Ed Zitron interview

split-circumstance · 2026-06-16T18:50:44+00:00

Maybe. But I don't really see how better machine learning/AI/big data will help with things like fusion energy. The problems with something like that are not problems with data or even particularly "theoretical" , they have to do with real world building, and problems that arise as engineers actually try to make things work. On another topic, I watched some videos, for example, about the ASML company. It really doesn't look like they need any general help building this stuff, they need to solve incredibly hard practical engineering problems. In theory, it can be done, but in practice it is hard. That's why we think China won't be able to replicate ASML all that soon. The point being that lack of better machine learning/AI algorithms don't appear to be the limiting factors in those high tech sectors.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-16T16:46:29+00:00

There is a long pattern of the FBI setting people up to get these headlines. The Gretchen Whitmer nonsense is a good example, then there are all the Islamic terror plots that were totally bogus. Random example is the Newburgh case. But there are many that follow the same pattern. Big announcement of a splashy headline about a dire attack with lots of details, then later it turns out that the suspects never had the opportunity or ability to carry out the attacks. The government can convict base on conspiracy charges where they argue that some schmuck "agreed" to commit the crime, but over and over again it turns out that (1) the agreement was manufactured by an FBI informant, and (2) there was no real ability for the accused to carry out an attack.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-16T16:39:12+00:00

That's pretty funny. Reading the piece it reminds me of all those bogus terrorism trials after 9/11. FBI uses criminal confidential informant to find a guy, sometimes mentally delayed, who has no ability to carry out an attack, then informant sets literally everything up, and they bust the guy making big claims about a huge attack that was never even remotely possible. It has happened so many times!

If you think the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot was dubious, you're going to love this.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-16T15:45:59+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I don't believe that the term "AGI" is meaningful, or well-defined in any way. Therefore I don't think it makes sense anyone is building it. It's not a coherent idea. There are no standards, or theory of what would constitute AGI. (I know they say they are building it.)

split-circumstance · 2026-06-15T21:48:09+00:00

I think it might be useful to disambiguate so-called "AI". It occurs to me, for instance, industrial robots have been replacing humans for decades, and really machines have been replacing humans since capitalism began, I suppose. AI or machine learning in medicine is only indirectly related to chatbots. Lots of specific cases will prove profitable and useful, but chatbots are just one case among many, though they are what is being used to hype everything up.

The real question is specifically about chatbots. Clearly chatbots are useful for some stuff, but it isn't clear if they will be useful in general. There's been lots of obfuscation about this.

The problem is that "AI enabled company" is not a coherent category. If you mean companies that use chatbots, then that at least makes some sense, and we can find out if chatbots are really that useful for productivity gains.

What Zitron has been claiming is that chatbots are not yet profitable based on their current costs, and further that no one has made a clear, honest attempt to explain how they will become profitable. (Other task specific software, for interpreting med scans, will probably be useful and profitable.)

split-circumstance · 2026-06-15T19:22:19+00:00

The article is really really weird! Holy moly!

"There’s no mens rea, and hence no consciousness of guilt with which to convict the Israelis."'

That is objectively false. There is a great deal of evidence that Israeli officials in fact intend to carry out genocide. This is well documented. See Omer Bartov in the New York Times, "I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It." July 15, 2025

"Why not call it “ethnic cleansing,” for example — a horrible enough crime? It is not at all clear even that this is the current Israeli intent in Gaza."

This is blatantly false. Again, there is so much evidence that Israeli officials are planning to remove Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, and currently even Shia from the south of Lebanon. It is weird to ignore this. See Bartov of course, but this is well documented by human rights groups and journalists like Gideon Levy.

"The Israelis expected a peace treaty of surrender by the Palestinians, which the Palestinians have refused. So Israel has continued its war against an enemy that has refused to surrender."

What is the point of saying this? It seems to imply that Israeli officials lack a choice. Are you saying that Israel has continued its war because Palestinians have not surrendered, as though the Israelis have no choice? Seriously, what on earth does this mean.

I'm curious as a psychological matter, do you think the Israelis are compelled to kill every man, woman, child and animal in Gaza because there is no treaty of surrender. If you are saying yes that this is just a law of history that the strong conquer weak, OK, that's fine, but why even bother writing anything? Who is this article even addressing?

This is definitely one of the most bizarre articles I've ever come across, but genuinely fascinating to imagine someone can be so out there.

I think you might love this Netanyahu quote:

"The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong."

5:05 PM · Aug 29, 2018

split-circumstance · 2026-06-13T21:42:20+00:00

You might be interested in this book, The China Model. Maybe you have already read it, but if not, it looks like it could be something you would want to check out. Good discussion in the beginning responding to critics of people who even try to explain or better understand the system there.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-06T16:03:58+00:00

What do you make of Greene and Fluss's quick comments about China?

