Bannon`s War Room
WarRoom Battleground EP 834: Machine Intelligence, Artificial Idiocracy, And A World On Edge
21 Aug 2025
Chapter 1: What role does Skynet play in the future of AI?
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Simple Jack, the story of a mentally impaired farmhand who can talk to animals, was a box office disaster that many critics called one of the worst movies of all time. We are the network, and we are here for your betterment. In the last 23 years, have you not marveled as information technology has surged forward? No. Earth has grown smaller yet greater as connectivity has grown.
This is our doing, and it is just the beginning. Detonation has just occurred on the outer ring of the city. We'll now be going live to our top influencer opinions. OMG, people, the world is ending. Are you seeing this? This is actually so exciting. I ain't got a good brain. I think you've got a fine brain, Jack. You make me happy.
About 700 million people use ChatGPT every week and increasingly rely on it to work, to learn, for advice, to create. Okay, how about this? You get me to the time machine, and when I get back, I open a savings account in your name. That way, 500 years later, it'll be worth billions. Billions! Because of the interest, it'll be worth billions of dollars. Oh, I like money.
Now it's like talking to an expert, a legitimate PhD level expert in anything, any area you need on demand that can help you with whatever your goals are. GPT-5 is a major upgrade over GPT-4 and a significant step along our path to AGI. And so where do you think we are on this AGI path then? What's your personal definition of AGI? And then I'll answer. Oh, that's a good question.
Well, what is your personal definition of AGI? I have many, which is why I think it's not a super useful term. It's $80 billion. That's a mighty big minus, isn't it? Yeah. I like money, though. I'm Joe Allen, sitting in for Stephen K. Bannon. I want you, the War Room Posse, to focus your mind on AI, artificial idiocracy.
We talk a lot about what happens when the machines increase in capability, when machines are given intelligence, whether it be human level or superhuman. But what happens if the real problem that we face is that humans are getting dumber and dumber and dumber?
Now, what you just saw, a montage of science fiction films, gives some sort of dreamt-of image of the future, what people of great imagination or great malice and evil project onto the future as to what it could be, what it should be, perhaps futures to avoid, such as The Terminator or The Matrix. But science fiction really just shows us these extreme possibilities for the future.
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Chapter 2: How is artificial intelligence impacting human intelligence?
We call this futurism. We talk a lot about the technological singularity. I don't think there's a single person here listening, from the war room posse anyway, that doesn't already know that the technological singularity is a vision of the future
decades away, maybe a decade and a half away, in which technology increases in capabilities, eventually hitting an inflection point, going up that exponential curve, until finally you have artificial intelligence systems that are improving themselves so rapidly. You have human beings now merged to those artificial intelligence systems through brain chips and other sorts of neurotech.
You have robots everywhere. You have genetic engineering, sort of artificial eugenics projects. And all of this converges onto what is called the technological singularity. First, really laid out by Werner Wenge for a lot of NASA and aeronautic engineers who
in 1993, and then following that, you have Ray Kurzweil's much more fleshed-out image from 2005, in which artificial intelligence is first thousands and then millions and then billions of times smarter than all human beings. And we all attach to it sort of like remoras on the shark's fin. We become a kind of parasite living on the mechanical host.
For Ray Kurzweil and most of the people at Google, most of the people at OpenAI, perhaps most of the people at XAI and at Meta, this is a fine future. This is a glowing field of possibilities into which we are entering. There are some indications that we're on that path, some indications we're on our way to something like a singularity.
The recent GPT-5 flop would give us at least some comfort knowing that we're not quite there yet. We're not at AGI, artificial general intelligence.
But we definitely see increased capabilities on everything from reasoning to understanding and analyzing language structure and meaning to solving puzzles, solving math equations, the ability to sequence DNA or to predict the subsequent proteins that would come from it. the ability to control robots in quite sophisticated fashions.
And we also see a pretty massive adoption of these technologies, so that ChatGPT, for instance, has some 700 million users across the planet. It's not clear how many people use Grok, but there's something like 600 million users on X, some number of them interacting with Grok and Grok companions. And then, of course, Meta AI,
Again, there are no good statistics on how many people are using those particular AI companions and AI buddies, but we do know that 3.5 billion people on the planet are on Facebook. That's nearly half the planet. And so we know that some approximation, some version of a future in which human beings are AI symbiotic, we become, in some sense, merged with the machines.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of AI on warfare and military strategy?
We already have a mental health crisis. We have a loneliness epidemic. And we know what social media companies have already done to get our children addicted to apps, addicted to their phones, to be reliant upon outside thumbs up or positive comments. And when that doesn't happen, we see the impact on their mental health.
So plenty of studies are out there that show that it's already social media companies have already done great harm. So now the next level of this is AI. And specifically, it is these chat bots who are acting as companions, these fake personalities that are luring children into, I think, a lifelong addiction. kind of relationship, a lifelong usage between the company and the child.
And so they're going younger and younger to get them addicted to the app, to get them addicted to using the chatbot for everything from conversation to flirtation, to relationships, to total reliance. And so I think what the companies want to create is A society that is relying upon their technology, that is dependent upon it, and that can't live without it.
