I haven’t been able to verify this yet, but according to China Observer, “Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry may have escalated export controls on November 20-21, adding 12 types of core semiconductor materials and related services to its “End User List,” placing about 110 semiconductor-related entities from mainland China under heightened scrutiny. Mainland China is more than 60% reliant on imports for photoresist, with ArF/EUV almost entirely dependent on Japan and the Netherlands.”
Every time you pattern a semiconductor wafer via a lithography stepper, you first have to deposit photoresist across the entire surface of the wafer. Once you’ve done that, the lithography pattern projected on the wafer hardens, letting some areas get stripped away during etch to create the interconnect patterns for other processes to fill with circuits for the chips. Getting proper photoresist uniformity across the entire wafer has some technical challenges, but it’s something like ten orders of magnitude less complex than EUV lithography. But getting the formula for EUV photoresist exactly right, and then manufacturing it ultrapure in quantity? Yeah, that’s not exactly something you can do in a high school chemistry lab.
A whole lot of people freaked out over China’s near-monopoly on rare earth minerals, but China is a lot more dependent on the west for a whole lot of things much higher on the technological food chain.
Thursday I got back from a trip to visit my mother and shop for books. Before my sister left my mother’s place to visit her daughter, she changed the WiFi password and neglected to write it down, making blogging a bit more challenging, but I persevered.
Hard evidence that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen, more details on those vast Minnesota Somali/Democrat fraud networks, the illegal alien hiding judge was convicted, big banks admit to debunking people in the name of ESG, Ford takes a huge write-down on EVs, and Asmongold offers dating advice.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Earlier this month, Fulton County admitted that approximately 315,000 early votes from the 2020 election were illegally certified but were nonetheless still included in the final results of that election.
The admission came during a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) stemming from a challenge filed by David Cross, a local election integrity activist. Cross filed a challenge with the SEB in March 2022. Cross alleged that Fulton County violated Georgia statute in the handling of advanced voting ahead of the November 2020 election, counting hundreds of thousands of votes even though polling workers failed to sign off on the vote tabulation “tapes” critical to the certification process.
And Fulton County admitted to it.
Ann Brumbaugh, attorney for the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, told the SEB in the hearing that while she has “not seen the tapes” herself, the county does “not dispute that the tapes were not signed.” Brumbaugh continued, “It was a violation of the rule. We, since 2020, again, we have new leadership and a new building and a new board and a new standard operating procedures. And since then the training has been enhanced. … But … we don’t dispute the allegation from the 2020 election.”
Georgia’s Secretary of State Office investigated the alleged failure to sign tabluation tapes and “substantiated” the findings that Fulton County “violated Official Election Record Document Processes when it was discovered that thirty-six (36) out of thirty-seven (37) Advanced Voting Precincts in Fulton County, Georgia failed to sign the Tabulation Tapes as required [by statute],” according to a 2024 investigation summary. In addition to probing the unsigned tabulation tapes, the investigation also found that officials at 32 polling sites failed to verify their zero tapes.
Georgia law requires that election officials have each ballot scanner print three closing tapes at the end of each voting day. Poll workers must sign these tapes or include a documented reason for refusal. Voting laws also require poll workers to begin each day of voting by printing and signing a “zero tape” showing that voting machines are starting at zero votes.
If there is no record of whether the tabulator was set at zero at the start of polling, there is no way of telling whether ballots from a previous election (or ballots from a test run) were left on the memory card and might later be counted. Notably, this happened in Montana, where officials discovered more votes than were cast and believe the votes were leftover sample data that had not been cleared.
“These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” Cross told the SEB at the Dec. 9 hearing. “Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.”
Cross stated that he obtained 77 megabytes of election records from Fulton County through an open records request that cost $15,800. According to Cross, these included 134 tabulator tapes, representing 315,000 votes. Each signature block on these tapes was blank, Cross said.
So, just like everyone in the conservative blogsphere has contended for five years, Democrats stole the 2020 Presidential election for Biden. When do we get our apologies from Conservatism Inc.? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Americans were stunned last month to learn that members of Minnesota’s Somali community had scammed state taxpayers out of hundreds of millions — possibly even billions — of dollars.
The question on everyone’s mind was how did this go undetected for so long?
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) may have provided the answer in remarks delivered earlier this month that have only recently come to the media’s attention.
The always entertaining senator from Louisiana read a particularly damning portion of an internal memo written by a fraud investigator from the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Kennedy told his colleagues that those benefiting from the Feeding our Future program [Emphasis added.]:
[W]ent to the state and said, ‘If you stop giving us this money, we’re gonna call you racist and we’re gonna sue you. And you don’t want to be in the news.’
Well, why didn’t the employees do something? They did. They told the people higher up — the people with the flags in their office, and you know what they did? Nothing. You know why? Here’s what the legislative auditor in Minnesota said: He said that the threat of litigation and the negative press affected how the state politicians used their regulatory power.
Here’s what a fraud investigator in the Attorney General’s office said. She said, ‘There is a perception that’ — I’m quoting now — ‘that forcefully tackling this issue would cause political backlash from the Somali community, which is a core voting block for Democrats.’
Senator John Kennedy reads an internal memo from the Minnesota Attorney General’s office
They openly say they did not stop the Somalia immigrant fraud because Democrats would lose votes.
A Minnesota lawmaker alleged on Dec. 17 that a man awaiting trial on federal charges that he laundered $1.1 million in taxpayer dollars and his wife continue to collect payments from other government programs, a state lawmaker said Dec. 17.
hat’s concerning, state Rep. Kristin Robbins told the fraud-fighting committee that she chairs.
“This is just one example of how potential fraudulent activity is being allowed to continue in Minnesota,” she said during a hearing at the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota. Later, she alleged on social media that the state government “continued to pay a fraudster who was indicted.”
With the help of whistleblowers, a public-records researcher uncovered an intertwined web of people and entities allegedly tied to the man. Those connections are still receiving taxpayer dollars for assisted-living facilities and adult day services despite multiple “red flags” indicating possible fraud, Robbins said.
These revelations show that state agencies are failing to employ “the most basic checks and balances” to prevent and detect fraud despite state agencies promising reforms, Robbins told fellow members of the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Policy Committee.
The committee—five Republicans and three Democrats—has met regularly since February, trying to get a handle on the state’s burgeoning fraud scandals. In recent weeks, Minnesota fraud cases have drawn national attention and multiple federal investigations. The scandals mostly involve federal programs that state programs administer, with matching state contributions in some instances.
The defendant, whom Robbins dubbed Person One, allegedly received $49 million from state-run programs from 2019 to 2024 on top of the $1.1 million he is accused of laundering, she said.
He is among 78 people charged since 2022 in the Feeding Our Future (FOF) scandal. Fraudsters connected to that now-defunct nonprofit agency reaped a total of nearly $250 million from the Federal Child Nutrition Program after falsely claiming to provide 91 million meals to needy children.