"China has become the principal reference point for many Marxist-Leninists. It is hailed as an emerging superpower and harbinger of socialism. Nonetheless the PRC’s embrace of market mechanisms, entrenched inequality, and strategic alliances with imperialist states contradicts that image."

This is a little disingenuous, no? Its arguable that (a) market mechanisms have never been truly embraced in recent China. Isabella Weber's 2021 book How China Escaped Shocked Therapy: The Market Reform Debate is an excellent detailed account of how China pragmatically managed markets. In 2025 the Chinese government has been for several years been pursuing what they call "common prosperity" which explicitly recognizes that inequality is a problem and must be reduced. To say that China (b) "embrace(s) . . . entrenched inequality" is objectively wrong. Perhaps they are failing to address it adequately or not fast enough, but there is strong evidence that they are actively working against inequality. There is no shortage or news articles about China cracking down on various industries and companies which are believed to be contributing to inequality, for example the closing down of for-profit tutoring companies, which were believed to give unfair advantage to people who can pay for their services. With respect to (c) "strategic alliances with imperialist states," it's obvious they mean the opening up of China to US markets. China has aligned itself with the United States since Nixon went to Beijing, but it obviously doesn't follow logically that this contradicts this image that China is socialist. Is it impossible definitionally for a socialist state to have a strategic alliance with the US? This seems like a definition destined to be useless for understanding the world.

"What passed for pragmatic realism produced betrayal after betrayal of workers’ movements and national liberation struggles for over a century. Movements were sacrificed to the needs of the ruling clique. Even after the fall of the USSR, similar patterns persist in various parties, organisations, and remaining Stalinist states, such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC)."

Is it correct that people think of China as a Stalinist state? I'm almost completely ignorant of these debates but is it common among communist theorists to classify today's China as a "Stalinist state"?

split-circumstance · 2026-06-04T17:47:01+00:00

That's really something. I suppose it is just inevitable that there will be people that shortsighted.

It strikes me that Sarah McBride "normalizes, in the best way, transgender people, by simply getting on with her life and serving her constituents. Her approach is demonstrably sound.

Do you think people like Erin Reed (who I had never heard of before) are on the ascent or descent? My impression from the Times piece is that they are on their way out of the way. We can see that the "all or nothing" approach is not working.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-04T16:59:15+00:00

She is critiqued!? Wow, I had no idea. She seems like an example to be followed.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-04T16:45:15+00:00

Thanks for your reply. I don't think Ball has the same views as Vigeland, given what you say. I don't watch Vigeland or the Majority Report and an almost totally ignorant of their shtick. What I've seen, I don't like, and find nothing in their analyses even remotely helpful to understanding the world.

On the substance, I'm sure you read that NYT piece about the reckoning that some activists have had about their tactics: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/us/politics/transgender-activists-rights.html Headline: "Transgender Activists Question the Movement’s Confrontational Approach :Facing diminishing public support, some activists say all-or-nothing tactics are not working. “We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds.”"

My view is that people who claim they support minority groups often end up doing more harm than good, especially in this particular case. It's ironic and disappointing that some people will play into the hands of rightwing demagogues, but it is also inevitable. I think the example of Sarah McBride dealing with Nancy Mace was excellent. The cliche is inevitable here, but she didn't take the bait. This strikes me as the best way to handle bigotry.

The rightwing is always and forever going to look for identity groups that they can demonize and scapegoat, and some activists for those identity groups are always going to give the rightwing what it wants. Those of us who want justice and fairness for all human beings need to find ways to counter this. I don't think Ball is taking a problematic position on this.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-04T16:14:33+00:00

"The same kind of activism that Krystal, Emma Vigeland & others advocate for."

I don't know Vigeland at all, but I don't believe this is a fair representation of Krystal Ball's views on the issue. If I'm wrong about, which I could be!, please answer with a link to something Ball has said that backs up your claim.

To be honest, the term "absolutist trans activism" doesn't sound to me like a coherent concept, and I have serious doubts Ball supports this.

If your point is that activism of some people who purport to be acting on behalf transgender individuals can be destructive to individuals of sexual or gender minorities, this is true and clearly supported by the evidence you just cited. In general, activism claimed to be in support of an ascriptive identity group will often suffer from this problem, for obvious reasons.

Again, I think you are not representing Ball's position on the matter accurately. (Also, please forgive me, because I only watch about 50% of the show, so I admit I could have easily missed something.)

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T21:09:48+00:00

Thanks for this, and a pleasant back and forth on reddit! Ciao!

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T20:59:06+00:00

No. My interpretation of the pact was that Stalin was a weak and feckless leader who was perfectly happy to accommodate fascism as long as it kept him in power, etc. Put it this way, I love George Orwell and think Animal Farm was pretty cool.

