Now, we have a source not just of info, but of judgement — knowledge itself. LLMs (Large Language Models) are clever. They will do your thinking for you. No more ‘mistakes,’ right?
Regarding Iraq: either there were no weapons of mass destruction, or Saddam sent them to Syria where they were used by Assad in subduing his people. Another possibility is that of all the Middle Eastern "countries" available, Saddam's Iraq was seemingly the easiest and most desirable mark. Like the stories of any modern American adventurism, for the benefit of the Deep State, no one of us knows the carefully guarded and manipulated truth. The same goes for political chicanery here at home: after 63 years, no one has paid for the skullduggery of the Kennedy Assassination, and despite many so-called releases of so-called classified information, we still do not have the full truth and nothing but the truth, save what Americans, on their own, have been able to figure out in the interim. This kind of corruption is a characteristic of what Mr. Bonner calls "late-stage decline of an empire." Best always. PM
Iraq was contained for a decade by the US and the UN.
During that era of containment, UN and AEA inspectors ensured all its weapons development programs were destroyed.
There's even a famous filmed interview of Saddam and one of his close advisors during the tense period just before or soon after Bush's attack during which Saddam admits there are no nuclear weapons to deter Bush.
And, after Iraq was occupied by US forces, no evidence of a nuclear weapon development program was found
Bush, by destroying Iraq, unleashed Iran. The two were mortal enemies for decades.
And now comes Trump who makes matters far worse. Iran is his tar baby. History will not be kind to his colossal blunder nor to Israel for proposing it.
Somebody had to "pay" for 9-11, and everybody in the Inner Circle sat around and said, "Who shall it be?" We can't just do nothing." Then there was the insult/threat Saddam had made about Poppy. Can't let that go. A jillion pretexts could exist. As the Lady said, "Coulda, shoulda, woulda...At this point, what difference does it make?" At least we got the "Baby Milk Plant" laugh out of it. Saddam was a great showman; gotta give him that. Best always. PM
You're correct Pat. The bombed out Ozirek reactor Yellowcake, the bioweapons trucks (2 of 3 that were found), the nuke fuel processing centrifuge parts found buried in the garden - there certainly were WMD there and plans for more - but not at the alarming levels that Powell had initially indicated to the UN.
Why then invade Iraq? I think the answer may be that, after OBL escaped capture at Tora-Bora and slipped into Pakistan, we needed a new plan.
As the Chinese General Sun Tse counsels, (sic) "when encountering contested territory, move quickly through it to a defensible position".
The Afghan and Pakistani mountains were contested territory with caves and defenses best known to the Islamist forces. Perhaps it was planned to draw these fighters into open and mutually unfamiliar ground such as Iraq?
1. Saddam was a vile dictator but that wasn't a problem for the US in the 80s. The US provided assistance to Iraq during their with Iran. In fact, there's a foto of a smiling Donald Rumsfeld, special envoy of Ronnie Reagan, shaking hands with Saddam in Iraq.
Later, when he was no longer needed, Saddam became the second coming of Hitler for Poppy Bush.
You have me confused with someone who is a fan-boy of this numbskull.
He is just the first of every president we have had to date in the 21st century who have distinguished themselves by their overall incompetence, profligate spending and needless wars.
One, Obama, even assassinated a US citizen.
I've often wondered that, had Bush Jr. not used his father's connections to avoid Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard, if he would have had the wisdom not to attack Iraq thereby unleashing Iran.
Yes. I contend Bush Jr. is a classic drugstore cowboy who wasted enormous resources -- especially the lives of innocents along with our men and material -- attacking Iraq.
Bush Sr., a WW II veteran (in whose Administration I served) didn't seek nor want revenge.
I further contend that, had Bush Jr. served in Vietnam (as I did) and witnessed first hand the horrors of war, he would have not attacked Saddam under the pretext of avenging 9/11, or for revenge or to finish what his father chose not to do (invade Iraq after pushing Saddam's forces out of Kuwait)
After all, Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but he had everything to do with keeping Iran in check.