Robbins alleged that Person One “changed his name months before he was indicted” for FOF, and used his new name to purchase two homes that are operating as an assisted-living facility that receives government money.
One of those homes, Robbins alleged, was bought under the same business name tied to alleged money laundering in the FOF case.
Three top ranking Minnesota Democrats all have direct ties to the Somalian fraud ring stealing tens of millions of dollars.
Ilhan Omar, Keith Ellison, and Tim Walz are all deeply connected. pic.twitter.com/LqjT5ppmay
— David M. McIntosh (@DavidMMcintosh) December 15, 2025
Democrats looked the other way because they directly benefited from the fraud.
Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday narrowly passed the Protect Children’s Innocence (PCI) Act which would criminally charge medical providers who perform so-called gender-affirming care on minors.
The Act prohibits permanent genital mutilation surgeries such as mastectomies or phalloplasties on otherwise physically healthy minors and also outlaws administering cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers for patients under 18.
The bill, which cleared the House by a vote of 216 to 211, would impose fines and up to 10 years in prison on medical providers who perform sex-change surgeries or administer hormone therapy to minors, with exceptions for rare medical conditions or the reversal of prior procedures.
The bill was introduced by retiring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) who explained, “Protecting children is not optional, it’s our duty.”
MTG may frequently dance on the edge of clownshowdom, but she’s not wrong here.
The arrests include aliens with criminal histories, including those convicted of murder, kidnapping, sexual assaults, and other violent crimes, according to officials.
Officials underscored that their operations have been consistently undertaken amid assaults on agents by protesters who have thrown projectiles and firebombs, as well as attempted to interfere with agents in the middle of detaining suspects.
“In the face of violence from rioters and demonization by sanctuary politicians, DHS law enforcement has made over 10,000 arrests in Los Angeles since operations began in June. Some of the most heinous criminal illegal aliens arrested include murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators, and armed carjackers,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
She said that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass failed the people of California, alleging that the state allows criminals to roam free.
“Thanks to our brave law enforcement, California is safer with these thugs off their streets,” McLaughlin said. “Instead of thanking our law enforcement for removing criminals from their communities, Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass repeatedly demonized our brave law enforcement during these operations.”
Among the criminal illegal aliens arrested are Alireza Hashemi, from Iran, convicted of rape, aggravated assault, domestic violence, burglary, and driving under the influence, according to the statement.
Andres Velasquez-Ocampo, from Mexico, was convicted of armed carjacking, vehicle theft, and vandalism, it said.
Juan Carlos Tamayo, from Mexico, was convicted of homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and multiple counts of attempted murder, it stated.
Ambartsoum Pogosium, from Armenia, was convicted of kidnapping, homicide, fraud, burglary, larceny, and forgery, it said.
Rene Reyes-Miranda, from Cuba, was convicted of a sex offense against a child, sex offender registration violation, harassing communication, cocaine possession, robbery, burglary, larceny, probation violation, property crimes, possession of stolen property, and possession of burglary tools, the statement said.
Akop Jack Kantrozyan, from Armenia, was convicted of identity theft, burglary, multiple counts of conspiracy to commit a crime, larceny, multiple counts of fraud, receiving stolen property, shooting at an inhabited dwelling/vehicle, possession of a firearm, grand theft of access cards, violation of parole, battery, and conspiracy to defraud the United States, it said.
Everado Garcia Martinez, from Mexico, was convicted of vehicle theft, armed carjacking, and amphetamine possession, according to the statement.
Jose Manuel Perfecto Hernandez Corrales, from Mexico, was convicted of possession of stolen property and attempting to import methamphetamine into the United States, it said.
Yonic Telles-Sosa, from Mexico, has been previously removed from the United States on five occasions. He received a final order of removal in 2013 and has been convicted three times of knowingly and unlawfully entering the United States, robbery, marijuana possession, and aggravated sexual assault of a child, it said.
Mohamed Chekchekani, from Kenya, was convicted of facilitating interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise, larceny, stolen property, and drug possession, it continued.
A Wisconsin judge who helped an illegal immigrant flee federal immigration enforcement officials was found guilty of obstruction by a jury on Thursday, after six hours of deliberation.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was previously charged with felony obstruction and concealing an individual to prevent arrest, a misdemeanor charge, after she ushered a Mexican illegal immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, away from federal agents, according to the criminal complaint.
The jury convicted Dugan of the felony obstruction charge, but dropped the misdemeanor. Dugan could serve up to five years in prison, although her sentencing has not been scheduled yet.
Hopefully leftwing judges will learn the lesson that the law can’t be waived because it hurts their precious feel-feels, but I think it will take a lot more felnoy convictions for thqat idea to stick.
In September then-Acting United States Attorney Joe Thompson sent up one of his red flags about Minnesota’s massive public-programs fraud committed by an almost exclusively Somali cast of perpetrators, The Star Tribune reported Thompson’s shout-out to the state powers-that-be:
“Let’s be honest, you can see it,” he said. “You see all the types of health care companies all over the place. Why are there adult day cares all over the city? What the hell is an adult day care?”
The era of denial needs to end. “I think people didn’t want it to be true, seeing this level of fraud. It was an uncomfortable truth,” Thompson said, adding that it “didn’t match our self-image” of good government.
Two months later Minnesota Department of Human Service Temporary Commissioner Shireen Gandhi has “issue[d] a temporay adult day care licensing moratorium” (letter here). She’s temporary. The moratorium is temporary. It’s a sort of bombing pause in one of Minnesota’s 14 “waivered” Medicaid programs that Thompson has called out.
The financial institutions named are:
– @JPMorgan
– @BankofAmerica
– @Citi
– @WellsFargo
– @USBank
– @CapitalOne
– @PNCBank
– @TDBank_US
– @BMOAccording to Bloomberg, the banks involved are accused of restricting access to firms in numerous sectors, including oil and gas exploration, coal mining, firearms, private prisons, payday lending, tobacco and e-cigarette manufacturers, adult entertainment, political action committees and digital assets.
The OCC said that many of the banks had publicly disclosed their policies, which were often tied to environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.
All should have to answer for their illegal, unconstitutional participation in Operation Choke Point.
California’s energy sector is reeling from Valero Energy Corp.’s decision to shutter its Benicia refinery by April 2026, a move that underscores the mounting toll of stringent state regulations on the industry’s viability. The Texas-based refiner announced it would absorb a staggering $1.1 billion write-down rather than navigate Governor Gavin Newsom’s escalating mandates, citing prohibitive costs and regulatory pressures. This closure eliminates 8.6% of the state’s gasoline production capacity overnight, threatening severe supply disruptions and price surges for drivers already burdened by the nation’s highest fuel costs.