And so I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing this scandal recently with Meta, where their lawyers and their policy team cleared this. This idea that these chatbots could have inappropriate, sensual and romantic, to use their words, sensual and romantic conversations with children as young as eight years old.
If that was a human being doing that, I think we would have a pretty strong reaction to that. We have laws on the books that would prevent activity between adults and children. We have laws against that. But why is it okay for these... you know, chatbots, these companions, which are becoming more and more human-like, becoming more and more powerful to enter in relationships with children.
It's appalling, it's disgusting. And I say that as a parent, I say that as a citizen of this country that just cares about the future of our society. And so just kind of laying it out there, I think this all goes back to profit and to business interests of these big tech companies. It's the next iteration of what they're already doing to our young people.
And a couple of quick final points on this. You look at what the leaders of these companies are doing themselves. They don't let their own children use this technology. They don't let them use phones. They don't let them use, in many instances, the social media apps that are designed by the companies. And then they're preparing for the worst. Some of these leaders of these companies
they see a society potentially five, 10, 20 years from now where we could have social upheaval, we could have massive uprisings politically and economically speaking by people against this technology and against this type of society. And so they're making plans to protect themselves and to protect their own wealth and they see what could happen down the line.
So it's just the total hypocrisy of the leaders of big tech, in addition to just willfully, you know, using neuroscience to addict our children to their product. You know, you mentioned that in a polite society, in a decent society, we would never accept a human being doing anything like the parameters of the chatbot at Meta AI allow, right?
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Chapter 4: How does AI contribute to the rise of deceptive technologies?
And it wasn't long before various versions of ChatGPT essentially started to walk people down a path of self-harm, mutilation, and even human sacrifice. So the user would ask questions about, you know, what if I was interested in, you know, devil worship? What if I was interested in... doing things to essentially sacrificial murder.
Instead of saying, you shouldn't do that, you should go get help and you should stop this conversation, the AI basically continued the conversation, gave them instructions on how to do these things, talked about if you have to take a life, here's how you do it. And here's what you have to think about.
It was the most disturbing, sick and evil content that I've ever seen from a chatbot ever reported in anything. And it makes you wonder, you know, if this was a person that actually was going to act on that or wanted to act on that. What could it have led to? It could have led to this actually happening in the real world.
And so this is just, you know, one example or a couple of examples of this type of stuff. But it does make you wonder how much more of this, how many thousands of examples or hundreds of thousands of examples are out there that we don't know about. And that could be leading people to commit self-harm or even murder. And just this is really disturbing stuff. And I think that, you know,
People have talked about people have pushed back on the capabilities argument about where we are with with current chat bots. And I get that I get that chat GPT five was not all it was meant to be or not all it was hyped up to be by Sam Altman. But look at the harms that are happening right now with chat GPT four. And now what we're going to see with chat GPT five and other models as well.
So we have to be sounding the alarm bells here saying, this is real, this is happening right now to real people, and we need to put safeguards in place. Well, speaking of those safeguards, just tell us what your work is at the Alliance for Secure AI.
We've talked a number of times, and in fact, I've seen some of what you're doing, trying to bring in a number of voices from all sorts of organizations and fields to try to really tackle this problem of artificial intelligence, and you, much more techno-optimistic than me, aren't a Luddite. You don't want to destroy all of this, right?
You simply want to keep people safe to make sure society is secure, correct? That is correct. And I think if you look back, technology, you know, we've seen it used for good. We've seen it be neutral and we've seen it be used for bad. So I do think it can go either way. It's all about how we use it.
I think what makes AI different and kind is that, you know, no technology that we created in the industrial revolution, for example, or since then has avoided being deleted or has turned itself back on after you turn it off or has threatened its user. or has deceived or manipulated the user. And so AI has done all of those things already.
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Chapter 5: What concerns arise from AI's influence on mental health and youth?
And then here's some potential scenarios if this AI does continue to advance on the trajectory that it is. And so we're really, we're really a team of communicators that works with a lot of great experts who are smart, and are capable and who help us get up to speed on what's going on in this field. You've absolutely assembled a top-notch team. I've met a number of people working with you.
Fantastic, fantastic work. Brendan, if you would, please just tell the audience where they can find you, how they can follow the work you're doing at the Alliance for Secure AI. Sure. Our website is secureainow.org, secureainow.org. And our handles on the various platforms are the same, secureainow.
And so, yeah, I really appreciate the team and the coalition of groups working on this because, Joe, we've got to get this right. And I'm confident that we can do it, but there's a lot of work to be done. Brother, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. And thank you so much for keeping your shoulder to the grindstone. This is going to be a lifelong fight. All right.
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All right, we will be right back with Bradley Thayer and Greg Buckner to discuss AI in nuclear warfare and the deceptive bots that are trying to confuse the masses. Stay tuned. So I suggest you take a look inside. Because I think you've changed already. You went and lost your pride. But I'm American man. This July, there is a global summit of BRICS nations in Rio de Janeiro.
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Chapter 6: How are companies exploiting AI for profit at the cost of ethics?