My guess: Israel and its US champions were the drivers of what became a strategically stupid decision to invade Iraq, a country no threat to us, and it turns out, to Israel.
Is it just a coincidence that Iraq was on the list of countrues designated for invasions or regime change given to General Wesley Clark at the Pentagon after 9/11 and also in the 1996 book written by Netanyahu?
I agree with Paul . Someone is constantly telling "little" people what we need to do with our money and time, because "AI" has all the data from history to provide us with the answers for or life's. At 79 I don't see where AI has provided anything that "common sense" and a little personal thinking couldn't provide answers to our questions. AI and the "big thinkers" are trying to lead us around by our noses because we arn't qualified to think for ourselves! I say B.S!
From Alex Newman: "Tucker Carlson’s nearly two-hour monologue featuring a 10-point policy platform that could be a preview of a potential 2028 run."
If Newman is right, you will know for certain that we are both politically and morally bankrupt. "Motormouth" Carlson will make even Bill Bonner pine for the days of Donald Trump. Best always. PM
P.S. Other than a dictator and 19th-century romantic blowhards, who talks for 2 hours? PM
I'm not a listener or followers of Carlson even during his Fox News days. But I listened to a discussion of his platform. With which of his 10 points do you disagree?
Why is this a sign of moral bankruptcy? In fact one of the points regarding fairness seems to correct the moral bankruptcy of allowing the connected such as the Epstein class to escape prosecution.
Bigger fake fraud populist than MAGA leader Donald Trump? But seriously, I just checked out his 10 points and some of them are excellent. Of course I don't believe that even if he were elected the Overlords would let him carry out his agenda.
But wouldn't you like to see this point enacted: "Productive: Rebuild domestic manufacturing, farming, and craftsmanship over a finance- and surveillance-based economy"?
Ernest Hemingway ends his novel "To Have and Have Not" with the line (modified): "One man alone has no chance." When I read that at the age of 16, it blew me away. "Certainly," I thought at the time, "that can't be." It's been in my ears ever since, and has yet to be proven wrong. Best always. PM
Bill: You wrote: "The worst single use of capital in the Internet Era was the attack on Iraq. Five trillion dollars down the drain." But you know very well that the overwhelming majority of that money circulated here in the U.S. by creating and sustaining millions of defense jobs. Now if you believe this money was sent down the drain because the defense jobs and defense contractor jobs that were maintained and created did not build--true wealth--for the U.S., then I strongly agree with you. And on top of this financial atrocity, unfortunately, much of this money was borrowed.
But just writing that five trillion dollars was sent down the drain, without more analysis, misleads the reader. And it could have provided a segue for you to talk about how some spending builds true wealth and how other spending (and borrowing) does not. My wife and I are grateful to you for the true-wealth-building essays in previous years. It helped us understand so much about one of the principal ways a country can become truly great.
And the rest of your essay today, just like the one yesterday, was the work of "Old Bill," and was very educational and insightful. And you didn't shoehorn in any verbiage blaming Donald Trump for all the problems of the 21st Century. So good deal. I hope you can keep up the good work you used to do.
Bill, I think you're looking at the stock and missing the flow.
You're right that AI has no divine source of truth. It rests on the same messy pile of human knowledge we do — saints, con men, geniuses, fools, good ideas and terrible ones.
But I don't think that's where the revolution is.
The printing press didn't make the ideas it reproduced any truer. It changed the cost of reproducing and distributing them.
AI is doing something similar at another layer.
It is collapsing the cost of moving through knowledge, interrogating it, comparing it and connecting pieces that previously lived in separate silos.
For most of my life, curiosity was expensive.
World Book Encyclopedia took me so far. Then the library. Eventually the answer was buried somewhere in an 800-page textbook, and quite often the question died before I got there.