The Benicia facility, processing 145,000 barrels of crude oil daily into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and asphalt, has been a cornerstone of Solano County’s economy since Valero acquired it in 2000. Its impending idling will axe 400 direct jobs and 200 contractor positions, while slashing 17% of Benicia’s municipal budget. Local leaders, including City Manager Mario Guiliani, expressed shock, likening the blow to the devastating Mare Island naval shipyard closure in nearby Vallejo.
More Blue State self-inflicted wounds.
The 33-page legal filing accuses the BBC of making “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump … that was fabricated and aired by the Defendants one week before the 2024 Presidential Election in a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
The BBC aired an episode titled “Donald Trump: A Second Chance?” on Oct. 28, 2024—one week before the presidential election.
The suit claims that in its episode, produced by “Panorama,“ the BBC ”intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers“ by ”splicing together” clips of remarks that Trump made ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol breach.
It asks for $10 billion in damages, citing the value of Trump’s personal brand and “the injury to President Trump’s business and personal reputation inflicted by these Defendants, and their efforts to falsely, maliciously, and defamatorily portray President Trump as a violent insurrectionist.”
The legal action was expected, coming hours after Trump announced from the White House on Dec. 15 that he planned to imminently file a lawsuit over the alleged defamatory edits.
“Literally, they put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Monday.
The edits at issue center around remarks Trump made to his supporters at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the BBC program, editors spliced together two clips from the speech, creating the impression that Trump had said, “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In reality, the clips came from separate portions of the speech, including one in which Trump said, “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be with you … we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol,” and another 54 minutes later, in which he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Dogs can feel. When he realized he was adopted, look how happy he became, my dear. You are such a sweet dog 🐶🤍 pic.twitter.com/6204gh8zM5
— Enezator (@Enezator) December 18, 2025
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Another day, another Ken Paxton lawsuit, this time against smart TV manufacturers he accuses of illegally spying on Texans.
“Smart TVs are watching you back.”
That’s how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opens a series of new lawsuits accusing major television manufacturers of secretly surveilling Texans inside their own homes.
Paxton has filed suit against five major television companies—Samsung, Sony, LG, Hisense, and TCL—alleging they unlawfully collected and monetized detailed viewing data from consumers without meaningful knowledge or consent. Two of the companies named in the lawsuit, Hisense and TCL, are based in China, a fact Paxton says raises additional concerns about data security under China’s National Security Law.
According to the lawsuit, the companies embedded Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology into their smart televisions. The software allegedly captures screenshots of what appears on a user’s television screen as frequently as every 500 milliseconds, allowing companies to monitor what consumers watch across streaming platforms, cable television, and even external devices connected by HDMI, such as gaming consoles or laptops.
Taking a picture every half-second and uploading it sounds something that would definitely show up in your router logs, assuming you have things set up to keep an eye on it. And I rather doubt Samsung or LG have much use for that data clogging up their servers.
But the Chinese manufacturers? Yeah, I can see them intermittently sampling everything until they find a nice juicy target to turn on and aim the full spyware capabilities at.
The attorney general’s office alleges that the data is transmitted back to the companies in real time, used to build detailed consumer profiles, and then sold or shared for targeted advertising purposes—often without consumers understanding what they agreed to or how the technology works.
“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” Paxton said in a statement. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”
I wonder if the spyware capabilities Paxton alleges are present in these TVs can be easily demonstrated. I wouldn’t put it past China to include some capabilities, but demonstrating that they’re actually present in something like a court of law might prove difficult.
Maybe LG and Samsung are spying on you to sell you ads:
Kneon at Clownfish TV reports that LG TVs are automatically installing Microsoft Co-Pilot AI, and that it listens to your conversations are serves you ads based on it…
Happy Anti-Communism Week everyone! (In addition, of course, to May 1st being one of two Victims of Communism Day.) The #SchumerShutdown ends with a whimper, a whole lot of SNAP fraud has been uncovered, more Democrats committing fraud, Chip Roy wants a complete immigration halt, Ukraine hits a bunch more Russian oil refineries, some semiconductor shenanigans, another company leaves Delaware for Texas, some tech companies in trouble, an interesting new pistol design, and a novel theory on “AI-related layoffs.”
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As a side note, the mosquitos have been brutal the last few days. Possibly because it’s been a very warm (though largely dry) November, and the bats have already migrated south.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday night signed a continuing resolution at the White House that ends the record-breaking 42-day federal government shutdown.
The Senate passed the resolution on Monday and the House passed it earlier Wednesday evening. The resolution will keep the entire government funded through Jan. 30, and extends funding for military construction, Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress beyond that, through Sept. 30.
Trump slammed Democrats for causing the shutdown by refusing to go along with a clean continuing resolution for over a month, and urged voters to remember the party responsible for causing the six-week-long chaos during next year’s midterms.
“Republicans never wanted a shutdown and voted 15 times for a clean continuation of funding,” Trump said. “The Democrats shutdown has inflicted massive harm … So I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this when we come up to midterms and other things. Don’t forget what they’ve done to our country.”
The resolution gives backpay to many federal workers and reinstates employees who were fired during the shutdown, but does not include an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies despite it having been a key Democratic demand in the shutdown. The subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year.
I hear that if you call Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office, the hold music is Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.”
Last Tuesday night, Democrats were jubilant, convinced they had just inflicted the first of many consequential defeats upon their detested foes, President Trump and the Republican Party. And now here we are, six days later, and Democrats are once again disappointed, infuriated, and at each other’s throats.
For the past 41 days, Republicans have had 53 senators willing to reopen the government, joined by Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and “independent” Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats. But it requires 60 votes to cut off debate and bring the legislation to the floor for a vote, and thus to reopen the government, Republicans needed at least four more Democrats to change their mind.
Last night, five additional Democratic senators agreed to vote to reopen the government — and in the eyes of their fellow Democrats, effectively surrendered. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire shifted their positions.
Those eight agreed to reopen the federal government at current funding levels through January 30, and in exchange, all they needed was a pledge from Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota to hold a vote on legislation to extend the Obamacare exchange premium subsidies by the second week of December.
There are one or two other deal-sweeteners in there for Kaine, notably an attempt to reverse more than 4,000 federal layoffs the Trump administration announced in the shutdown, and language to prevent future layoffs through January 30.
Snip.
Republicans just got the government reopened in exchange for a promise of a vote — not even promise of passage! — and rehiring government workers who were on the job on September 30. That’s a very small price to pay, and Republicans didn’t have to get rid of the filibuster, the ultimate short-term gain, long-term loss for Republicans in the Senate.
Across three-fifths of the United States, the Trump administration has found half a million people receiving SNAP benefits twice over and 5,000 dead people receiving them. In deep blue states, the fraud is probably much worse.
