Russia is great at stuff that can be automated cheaply like influence campaigns. They're not so great at physical hardware and logistics and so forth. Not everyone is good at everything.
Messing with elections by fooling the most volatile and eager to be fooled is not a genius move.
In the town where I live there are buildings from a 19th century pipe organ factory. My wife used to work in one of the buildings. The employees had scribbled various names and dates and witticisms on the walls in pencil. Their handwriting was beautiful. I was gratified that no one had thought to beautify the walls after the factory closed. In the loft above there were ancient mechanical drawings of organ parts rolled up and stored on racks, and at the end of the loft was a designer's desk still waiting for him to come back and make more drawings.
Everyone wants someone else to deal with it. It's like we have a live grenade and rather than defusing it or disposing of it we keep passing it around hoping it explodes on someone else.
> A rich person and a poor person can train LLMs on copyrighted material in 2026.
Updating an old adage for the modern age:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
― Anatole France
The problem the Turing test was meant to solve is that we had, and still have, no means of recognizing a conscious mechanism. We lack a theory of consciousness that can be used to make a better test than "It could fool me", so the Turing test accepts that as the test.
In other words, the mechanism may be what consciousness is about, but we can't say anything useful about this as relates to consciousness.
Somebody, in a conversation of which there will be no record, told him it was a good idea, telling him it would be quick, he would be lauded as a hero, there would be vast mineral riches, etc. This person wanted to break up NATO, but this wasn't part of the sales pitch, I imagine.
What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation.
If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.
After a few hundred years historical injustices move down the priority list. France isn't seeking reparations from Italy for the conquest of Gaul, for example.
I agree that our economic system is cold, transactional, and cruel. The problem kinder systems always face is that the people indifferent to the cruelty of capitalism, exemplified by these extortionists, are still there in the alternative system. The alternative must develop countermeasures or fail. The countermeasures replicate the cold transactional cruelty of capitalism.
This isn't to say all countries are doing equally well or poorly, just that countries that came closest to eliminating what we call businesses were not generally regarded as kind, compassionate paradises by the people who lived there.
You sound depressed. I wish you well. I wish the world were kinder to idealists. May you find a supportive community within the indifferent wider world.
That seems beside the point. The ransomware extortionists aren't doing a utilitarian calculation and transferring funds from Exxon to Oxfam. They're taking money where they can and using it to fund a lavish lifestyle and more extortion. In particular, they aren't channeling it towards transforming any society into one in which basic needs are met by something other than jobs and businesses of the familiar sort. The extortionists cause suffering. They parasitize other people's labor. Their acts have actual, identifiable victims. The escorts serving them Moët at their birthday parties funded by other people's suffering aren't doing it for fun, love, or charity. For the escorts, it's a job.
If a business is destroyed by ransomware, all its employees lose their jobs. The business's customers lose the services the business was providing. The families supported by these jobs are now all at risk.
All that money goes somewhere. Much of it goes towards clothing, feeding, and housing people. Also, in most places it's a crime to rob anyone, even selfish assholes.
So Indivisible, which planned the protest, knew the US was going to attack Iran months in advance and plotted this protest to distract from it? What strategic masterminds! What opsec! The left always seemed so fractious and disorganized, but they were just wily, biding their time. But, why?
Seriously, I'm sure you're smart enough to know this is absurd. Just sit down and think about it a bit.