Now I can begin with:
Why?
Then:
How?
Then:
Wait. If that's true, wouldn't this other thing happen too?
And keep going.
The interesting question may not be whether AI can think for us.
It may be:
What happens to human curiosity when the cost of pursuing a question collapses?
It's possible in this case that both you and Bill are correct. I love ChatGPT and similar as excellent (but not perfect) search engines.
But do we believe that "this time its different" and the current investment phase is worth trillion dollar valuations.
I'm not convinced (in this iteration) as when using AI as a productivity tool at work I find it about as useful as a very junior grade admin. Needs long detailed instructions and the output needs checked and refined. Most of the productive analytics is machine learning or even boolean logic with an AI label.
So useful technology, yes, worth current valuations, we'll see.
Sorry Patrick. I wasn’t talking about POTUS. I was talking about AI.
The beauty of AI is that you can ask it to double-check its assumptions, critique its own answer, and fact-check itself. You can even have different AIs challenge each other.
Try that with POTUS and keep pressing on the answers, and the interview tends to end rather quickly.
Imagine if everyone was willing to say:
“Check me. Challenge me. Show me where I’m wrong.”
Regarding Iraq: either there were no weapons of mass destruction, or Saddam sent them to Syria where they were used by Assad in subduing his people. Another possibility is that of all the Middle Eastern "countries" available, Saddam's Iraq was seemingly the easiest and most desirable mark. Like the stories of any modern American adventurism, for the benefit of the Deep State, no one of us knows the carefully guarded and manipulated truth. The same goes for political chicanery here at home: after 63 years, no one has paid for the skullduggery of the Kennedy Assassination, and despite many so-called releases of so-called classified information, we still do not have the full truth and nothing but the truth, save what Americans, on their own, have been able to figure out in the interim. This kind of corruption is a characteristic of what Mr. Bonner calls "late-stage decline of an empire." Best always. PM
Paul,
Iraq was contained for a decade by the US and the UN.
During that era of containment, UN and AEA inspectors ensured all its weapons development programs were destroyed.
There's even a famous filmed interview of Saddam and one of his close advisors during the tense period just before or soon after Bush's attack during which Saddam admits there are no nuclear weapons to deter Bush.
And, after Iraq was occupied by US forces, no evidence of a nuclear weapon development program was found
Bush, by destroying Iraq, unleashed Iran. The two were mortal enemies for decades.
And now comes Trump who makes matters far worse. Iran is his tar baby. History will not be kind to his colossal blunder nor to Israel for proposing it.
Somebody had to "pay" for 9-11, and everybody in the Inner Circle sat around and said, "Who shall it be?" We can't just do nothing." Then there was the insult/threat Saddam had made about Poppy. Can't let that go. A jillion pretexts could exist. As the Lady said, "Coulda, shoulda, woulda...At this point, what difference does it make?" At least we got the "Baby Milk Plant" laugh out of it. Saddam was a great showman; gotta give him that. Best always. PM
You're correct Pat. The bombed out Ozirek reactor Yellowcake, the bioweapons trucks (2 of 3 that were found), the nuke fuel processing centrifuge parts found buried in the garden - there certainly were WMD there and plans for more - but not at the alarming levels that Powell had initially indicated to the UN.
Why then invade Iraq? I think the answer may be that, after OBL escaped capture at Tora-Bora and slipped into Pakistan, we needed a new plan.
As the Chinese General Sun Tse counsels, (sic) "when encountering contested territory, move quickly through it to a defensible position".
The Afghan and Pakistani mountains were contested territory with caves and defenses best known to the Islamist forces. Perhaps it was planned to draw these fighters into open and mutually unfamiliar ground such as Iraq?
I don't think we'll ever know for sure.
Patrick --
1. You are right. Saddam was a vile dictator who used lethal gas to murder his citizens, especially Kurds.
And he did have yellow cake from Niger. He legitimately purchased it in 1981 and again in 1982.