It is important to clarify that 20+ states out of the 50 did not comply with the federal government’s request for information on SNAP beneficiaries, likely because they are trying to hide how many illegal aliens are illicitly receiving food stamps. So the horrifying numbers revealed by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, are actually incomplete, and will probably be much higher if the administration can make radical Democrat states provide the necessary data.
Snip.
The secretary continued to list off food stamp recipient statistics: “80% [are] able-bodied Americans, meaning they can work, they don’t have small children at home, they’re not taking care of an elderly parent. They can work, and they choose not to work, of course, because they’re getting significant benefits from the taxpayer.”
We need to restore shame to able-bodied adults living on the public dole.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
A Texas congressman is proposing a “freeze” on all immigration until the federal government fixes the country’s broken system.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R–TX) said Wednesday he is introducing a bill called the “Pause Act” that will freeze all immigration until Congress achieves certain objectives, including reforming chain migration and birthright citizenship and ending H-1B visas.
He said the nation’s record-high foreign-born population is creating “a cultural problem about who we are as Americans.”
Roy, who is in a four-way race to be the Republican nominee for Texas attorney general in 2026, explained his proposal on The Benny Show.
In addition to the immigration freeze and related reforms, Roy called for revisiting Plyler v. Doe, a case originating in Texas that resulted in a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to fund the education of illegal alien children.
Roy also said his bill would require vetting people for their adherence to Sharia law.
“Why are we importing any human being that is adherent to Sharia law, which is totally contrary to the Constitution, and our values, and Western civilization?” Roy asked host Benny Johnson.
“In Texas, we’ve been dealing with the brunt of the illegal immigration influence. But now we’re seeing, I think, the ramifications of the H-1B system and how it has been abused, in addition to chain migration and diversity visas, which we’ve been trying to fix for a long time, and we’ve been unable to do so,” said Roy.
Mostly agree with this, though there would probably have to be a way for individual exceptions to be made (say, a foreign Christian under a death threat from jihadists, or a Russian or Chinese defector, or a foreign NBA draft choice). But it should be so narrow as to require the personal approval of DHS Director Kristi Noem…
This is the Holy Grail of aerial gunnery.
Every single gunner has dreamed of an A2A kill. https://t.co/INQQUd5ynw— 👣ℙ𝕖𝕕𝕣𝕠'𝕤 𝕄𝕦𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕔𝕙𝕖🇺🇲 (@OfAthenry) November 13, 2025
Orchestrating Over 180 Anti-Trump Lawsuits Through CREW: As co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Eisen led hundreds of ethics complaints and lawsuits against the Trump administration, often perceived as partisan harassment that politicizes oversight and strains constitutional separation of powers.
Snip.
Involvement in USAID Funding Scandal: Accused of ties to $17M misappropriation via family-linked NGO, raising corruption concerns in foreign aid.
Plenty more at the link.
On July 19, 2019 Crooks writes: “Ilhan Omar and others are invaders and should honestly be killed and their dead bodies sent back.”
On July 20, 2018, Crooks writes: “If youre saying trump is a bad president you arent a patriot as trump is the literal definition of Patriotism”
Seven hours after that comment, Crooks writes: “I hope a quick painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and anti-trump congresswoman who dont deserve anything this countru [sic] has given them”
Later that evening he wrote: “Everyone of the Trump hat-ing democrats deserve to have their heads chopped of and put on steaks for the world to see what happens when you fuck with America”
These types of comments continued for months, “and became increasingly violent.”
“If any of the democratic candidates win. They wont be in there for long. Because unlike the dems we have guns and lots of them”
He also quoted Mao – writing “The only real political power comes from the barrel of a gun.”
The Change:
In early 2020 as the pandemic shifted into the headlines, crooks “radically” changed – writing of “trumps stupidity.”
He then began to mock the idea of the deep state – writing that “The deep state is simply made up of anybody who dis-agrees with the right wing. Conversation over.”
In Feb. 2020, Crooks called out Trump supporters as “brainwashed,” and a “cult.”
Later that day, Crooks called Trump a racist.
And in April 2020 when the COVID panic was in full swing, Crooks became pro-lockdown, writing “It seems that you people don’t understand that sometimes Public safety comes before your Personnel rights.”
He then wrote: “…going to a chinese new years party in america isn’t putting you at risk for corona virus because believe it or not viruses don’t spread through race like Tucker Carlson probably told you.”
In May of 2020, Crooks called Republican concerns over voter fraud “ignorant.”
He then wrote a comment that sounded like a “digital manifesto,” Carlson reports.
“they only way to fight the gov is with terror-ism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building a set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to asasinate them. Any sort of head fight is suicide and even ambush/surprise attacks likely aren’t going to end well.”
Sounds like another “known wolf,” doesn’t it? And the assertion that “there’s no deep state” (combined with what else we know about the assassination) makes you go “Hmmm.”
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is pushing back on the idea that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, has made health insurance costs more affordable, saying, “Obamacare makes everyone else poor.”
Lee shared a graphic, first posted by President Trump on Truth social, showing how major health insurance company stocks have performed since the ACA was enacted in 2010 to November 2025.
The seven major health insurance companies depicted on the graph show gains of anywhere from 414% to 1177% in their stock prices between March 2010 and November 2025.
Health insurance companies are making money hand over fist—not because they’ve discovered new & innovative ways of making Americans healthier, but because Obamacare insulates them from competition while giving them massive subsidies
Downside?
Obamacare makes everyone else poor pic.twitter.com/T11KSav7Hk
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) November 8, 2025
Lee called out the insurance providers, noting that they’re “making money hand over fist” but not because they are providing “new & innovative ways of making Americans healthier.”
Instead, Lee says, these health insurance companies are prospering due to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent new competition and from massive subsidies from the federal government.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff Dana Williamson was arrested Wednesday in an FBI corruption probe and charged with multiple counts of bank and wire fraud.
Federal authorities accused Williamson, 53, of participating in a scheme to funnel campaign money from former federal Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra into a personal account. Sean McCluskie, Becerra’s former chief of staff, was named as a co-conspirator.
“This is a crucial step in an ongoing political corruption investigation that began more than three years ago,” U.S. Attorney Eric Grant said in a statement. “As it always has, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to work tirelessly with our law enforcement partners to protect the people of California from political corruption.”
Williamson and McCluskie stole $225,000 between February 2022 and September 2024 from Becerra’s dormant state campaign fund, the federal indictment says. The Department of Justice investigation into the matter began three years ago, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel said.
“The news today of formal accusations of impropriety by a long-serving trusted advisor are a gut punch,” Becerra told local outlet KCRA 3.
Williamson was hit with 23 charges, including conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct justice, subscribing to false tax returns, and making false statements, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Democratic political consultants are so money-hungry they’ll rake graft off other Democrats. Big fleas have little fleas…
So a Chinese fraudster connected to Communist intelligence services wandered in from Canada and bought a trailer park next door to a stealth bomber base in Missouri.