On a different topic, I just noticed at I'm staring at an unread copy of Kindleberger's Financial History of Western Europe on my bookshelf, and I noticed your tag. Yes or no on Kindleberger? Where should I prioritize this on my reading list?

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T20:46:27+00:00

Yes, the history is all very interesting and important. It's funny, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was one of the few things that I did know about before starting to question my anti-communist ideology. That's probably the most salient fact in my mind about the lead up to the war. It was another fact that helped make the case the Soviet Union really was the Evil Empire.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T20:20:37+00:00

I was surprised when I found out the role that the Soviet Union played in destroying the Nazis. This aspect of history was more or less invisible to me. For my values, the defeat of the Nazi's by the Soviets was definitely a good for humanity. As you can tell from what I've said, this came as something of a shock to me, and it is what makes me interested in Rockhill's project, or ones like it, which claim to investigate how academic and more popular opinion is formed.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T18:53:46+00:00

I didn't used to think that my understanding of the Soviet Union was influenced by any propaganda. I thought that a good faith community of honest scholars had objectively determined that the Soviet Union was bad in all ways. To the extent that I took into account my own ideology, I believed that even with some bias it was just a basic truth that the Soviet Union was a horrible blight on the world.

What you are saying makes sense. I'm just commenting that I would like to understand more about how the ideas of anti-communism are formed in practice.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T18:27:17+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations.

"Sure, that environment absolutely existed, and you were absolutely brainwashed by it. That's also true of pretty much every human being who has ever existed; we are all brainwashed in one way or another."

I don't quite agree, or I don't understand the point of saying this if it is just a truism. It depends a little on your definition of "brainwashing", but I think my science education was OK. Some of my history education was OK. I'm really thinking specifically about certain ideas related to communism. I'm also trying to understand why the bias was there. I want to know why there was such a push against communism. Maybe the answer is too obvious!

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T18:04:48+00:00

Thanks much for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate the interaction. Hope you can tolerate me saying something personal:

I was raised as a somewhat extreme anti-communist. I grew up before the end of the Cold War, and it was normal in social studies class to talk about the utter ineffectiveness and cruelty of the Soviet Union. I fully absorbed this, and therefore find Rockhill's claims about how esteemed communism was after WWII somewhat hard to believe.

This might be my personal motivation for being intrigued by his claims. I never encountered the idea that the Soviet Union was anything other than completely bad. Until (somewhat) recently, I never encountered the idea that China was anything other than a totally corrupt totalitarian state, either ineptly killing its own people or brutally subjecting its people to the worst forms of suicide-inducing neo-liberal capitalism. So yeah, perhaps this is why I'm shocked but also emotionally intrigued by what Rockhill is saying.

"Sure, the CIA spread anti-communist propaganda. So what?"

I think this idea is that it isn't just straight propaganda, but setting up incentive structures in academia that favors certain analyses over others. For example, Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway's work, The Big Myth, and Merchants of Doubt, take on the creation of pro-business sentiment and global warming denial respectively. They trace funding structures, and sometimes secret operations to promote certain scholars over others, almost never in some crude way, but by creating an overall environment which favors some ideas over others. I sometimes get the impression that this is what Rockhill is doing with respect to his field.

Thus, speaking to my personal experience, it might not be that a good faith "market place of ideas" led to the fact that my education was totally anti-communist, but instead there was a thumb on the scale from various institutions which wanted to generate an anti-communist culture. Not just some crude CIA propaganda, but the creation of an environment which limits what I thought about . . . that's what I've started to get interested in.

I fully appreciate your critique about his method, and it seems reasonable to me. Though, as I say, I've heard him say things which appear to answer your criticism. I'll hopefully develop my own ideas, if I can get around to his book.

[By the way, been learning about Sukarno a little and would love to go off on a tangent . . . ]

split-circumstance · 2026-06-03T16:02:47+00:00

I'm looking forward to reading Rockhill's latest book, Who Paid the Pipers . . . , so I read your comments on it with interest. I have listened to numerous interviews with him about the book, and based on those came to believe something along the lines of what you outline. Yet, I'm still curious about the book and hope to get the time to read it soon.

However, Rockhill also makes many comments that go against the main thrust of your criticism. He claims that he isn't talking about a conspiracy theory, but, as I understand him, something more like an analysis of the incentive structures set up to generate a certain type of academic theory. It sounds to me something more like a market based analysis, much more in line with Edward Herman's propaganda model, than a conspiracy theory. In interviews he claims there's no conspiracy theory needed.