However, after the 1991 Gulf War, his weapons development program was ended by the IATA (International Atomic Energy Agency)
550 tons of Iraq's pre-1991 uranium material was sold in 2008 to a Canadian company.
2. Almost right again: There were car-bomb assassins in Kuwait but they were captured by Kuwaiti authorities before Bush arrived in the country.
However, I do like the notion some of them got gunned down in an elevator. Very Hollywood.
1. Saddam was a vile dictator but that wasn't a problem for the US in the 80s. The US provided assistance to Iraq during their with Iran. In fact, there's a foto of a smiling Donald Rumsfeld, special envoy of Ronnie Reagan, shaking hands with Saddam in Iraq.
Later, when he was no longer needed, Saddam became the second coming of Hitler for Poppy Bush.
Yes.
Baffling too especially since, if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then why in the world did we invade Iraq?
You have me confused with someone who is a fan-boy of this numbskull.
He is just the first of every president we have had to date in the 21st century who have distinguished themselves by their overall incompetence, profligate spending and needless wars.
One, Obama, even assassinated a US citizen.
I've often wondered that, had Bush Jr. not used his father's connections to avoid Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard, if he would have had the wisdom not to attack Iraq thereby unleashing Iran.
Apologies then! (my previous post deleted)
Yes. I contend Bush Jr. is a classic drugstore cowboy who wasted enormous resources -- especially the lives of innocents along with our men and material -- attacking Iraq.
Bush Sr., a WW II veteran (in whose Administration I served) didn't seek nor want revenge.
I further contend that, had Bush Jr. served in Vietnam (as I did) and witnessed first hand the horrors of war, he would have not attacked Saddam under the pretext of avenging 9/11, or for revenge or to finish what his father chose not to do (invade Iraq after pushing Saddam's forces out of Kuwait)
After all, Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but he had everything to do with keeping Iran in check.
My guess: Israel and its US champions were the drivers of what became a strategically stupid decision to invade Iraq, a country no threat to us, and it turns out, to Israel.
Is it just a coincidence that Iraq was on the list of countrues designated for invasions or regime change given to General Wesley Clark at the Pentagon after 9/11 and also in the 1996 book written by Netanyahu?
LLM's are not intelligent. It's a machine that makes plenty of mistakes. Intelligence remains in the domain of humans. We just choose to not use it.
Just like a bill.
I agree with Paul . Someone is constantly telling "little" people what we need to do with our money and time, because "AI" has all the data from history to provide us with the answers for or life's. At 79 I don't see where AI has provided anything that "common sense" and a little personal thinking couldn't provide answers to our questions. AI and the "big thinkers" are trying to lead us around by our noses because we arn't qualified to think for ourselves! I say B.S!
Jim Marshall
From Alex Newman: "Tucker Carlson’s nearly two-hour monologue featuring a 10-point policy platform that could be a preview of a potential 2028 run."
If Newman is right, you will know for certain that we are both politically and morally bankrupt. "Motormouth" Carlson will make even Bill Bonner pine for the days of Donald Trump. Best always. PM
P.S. Other than a dictator and 19th-century romantic blowhards, who talks for 2 hours? PM
I'm not a listener or followers of Carlson even during his Fox News days. But I listened to a discussion of his platform. With which of his 10 points do you disagree?
Why is this a sign of moral bankruptcy? In fact one of the points regarding fairness seems to correct the moral bankruptcy of allowing the connected such as the Epstein class to escape prosecution.
Talk about taking for 2 hrs :)
Bigger fake fraud populist than MAGA leader Donald Trump? But seriously, I just checked out his 10 points and some of them are excellent. Of course I don't believe that even if he were elected the Overlords would let him carry out his agenda.
But wouldn't you like to see this point enacted: "Productive: Rebuild domestic manufacturing, farming, and craftsmanship over a finance- and surveillance-based economy"?
"the spending is mistaken for end demand."