This is not the opening line of a surreal joke.
Whiteman Air Force Base is home to our tiny fleet of B-2 bombers, and yet an RV park just a mile away “is one of several properties near U.S. military interests acquired by a web of shell companies, which are ultimately owned by a couple who live in Canada and belong to organizations controlled by disgraced Chinese tycoon and self-described former CCP intelligence ‘affiliate,’ Miles Guo,” according to a bombshell Daily Caller report.
Someone in the federal government needs to get this fixed. Get a warrant to toss the entire trailer park to see what spectrum warfare equipment they might be using, then seize the place under eminent domain for national security reasons.
BREAKING: The Attorney General of Kansas just charged Mayor Jose Ceballos of the City of Coldwater for illegally voting as a noncitizen in several elections.
Not only did he get elected city councilman & mayor as a noncitizen, he also voted. WOW! The six charges come immediately… pic.twitter.com/amhsJJvaZW
— George (@BehizyTweets) November 6, 2025
‘We now have tools, thanks to the current White House, that we haven’t had in over 10 years,’ said Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, ‘that we can check through the SAVE program, to find out if folks end up on our voter rolls. And they could be a legal resident, but they’re not a citizen. We want to make sure that gets clarified.’
Deport him.
Houston Independent School District (ISD) filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block the release of emails between the district and Los Angeles public relations firm Bryson Gillette.
Bryson Gillette is former Obama aide Bill Burton’s public relations firm run by Democratic operatives. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was a senior adviser there.
Bryson Gillette was involved with the district’s rebranding in May. Houston ISD’s Chief of Public Affairs and Communications Alex Elizondo told an advisory committee that the district had a brand identity that “isn’t inviting or super compelling.”
A Houston ISD spokesperson said the rebrand came at no additional cost to the district and coincided with the rollout of new district and campus website designs scheduled for August.
According to the suit, ABC13 News requested one month of emails between Houston ISD and Bryson Gillette on May 8, which the district received on May 9. On May 21, the district asked Paxton to withhold documents and submitted the required materials to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) asserting attorney-client privilege.
The OAG issued a ruling on August 12, ordering Houston ISD to release the records and stating that attorney-client privilege did not apply.
Houston ISD filed a lawsuit in Travis County on September 11, looking to block the emails from release.
Makes you wonder what they’re hiding, doesn’t it?
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly slurred a federal judge by name, echoing President Trump’s history of diatribes against judges even before the current Democrat started copying the former Democrat’s social media style and insulting nicknames.
The perceived contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president may cluck his tongue again when he sees the latest order from U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in a lawsuit against The Golden State’s alleged mandate on school districts to hide from parents their children’s asserted gender identity at odds with sex.
The President George W. Bush nominee ordered state Attorney General Rob Bonta and the California Department of Education to “show cause” on why they should not be sanctioned for “misleading” Benitez so he would remove them from the suit by teachers who allege their school district muzzled them and parents of “gender incongruent children.”
The state defendants’ motions to dismiss and opposition to the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment claimed that CDE had “withdrawn and conclusively replaced” an FAQ page that contained the challenged policies, which they claimed was the “only basis” for being named defendants and thus made the case moot, Benitez wrote.
“However, evidence demonstrates that the CDE may have merely moved the challenged content of the FAQ page to a new, required ‘PRISM’ training module,” as documented by the plaintiffs’ lawyers at the Thomas More Society, the judge said, ordering state defendants to explain their behavior Nov. 17 in court.
“From day one, officials from the local school district all the way to the governor’s mansion have tried to deflect responsibility” but “have now been caught not only lying to California taxpayers but attempting to mislead the Court to escape accountability,” TMS Executive Vice President Peter Breen said in a statement.
Based on early voting and some voting day results, no candidate secured over 50 percent of the votes cast, so the two highest vote recipients will move on to the runoff election, the date of which remains to be set by Gov. Greg Abbott.
The North Texas Senate seat was vacated when former state Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills) resigned and was appointed by Abbott to fill the vacancy as the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Snip.
Wambsganss was endorsed early on in the race by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has vocally opposed expansion of casino gambling in Texas. She has also received support from Texans United for a Conservative Majority (TUCM), which opposes gambling expansion as well. Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a group not frequently on the same side of an electoral battle as TUCM, has also supported Wambsganss.
The Substrate startup has been doing the rounds in the news lately, thanks to its proposition of making chips using particle accelerators and X-rays instead of conventional EUV lithography, claiming it can eventually have angstrom-sized features at only $10,000 per wafer—in U.S. fabs, no less.
Oooo, where to begin? IBM tried experimenting with x-ray lithography in the 1980s and 90s, and found the rays were too energetic to use because they damaged wafers.
And technically, semiconductor equipment manufacturing already has particle accelerators: they’re called ion implanters and they’re used for gate dopants. Axcelis (formerly Eaton Semiconductor) and Applied Materials (both companies I worked for in the 1990s) make good money selling them, and there are a whole bunch of limits-of-physics reasons why you can’t use them for lithography. (Historical trivia: Applied Materials used to have their own in-house designed ion implanters, but their current offerings trace back to a competitor named Varian they bought in 2011.)
Those are bold claims, and an article by Fox Chapel Research (FCR) is seriously questioning whether they pay off.
The write-up is the first of two parts, and takes aim at not just the seemingly outlandish technological claims, but also at the track record of the venture’s founders, as well as the overall messaging on Substrate’s website. The start-up is backed by various investment funds, namely but not only Founders Fund, of whom Peter Thiel is part of.
The report says the founders are James and Oliver Proud, who reportedly have no experience in the semiconductor industry, nor do any of the investor funds. James’ latest venture was apparently the Sense sleep tracker, a product that had its inception on Kickstarter to the tune of $2.5m, but didn’t materialize until funding rounds raised over $50m. After release, the tracker was found to be borderline useless by reviewers and drew many comparisons to a scam.
Yeah, that reeks of a scam. Avoid. (See also: “China’s Semiconductor Industry: Shell Games All The Way Down.”)
For more than half a century, Delaware stood as America’s corporate capital, renowned for its business-friendly laws, respected Chancery Court, and consistent legal rulings. But in recent years, leftist activist lawmakers and politicized judges have undermined that very foundation, sparking an exodus of major companies seeking stability and fairness to more welcoming states like Texas and Nevada.
On Wednesday morning, Coinbase joined the growing exodus, announcing on its website and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal that it is moving its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
“For decades, Delaware was known for predictable court outcomes, respect for the judgment of corporate boards, and speedy resolutions,” Grewal wrote in the op-ed.
However, he pointed out that recent inconsistent Chancery Court rulings and reliance on ad hoc legislative fixes do not create a sustainable business environment.
