checked it on the video screen, when I got the paper ballot, it had the other candidate’s name on it,” one Tarrant County voter said in the report.

Similar election fraud was being suggested in Georgia.

“According to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a constituent in Whitfield County noticed that their printed ballot did not reflect the selections they made on the voting machine, particularly changing their vote away from candidates they had chosen,” the report confirmed.

She, too, warned, “Georgia voters make sure you double check your printed ballot to make sure the candidates you voted for are listed before you turn in your ballot!!!”

Here are the links to watch Kamala’s America interviews on other platforms:

Elizabeth Farah on X
WND on X
WND on Rumble
WND on YouTube
WND on Facebook

(AFRICA NEWS) – In September, the U.S. Department of Labor added the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt to its list of goods that may be produced using forced or child labor.

This action has prompted responses from both authorities and civil society in the country, the world’s leading cobalt producer, as they worry that this decision could drive away investors. The Congolese authorities assert that they are making efforts to enhance the cobalt supply chain.

In 2023, the DRC produced 170,000 tons of cobalt, maintaining its status as the global leader. However, concerns linger about how long this will last.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested last week that the company’s climate targets are essentially hopeless in light of the rise of power-intensive artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Axios reported.

Schmidt shared his view during a conference last week in Washington, D.C. that Google’s emissions goals, which include reaching net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2030, will not be met because the data centers that will power AI technologies are going to consume massive volumes of electricity, according to Axios. In a July report, Google disclosed that its corporate emissions have increased by 48% relative to 2019 levels in large part because of its growing collection of data centers.

“My own opinion is that we’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it,” Schmidt said at the event, according to Axios. Whatever improvements may be made to energy efficiency in the near future “will be swamped by the enormous needs of this new technology,” Schmidt continued, referencing AI.

“The needs in this area will be a problem,” Schmidt said, Axios reported. “But I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it.”

Schmidt is known as a “longtime climate hawk,” according to Axios.

Along with other factors like electric vehicles (EVs), AI data centers are expected to drive up electricity demand in the U.S. over the coming years after staying mostly flat for two decades, according to The New York Times. Goldman Sachs projects that data centers — which currently account for 1-2% of global power consumption — will eat up about 3-4% of overall power supply by the end of the decade, and that emissions from those facilities may end up doubling between 2022 and 2030.

In the U.S., grid planners are now expecting power demand to increase by about 4.7% over the next five years, a major jump from the previous estimate of approximately 2.6%, according to UtilityDive. Some tech companies are looking to strike deals with energy companies to secure electricity directly from nuclear power plants, while power grid experts are warning that climate policies and regulations are forcing the premature retirement of reliable generation more quickly than it can be replaced by green sources.

Google did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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The most consequential issue on the ballot this November is the fate of free speech: your ability to speak your mind.

At former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaped on the stage and urged the nation to support Trump as the free-speech candidate. It’s “the bedrock of democracy,” Musk said, warning that “the other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.”

That’s true. Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, want government and its proxies to muzzle us, limiting what we can post on social media and censuring whatever government deems “misinformation” or hate.

The Constitution’s framers understood the dangers of making government the arbiter of what the public should hear or read. The First Amendment bars government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Since the mid-20th century, the Supreme Court has consistently struck down government attempts to silence speech, even divisive, untrue or hateful speech.

In 1949, Father Arthur Terminiello, a communist, was arrested in Chicago for denouncing racial groups in a hate-filled speech. A city ordinance banned “speech that stirs the public to anger.” But the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, ruling that “the vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion.” The court added that speech “may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest … or even stirs people to anger.”

That includes hate speech. In 1969, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the justices overturned the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who uttered anti-Semitic and racist comments during an organizational meeting of Klan members. Ohio could not outlaw speech, said the court, unless it threatened imminent lawlessness.

In 1989, the court ruled that Gregory Lee Johnson of Texas could not be punished for burning an American flag. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

In 2012, the justices made it clear that the First Amendment even protects misinformation and lies from criminal prosecution. The court invalidated a federal law making it a crime to falsely claim being the recipient of military honors. The court concluded that “falsity alone may not suffice to bring the speech outside the First Amendment.” So don’t worry, Walz. The Supreme Court has your back.

The court, referencing George Orwell’s “1984,” said it’s not government’s job to shield the public from falsehoods: “Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.”

The court has also ruled that political correctness must take a backseat to freedom of speech. In 2017, the court struck a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office regulation that blocked Simon Tam and his Asian American band members from calling their group “The Slants,” which the USPTO had rejected as “disparaging.”

Few reading these decisions will like all of them. Freedom of speech doesn’t benefit one group. It’s an even-handed principle that keeps democracy alive. The racist KKK member, the communist, and the anti-American flag burner are protected so that all of us can be confident we won’t be jailed for expressing our views.

The First Amendment’s purpose is to protect unpopular views. But according to a poll sponsored by the Foundation for Freedom of Individual Rights and Expression, half the country thinks First Amendment protections go too far, with Democrats especially opposed.

Walz and Harris, together with President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff, oppose free speech, particularly on social media platforms, the 21st-century public square. Walz insists there’s no First Amendment protection for misinformation or hate speech. Staggering coming from a social studies teacher.

In 2019, Harris called for Twitter to deplatform Trump, arguing that online expression is a “privilege” and that censorship is necessary to protect democracy from those who spread misinformation.

In office, she and Biden erected a vast censorship operation in which White House and agency employees met with social media executives and told them what “misinformation” and individuals should be silenced. Even scientists questioning masking and vaccines were canceled, and their research was taken down, though some were later proved correct.

Facebook, YouTube and Google were pressured into doing the administration’s dirty work. It continues now.

Two states and five individuals sued to stop what the federal district court called this “far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign.” But the Supreme Court refused to rule on the censorship issue, citing a technicality – the litigants lacked standing.

Justice Alito, disgusted with the court’s punt, warned that the Biden-Harris censorship scheme is “blatantly unconstitutional” and that the survival of democracy depends on protecting free speech.

Pay close attention to Alito’s admonition. Those are the stakes in the upcoming election.