If you're cynical, as I am, then you say the spending is intended, yea even designed, to produce the illusion of demand. Best always. PM
Just a comment; cynicism is a function of time. If you're old, then you are cynical. Based on the physics of time.
In that case, I've been old all of my life. Sure explains a lot. Thanks. Best always. PM
But doesn't some curiosity have to accompany the aging in order for the cynicism to take hold?
Ernest Hemingway ends his novel "To Have and Have Not" with the line (modified): "One man alone has no chance." When I read that at the age of 16, it blew me away. "Certainly," I thought at the time, "that can't be." It's been in my ears ever since, and has yet to be proven wrong. Best always. PM
Bill: You wrote: "The worst single use of capital in the Internet Era was the attack on Iraq. Five trillion dollars down the drain." But you know very well that the overwhelming majority of that money circulated here in the U.S. by creating and sustaining millions of defense jobs. Now if you believe this money was sent down the drain because the defense jobs and defense contractor jobs that were maintained and created did not build--true wealth--for the U.S., then I strongly agree with you. And on top of this financial atrocity, unfortunately, much of this money was borrowed.
But just writing that five trillion dollars was sent down the drain, without more analysis, misleads the reader. And it could have provided a segue for you to talk about how some spending builds true wealth and how other spending (and borrowing) does not. My wife and I are grateful to you for the true-wealth-building essays in previous years. It helped us understand so much about one of the principal ways a country can become truly great.
And the rest of your essay today, just like the one yesterday, was the work of "Old Bill," and was very educational and insightful. And you didn't shoehorn in any verbiage blaming Donald Trump for all the problems of the 21st Century. So good deal. I hope you can keep up the good work you used to do.
Bill, I think you're looking at the stock and missing the flow.
You're right that AI has no divine source of truth. It rests on the same messy pile of human knowledge we do — saints, con men, geniuses, fools, good ideas and terrible ones.
But I don't think that's where the revolution is.
The printing press didn't make the ideas it reproduced any truer. It changed the cost of reproducing and distributing them.
AI is doing something similar at another layer.
It is collapsing the cost of moving through knowledge, interrogating it, comparing it and connecting pieces that previously lived in separate silos.
For most of my life, curiosity was expensive.
World Book Encyclopedia took me so far. Then the library. Eventually the answer was buried somewhere in an 800-page textbook, and quite often the question died before I got there.
Now I can begin with:
Why?
Then:
How?
Then:
Wait. If that's true, wouldn't this other thing happen too?
And keep going.
The interesting question may not be whether AI can think for us.
It may be:
What happens to human curiosity when the cost of pursuing a question collapses?
I suspect we're barely on page one.
I chased this thought a little further here:
https://lucaskandia.substack.com/p/when-curiosity-becomes-cheap
It's possible in this case that both you and Bill are correct. I love ChatGPT and similar as excellent (but not perfect) search engines.
But do we believe that "this time its different" and the current investment phase is worth trillion dollar valuations.
I'm not convinced (in this iteration) as when using AI as a productivity tool at work I find it about as useful as a very junior grade admin. Needs long detailed instructions and the output needs checked and refined. Most of the productive analytics is machine learning or even boolean logic with an AI label.
So useful technology, yes, worth current valuations, we'll see.
Sorry Patrick. I wasn’t talking about POTUS. I was talking about AI.
The beauty of AI is that you can ask it to double-check its assumptions, critique its own answer, and fact-check itself. You can even have different AIs challenge each other.
Try that with POTUS and keep pressing on the answers, and the interview tends to end rather quickly.
Imagine if everyone was willing to say:
“Check me. Challenge me. Show me where I’m wrong.”
What a wonderful world that would be, eh?
I see Brookfield mention in the MOU with Nvidia... this can mean just one thing. More wealth for the Prime Minister of Brookfield, Mark Carney...
Can't help but agree wholeheartedly Bill.