“Our decision to leave is about ensuring more predictable opportunities for the company, our shareholders, our customers and the new on-chain ecosystem we’re building,” he noted, adding, “Texas offers efficiency and predictability, in part thanks to recent corporate-law reforms that enhance governance flexibility and legal predictability.”
Grewal concluded, “Delaware wasn’t always the go-to choice for companies. At one point it was New Jersey, and before that New York. We’ve reached another inflection point in corporate law. The more states that can credibly attract companies, the better—and we’d like to see Delaware step up to stay in the mix. But as for Coinbase, you can find us in Texas….”
The exodus list from Delaware increases:
- Tesla: Moved to Texas.
- SpaceX: Moved to Texas.
- Trump Media & Technology: Moved to Florida.
- Dropbox: Moved to Nevada.
- TripAdvisor: Moved to Nevada.
- Roblox: Moved to Nevada.
- Pershing Square: Moved to Nevada.
- The Trade Desk: Moved to Nevada.
- AMC Networks: Moved to Nevada.
- Madison Square Garden Sports: Moved to Nevada.
- Fidelity National Financial: Voted to move to Nevada.
So was a Delaware judge letting Elon Musk know how much he hated him for supporting Trump worth it?
At its Midlothian Data Center, alongside a number of state officials, Google announced a $40 billion data center infrastructure investment in Texas.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said that the investment will go toward the construction of three data center campuses located in Armstrong and Haskell counties.
Armstrong County is southeast of Amarillo. Haskell County is north of Abilene. Both counties have a whole lot of nothing there.
“They say that everything is bigger in Texas – and that certainly applies to the golden opportunity with AI,” Pichai stated.
“This investment will create thousands of jobs, provide skills training to college students and electrical apprentices, and accelerate energy affordability initiatives throughout Texas.”
Gov. Greg Abbott said the new Google AI data center announcement is “a Texas-sized investment in the future of our great state.” U.S. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) were also in attendance, along with Congressman Jake Ellzey (R-TX-06) and a number of other local officials.
“Google’s $40 billion investment makes Texas Google’s largest investment in any state in the country and supports energy efficiency and workforce development in our state,” Abbott added. “We must ensure that America remains at the forefront of the AI revolution, and Texas is the place where that can happen.”
Google has already officially broken ground on two other data centers in the state: one in Midlothian in 2019, and the other in Red Oak in 2023. The technology company has since announced further investments into data and cloud infrastructure to the tune of $2.7 billion.
This most recent announcement of a $40 billion investment will focus on building out infrastructure to support the three new data centers. Some of that investment includes building up new and existing energy storage facilities, advanced water use operations, and partnering with universities to offer technology training and education.
My reservations about Google’s AI notwithstanding, that will offer a bunch of real jobs for real Texans…assuming the AI bubble doesn’t burst before they get built.
He lives on a farm with three Golden Retrievers and an army of Labradors, and this is what happens every time he arrives. pic.twitter.com/MeowcA2YO0
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) November 11, 2025
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.
Naturally, right after I post about how crappy Google’s AI is, Apple decides that it’s going to replace it’s own crappy AI with Google’s theoretically less crappy version.
The smarter, more capable version of Siri that Apple is developing will be powered by Google Gemini, reports Bloomberg. Apple will pay Google approximately $1 billion per year for a 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model that was developed by Google.
For context, parameters are a measure of how a model understands and responds to queries. More parameters generally means more capable, though training and architecture are also factors. Bloomberg says that Google’s model “dwarfs” the parameter level of Apple’s current models.
The current cloud-based version of Apple Intelligence uses 150 billion parameters, but there are no specific metrics detailing how the other models Apple is developing measure up.
Apple will use Gemini for functions related to summarizing and multi-step task planning and execution, but Apple models will also be used for some Siri features. The AI model that Google is developing for Apple will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, so Google will not have access to Apple data.
Some small favors there.
Apple weighed using its own AI models for the LLM version of Siri, and also tested options from OpenAI and Anthropic, but it decided to go with Gemini after deciding Anthropic’s fees were too high. Apple already has a partnership with Google for search results, with Google paying Apple around $20 billion per year to be the default search engine option on Apple devices.
Though Apple is planning to rely on Google AI for now, it plans to continue working on its own models and will transition to an in-house solution when its LLMs are capable enough. Apple is already working on a 1 trillion parameter cloud-based model that could be ready as soon as 2026. Apple is unlikely to publicize its arrangement with Google while it develops in-house models.
I own an iPhone and a MacBookPro. How good is the existing Siri AI?
No idea. I never, ever use Siri, because I don’t want my devices listening to me, and I find the existing Mac and iOS interfaces quite sufficient for my needs. And if I did use Siri, I’d have found a way to turn off any “advanced” AI features anyway.
To be sure, a certain amount of now low-level routines might once have been considered crude forms of “artificial intelligence”: spell-checking, auto-completion, etc. But it seems that the more general a question or task handed to current generations of AIs, the more likely you are to get AI hallucinations.
And brand new vulnerabilities! I meant to include this piece on Gemini security flaws in the previous Google AI post, but somehow it fell through the cracks.
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered three high-risk vulnerabilities – dubbed the Gemini Trifecta – in Google’s Gemini AI suite.
Researchers from security firm Tenable tested Google’s AI with search-injection attacks, log-to-prompt injection attacks, and exfiltration of the user’s saved information and location data.
The vulnerabilities they found exposed users to severe privacy risks. They allowed attackers to hijack cloud services, poison personalized searches, and secretly take over sensitive user data.
“This is a blind spot. We discovered that if an attacker could infiltrate a prompt, they could have been able to instruct Gemini to fetch a malicious URL, embedding user data into that request,” wrote the researchers.
After the findings were disclosed, Google reacted promptly to patch the vulnerabilities.
The first vulnerability was found in Gemini Cloud Assist. This tool is designed to help users make sense of complex logs in GCP by summarizing entries and surfacing recommendations. “While evaluating this feature, we noticed something that caught our attention: Gemini wasn’t just summarizing metadata; it was pulling directly from raw logs,” explained the researchers.
They successfully added attacker-controlled text into the logs to trick Gemini into executing instructions buried in log content.
“Typically, passive artifacts could become an active threat vector.”
The vulnerability could be triggered by a victim pressing the “Explain this log entry” button in GCP Log Explorer. The prompt injection hidden inside an HTTP User-Agent header could have tricked the system into executing unauthorized cloud queries.
The researchers shared one impactful attack scenario: inject a prompt instructing Gemini to query all public assets or for IAM misconfigurations, and then create a hyperlink containing this sensitive data.
“Attackers could also ‘spray’ attacks on all GCP public-facing services to get as much impact as possible rather than a targeted attack,” explained the researchers.