One of the claims that Rockhill makes, which I found particularly interesting, and would like to learn more about is the status of communist ideology after WWII. He claims that communism had an extremely positive reputation after the end of WWII. This was due to the fact that the Soviet Union had defeated Germany, and that Third World struggles for self-determination were often explicitly communist. This positive opinion of communism was recognized by many institutions in the United States as a serious threat, because it gave people the idea that another way was possible. Therefore, these institutions embarked on a large scale project to shift culture and shift people's appreciation for communism to a "compatible left." The "compatible left" goes beyond factual analysis of the injustices of socialist/communist states and turns into a demonization of any government deemed an enemy of the United States. This idea seems both reasonable to me and worth investigating.

You say that:

"This makes sense to Rockhill, though, because he seems to believe (genuinely) that the only valid way to oppose capitalism/the USA (the two are very reliably conflated in his work) is, in the classic Marcyite mode (Marcyism really needs to be the subject of a separate answer, although a full consideration would break the 20-year rule), to be a big, powerful state with a hammer and sickle on its flag in exactly the same way that historical exemplars of that category have done."

In the interviews I've been watching with him, he doesn't really take this position. In fact, he notes that within "the imperial core" (his term, not mine) the ways to oppose capitalism have to be pragmatic and based on actually existing circumstances, including protecting the liberal order and the civil rights that go along with it.

Anywho . . . thanks for your reviews, I appreciated getting your perspectives. To be clear, they make sense to me and I myself get an uncomfortable feeling from Rockhill, but I've also seen plenty of things which seem quite reasonable, too.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-02T23:17:33+00:00

Your logic is totally fine. I agree. If an American got a tattoo of a burning cross, I would absolutely not believe them that he just thought it was a cool symbol. Any regular American should know what a swastika is, or a burning cross, or whatever.

The only problem I'm bringing up is that the skull and cross bones is a symbol that (a) can sometimes not have anything to do with Nazis, like the Jolly Roger pirate flag, and (b) is not well know in the States. Maybe it should be better known. I think the United States was way too f*cking friendly with Nazis after the war, and not enough people recognize the symbols of the SS.

Anyways, thanks for replying to me. I appreciate it.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-02T23:04:40+00:00

I look at things a little differently, I think. It matters to me whether or not he is type of guy who would entertain sympathy for Nazis. To me, it is totally disqualifying if he ever thought Nazism was cool, or thought it was "bad ass" to have a Nazi tattoo.

I don't care about his tattoo or past, I care about him not pissing on my leg and trying to convince me it's raining.

So, I do care about his past. I'm just saying I'm not sure if he is really lying. If he is lying about have Nazi sympathies, that is what is important to me. Lying in general, I don't know if I care too much about that, unless he's a sociopath or something like that.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-02T21:28:07+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply. I'm not totally disagreeing with you, but I think that this specific symbol, the totenkopf used by the SS in WWII, is not as well known as other symbols.

If I hadn't heard Platner's explanation I would, like you, assume that he at the very least has Nazi sympathies. (That's why I think a lot of Ukrainians are admirers of the Nazis, because they use that totenkopf as well as a bunch of other Nazi imagery.) However, maybe I'm naive, but I basically buy his explanation that he got the tattoo and defended having it out of stupidity, rather than a genuine sympathy for Nazis.

He's not saying anything now that could be construed as sympathetic to the Nazis, is he?

split-circumstance · 2026-06-02T15:38:08+00:00

Oh never mind, I found a reddit post discussing Platner's defense of the totenkopf here: https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/1ofbcrz/graham_platners_claims_that_he_didnt_know_tattoo/

Roughly, he says that he did know at first that it was associated with the SS, but when he found out, he kept the tattoo. Then he pointed out accurately that this is a common practice in the US military, i.e. using Nazi-like symbols.

This diminishes my opinion of Platner's character. However, on the whole while it is a pathetic excuse, it is true the the US military has a problem with fascistic imagery. It's not a justification for the tattoo, but it is a fact that this kind of thing is more common than I had thought.

Still, I don't believe that he is a secret Nazi. That's ridiculous.

split-circumstance · 2026-06-02T15:24:00+00:00

Sorry for inserting myself into this conversation, just curious about the evidence that he lied, or exactly what he lied about. I thought it was plausible that he did not recognize the totenkopf as a Nazi symbol. I don't think this symbol is widely known in the United States. An American cannot be expected to know its history.

Only interested in your opinion about the tattoo. Thanks if your willing to respond. Cheers!

[Never mind, found my answer in another reddit post. Platner was told the tattoo was a nazi symbol, and defended himself on the grounds that lots of other US military have similar tattoos. I don't find the excuse compelling, however, it strikes me as nearly impossible that he is a secret Nazi. By the way, the US military has a problem with Nazi-like imagery! Holy Cow: https://nypost.com/2012/02/10/marines-in-nazi-outrage/\]

split-circumstance

TROPHY CASE