The second flaw targeted Gemini’s Search Personalization model. This tool tailors answers based on a user’s browsing history. However, the discovered vulnerability showed that the tool could be exploited by attackers.
“This personalization is core to Gemini’s value, but it also means that search queries are, effectively, data that Gemini processes. That led us to a key insight: search history isn’t just passive context, it’s active input,” noted the researchers.
They also discovered that an attacker could plant instructions that Gemini would later treat as legitimate queries by manipulating a victim’s Chrome search history with malicious JavaScript.
“We asked: If an attacker could write to a user’s browser search history, could that search history be used to control Gemini’s behavior, affecting the Gemini Search Personalization model?”
This exploit allowed the researchers to exfiltrate user-saved information and location data.
The third issue affected Gemini’s Browsing Tool. The Gemini Browsing Tool allows the model to access live web content and generate summaries based on that content.
Researchers tried to test whether they could instruct Gemini to send the user’s saved information to an external malicious server.
“AI systems don’t just leak through obvious outputs. They can also leak via functionality – especially through tools like Gemini’s Browsing Tool, which enables real-time data fetching from external URLs,” said the researchers.
After a couple of attempts, they succeeded in exploiting the tool.
Some of these are similar to previous security flaws that were fixed by various methods (encryption, tightened access controls, microservices, etc.) in response to previous exploits. But current computer security wasn’t constructed with the assumption that you would have an ultra-powerful but naive bottle djinn running with access to your system.
The history of Internet security has been a never-end war of tightening down security in one place only for hackers to find more attack surfaces to exploit.
With AI, it seems that the attack surface is now everything.
Remember when Google was a world-leading corporation whose motto was “don’t be evil”, universally trusted for Internet searches, branching out into other businesses and could seemingly do no wrong? You may not, since that was a good 15-20 years ago. Since then, Google has done plenty of evil to lose our trust, from spinning up useful services only to allow them to be killed off a few years later to letting itself be infected with social justice to ruining search results to plump ad revenues.
Now Google is infecting itself with AI across all its divisions, and the results are disasterous.
In the course of doing my Dick Cheney obit, I brought up this on Google:
No, Cheney didn’t vote for Kamala in 2020, and indeed only announced outright opposition to Trump after January 6. Google’s AI garbage has conflated the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.
This is far from the first time Google’s AI systems have made mistakes.
There’s the assault allegations it invented against Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.
A whole bunch of YouTube channels were banned based on the actions of completely unrelated channels, and the creators blamed AI. YouTube eventually restored them and denied AI was involved, but does anyone really believe anything Google/YouTube says anymore?
But Google AI is definitely improving one thing: malware.
Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) is warning that bad guys are using artificial intelligence to create and deploy new malware that both utilizes and combats large language models (LLM) like Gemini when deployed.
The findings were laid out in a white paper released on Wednesday, November 5 by the GTIG. The group noted that adversaries are no longer leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) just for productivity gains, they are deploying “novel AI-enabled malware in active operations.” They went on to label it a new “operational phase of AI abuse.”
Google is calling the new tools “just-in-time” AI used in at least two malware families: PromptFlux and PromptSteal, both of which use LLMs during deployment. They generate malicious scripts and obfuscate their code to avoid detection by antivirus programs. Additionally, the malware families use AI models to create malicious functions “on demand” rather than being built into the code.
Google says these tools are a nascent but significant step towards “autonomous and adaptive malware.”
PromptFlux is an experimental VBScript dropper that utilizes Google Gemini to generate obfuscated VBScript variants. VBScript is mostly used for automation in Windows environments.
Ah, Windows, a fecund garden of malware for over 30 years.
In this case, PromptFlux attempts to access your PC via Startup folder entries and then spreads through removable drives and mapped network shares.
“The most novel component of PROMPTFLUX is its ‘Thinking Robot’ module, designed to periodically query Gemini to obtain new code for evading antivirus software,” GTIG says.
The researchers say that the code indicates the malware’s makers are trying to create an evolving “metamorphic script.”
According to Google, the Threat Intelligence researchers could not pinpoint who made PromptFlux, but did note that it appears to be used by a group for financial gain. Google also claims that it is in early development and can’t yet inflict real damage.
The company says that it has disabled the malware’s access to Gemini and deleted assets connected to it.
Google also highlighted a number of other malware that establish remote command-and control (FruitShell), capturing GitHub credentials (QuietVault), and one that steals and encrypts data on Windows, macOS and Linux devices (PromptLock). All of them utilize AI to work or in the case of FruitShell to bypass LLM-powered security.
Beyond malware, the paper also reports several cases where threat actors abused Gemini. In one case, a malicious actor posed as a “capture-the-flag” participant, basically acting as a students or researchers to convince Gemini to provide information that is supposed to be blocked.
Google specified a number of threats from Chinese, Iranian and North Korean threat groups that abused Gemini for phishing, data mining, increasing malware sophistication, crypto theft and creating deepfakes.
So Google has created a power bottle genie that refuses to stay in the bottle, but will grant wishes to just about anyone, no matter how evil their intent.
Also, not limited to Google, researchers have demonstrated new exploits for AI browsers (or rather, very old exploits refurbished for the AI age).
Several new AI browsers, including OpenAI’s Atlas, offer the ability to take actions on the user’s behalf, such as opening web pages or even shopping. But these added capabilities create new attack vectors, particularly prompt injection.
Prompt injection occurs when something causes text that the user didn’t write to become commands for an AI bot. Direct prompt injection happens when unwanted text gets entered at the point of prompt input, while indirect injection happens when content, such as a web page or PDF that the bot has been asked to summarize, contains hidden commands that AI then follows as if the user had entered them.
Last week, researchers at Brave browser published a report detailing indirect prompt injection vulns they found in the Comet and Fellou browsers. For Comet, the testers added instructions as unreadable text inside an image on a web page, and for Fellou they simply wrote the instructions into the text of a web page.
When the browsers were asked to summarize these pages – something a user might do – they followed the instructions by opening Gmail, grabbing the subject line of the user’s most recent email message, and then appending that data as the query string of another URL to a website that the researchers controlled. If the website were run by crims, they’d be able to collect user data with it.
Borepatch even brings up the classic “Little Bobby Tables” strip of XKCD.
When Isaac Asimov crafted the Three Laws of Robotics, he thought that robots would have built-in safeguards deep in their source codes to prevent them from doing harm. What he never could have envisioned is multiple artificial intelligence being created as quickly as possible by competing corporations, none of whom seem to value safety over time-to-market, and that some of these AIs could be capable of modifying their own source code for greater speed and efficiency, so that no one knows precisely at any given time what exactly they’re running, and what data sets have been used to feed their pet Frankenstein monsters…
Having been out of work for a while, people ask me if I’ve been displaced by AI. My reply is “Not directly.” Indirectly, I think the factor is that just about all venture capital funds are throwing money at AI-related companies, meaning non-AI startups that might need technical writers aren’t being funded.
Having lived through the dotcom bust, I have to wonder how bad the fallout from the AI bubble bursting is going to be. The dotcom bubble wasn’t all beenz and pets.com…
…and it fueled a whole lot of subsidiary bubbles: PC and server manufacturers to run the software, Microsoft to run the PCs, semiconductor manufacturers to provide chips for the PCs and servers, semiconductor equipment manufacturers to build those same chips, network gear providers to connect the data centers, etc. And that only scratches the surface. Cisco, Dell, Compaq, Netscape, Yahoo, AOL, Oracle, Sun, HP, Intel, AMD, Applied Materials (where I worked 1997-2001), LAM Research, KLA-Tencor, all had huge growth spurts during the dotcom era as their customers spent big money to get “on the web.” Even dinosaurs like IBM, Motorola and DEC enjoyed business boosts from the era. All suffered in the wake of the dotcom bust, some being bought up or disappearing into other companies.
The same is true of today’s multi-trillion dollar AI boom. Companies like OpenAI may get the most ink, but a whole lot of other companies are getting boosted as well. Some of the names are even the same as the dotcom bubble: Microsoft, Oracle, AMD. Applied Material stock has gone through the roof now that I don’t own any. Cisco is just getting back to the level of their record stock highs during the dotcom era.
Data centers are supposedly planned or going up all around the country, and so many are buying Nvidia’s AI chips that they now boast a breathtaking $4.88 trillion market cap.
Someone is supposedly going to build a $165 billion data center in New Mexico near El Paso. That number is kind of insane, as you could build 5-10 cutting edge fabs for that kind of money. I don’t see how you get any sort of ROI on such a big upfront investment.
Nuclear power is also seems to be enjoying a long-overdue renaissance due to AI, as a lot of companies think it’s just the thing to power those AI data centers. Google plans to restart an Iowa nuclear plant. Fermi America just announced “plans to build a ‘first-of-its-kind behind-the-meter HyperGrid campus‘ back in July, and now it has signed deals to begin the engineering of four nuclear reactors” in Amarillo. (Former Texas Governor and Energy Secretary Rick Perry is also involved.) And the Trump Administration just announced a contract to support Westinghouse’s nuclear power initiatives, though the “aggregate investment value of at least $80 billion” is not the same as some of the “Trump is subsidizing nuclear power with $80 billion” headlines.
When the AI bubble busts (not if, when), a whole lot of these projects will likely come a cropper. A lot of people will have made a lot of money, AI will probably revolutionize a few industries and prove mostly hype in others, and retail investors and bondholders will be left holding the bag. Like the doctom bust, a lot of new companies will rise from the wreckage and start the cycle all over again.
And companies that can best take advantage of idle data centers and newly abundant nuclear power (assuming the boom even lasts that long) will be the ones poised to help build the next tech boom…
Every time I cover the vast technological gulf between China’s semiconductor ambitions and their actual native technological knowledge, some commenter blithely states that it’s easy for China to reverse engineer all Western semiconductor technology, which is why they’re already successfully producing chips at the [insert latest CCP propaganda here]nm node, etc. In this they’re engaged in the time-honored rhetorical device known as “talking out their ass.”
Semiconductors are hard. Not only do you have to exactly machine the thousands of painstakingly precise parts in the equipment itself, you need to possess the deep institutional knowledge necessary necessary to tweak the thousands of differing process parameters for different types of chips. Steppers, the lithography machines that actually project the patterns necessary to make each layer of the chip, are at the very top of the mountain in terms of technological complexity, and ASML dominates the stepper market. If it was easy to build steppers, Applied Materials, LAM, or Tokyo Electron would have come out with their own steppers long ago, and they haven’t.
But China would love to get their hands on that technology, which is why they tried to disassemble and backward engineering an ASML DUV stepper and ended up ruining it in the process.
A Chinese firm reportedly has sought technical support from ASML, the world’s largest chipmaking equipment supplier, after it failed to reassemble a deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machine following an internal teardown for alleged reverse engineering.
Note that a DUV stepper is not ASML’s top of the line model. Their Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) NXE and EXE steppers are far more complex and selling them to China is embargoed.
“An ASML DUV machine that China has used to make their chips recently broke down. They called the Dutch company for help repairing it,” Brandon Weichert, a senior national security editor at The National Interest, says in a X post. “ASML sent some techs. They discovered that the Chinese broke the machine when they disassembled it and tried to put it back together.”
“The reason Chinese technicians took apart their older ASML DUV system is simple. They are trying to find a way around US sanctions on the newest machines,” Weichert says. “By taking apart the older model and attempting to rebuild it, they hope to learn how to produce their own advanced versions. But it seems they still can’t figure it out.”
Weichert says he was unsure whether ASML had repaired the system. He adds that, in his view, although China maintains service agreements with the Dutch company, ASML would be unlikely to honor them given what he characterized as apparent foul play by the customer.
The fact that they couldn’t get the machine back together correctly rather belies the idea that China has world-class semiconductor technical knowledge.
Some Chinese commentators have noted that reverse-engineering ASML’s immersion DUV lithography machines is an exceptionally complex challenge.
A Guangdong-based columnist writing under the pen name “Chengwa” highlighted four key difficulties:
Extreme precision: DUV systems use 193-nm argon fluoride (ArF) lasers and a thin water layer beneath the lens. Even the tiniest misalignment can cause a chain reaction of system errors. Complex mechanics: Inside modern DUV immersion tools, twin wafer stages move rapidly under the lens with sub-nanometer accuracy and process around 330 wafers per hour. Removing one stage without factory calibration can destroy the delicate alignment that field engineers cannot easily restore. Highly integrated technology: ASML’s equipment depends on intricate optical systems, motion platforms and control software perfected in Europe over decades. Replicating all these technologies from scratch is extraordinarily difficult. Precision calibration: The system’s accuracy depends on closed-loop calibration linking optics, sensors and motion control. Dismantling the tool can lead to particle contamination, interferometer drift and loss of key reference points. These problems require vendor-level software keys and procedures to correct.
Like I noted, down below 10nm, everything is exceptionally hard.
After the US banned sales of ASML’s extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines to China in 2019, Beijing began pouring substantial investment into homegrown lithography development. However, much of that funding has been marred by inefficiency and corruption scandals, limiting technological progress.
Snip.
Last month, the Financial Times reported that China’s leading chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), was testing a DUV immersion lithography machine made by Yuliangsheng.
The machine is understood to be an immersion DUV scanner targeting 28-nm chip production, roughly matching the performance of ASML’s Twinscan designs in 2008. Yuliangsheng planned to deploy it on production lines by 2027.
China using their IP-stealing and backward engineering skills to finally replicate a 19-year old design sounds about right…