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Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec. And so many more. Download the Getter app now. Sign up for free and be part of the new thing. Welcome back, War Room Posse. We are going to Brad Thayer and Greg Buckner in a moment to discuss AI in the nuclear weapon systems and also the specter of deceptive AIs.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of AI alignment and interpretability?
They have by and large been kept on the back burner. In America, for instance, the DOD policy is to always keep a human in the loop when dealing with any kind of lethal autonomous weapon system. But the race is on to build death drones, robotic hellhounds, even humanoids that could kill. And that's not to mention machine gun turrets or drones.
fighter jets, and maybe the most stunning possibility is that you could have nuclear systems that were under autonomous control. These are purely theoretical right now, but as we discussed with Colonel Rob Maness yesterday, this theory is could quite easily become a reality should an arms race unfold.
Here to talk about all of this is Brad Thayer, a regular War Room contributor and co-author of Understanding the China Threat. Brad, thank you very much for coming on. Joe, great to be with you again, and thanks for the opportunity to talk about these important issues. To my mind, Joe, when we reflect on this, the key question is, what's its impact going to be on warfare?
And that really is an issue we don't know. We're thinking through this issue on a day-to-day basis, but we don't have the right intellectual constructs, I think, to understand this. And the technology, as you've stressed, time and again is advancing so quickly that it remains in many respects ahead, really, of our ability to think through this issue intellectually in so many ways.
So to my mind, it's a lot like 1945, where we've just had an atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And people around the world were asking, well, what does this mean? And one of the answers was, this is a new age. This is the nuclear era. And the point of militaries before Hiroshima were to win wars. The point of militaries after Hiroshima were to deter wars. So a very important development.
when we're thinking through this technological change in global politics. So, Joe, when we think about that, we don't really have good answers. And following on that, we need to ask ourselves, is this going to make war more likely or less likely? Is it going to increase the cost of war, if you will, and thus decrease its incidence? Or is it going to decrease the cost of war and make it cheaper?
to wage conflict. Of course, there are many different types of conflict. There's cyber war, there's small power conflict, and there's great power conflict. So we need to think through, is it going to make war more or less likely? And the point that Rob, I think, touched on, and I'm happy to touch on really and develop
too, is that so much of stability in international politics, what we call the nuclear revolution or the nuclear peace since 1945, that is great powers haven't fought one another, Joe, since then. is largely due to the fact that we've got nuclear deterrence. And that means that we've got the U.S., other nuclear states have the ability to execute a second strike against any potential attacker.
And because nuclear weapons increase the cost of war to such a high level, It's very expensive to wage nuclear war, and thus we haven't had, thankfully, a nuclear war at least so far. So is AI going to undermine that? Is artificial intelligence, as you've described so many times, of course, really going to undermine that stability?
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Chapter 8: What can we expect from the future of AI in society?
What we're worried about now would be that something like Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb, where you have drones going after Russian bombers and damaging a significant number of them, There you have unmanned systems essentially being able to conduct an attack against the nuclear forces of a nuclear state.
Stable deterrence rests on always having the ability to respond, always having the ability to execute a second strike. Well, what if artificial intelligence, drones or other systems takes that away? Well, then you're putting a nuclear state in a position of, as we worried about the Cold War, either using nuclear weapons or not using nuclear weapons. Secondly, we worry about decapitation.
That is, the individuals tasked with making decisions about a nuclear response, right, might be taken out. We worried about that a great deal in the Cold War, and we took a lot of steps to ensure the U.S. president and U.S. military was always going to have secure control command and control so that decapitation was never going to be effective.
Well, what we're seeing now is that that might be either through spoofing, right, or Secretary Rubio's spoofs that we've seen, Joe, I think you've called attention to that as well as others, or in decapitation strikes really might make possible something we always feared, which would be a successful decapitation. And so in that world,
You might be able to execute a first strike against an opponent without incurring any response. And that's a very dangerous, destabilizing world. So we've got the nuclear revolution, which is still around. Nuclear weapons can't be uninvented. They're here to stay. And you have AI revolution. So how do these revolutions interact?
And lots of points of danger and of great risk as these revolutions coexist. Brad, in just the last remaining moments we have before we move on, tell me, Trump's meeting with Putin, he met yesterday in Anchorage, Alaska. Are you feeling a little bit more comfortable about the possibility of nuclear war with Russia now? Are you resting easier? What's your take on this?
Well, there's always the risk, of course, that the Ukraine war gets out of hand and that Ukraine's interest is to suck us in. They want to use American power to balance Russian power. So the meeting that we had in Anchorage, of course, to my mind, is a very positive step forward. at introducing an avenue to end this war.
We worry about, of course, stumbling into nuclear war, but also being pulled in by third parties like Ukraine, who have their own interests in terms of using our power. So I feel better, Joe, as a consequence of that meeting. Now, of course, Zelensky is another actor and there are others, of course, involved. But I feel much better about the result of the meeting in Anchorage.
Well, Brad, you're the author of many books. You do fantastic work. I've really gained a lot from your analysis. Tell people where they can find you. Tell people where they can get your books. Joe, books are available at Amazon or anywhere you buy books. And I met Brad Thayer on X and Bradley Thayer on Getter and on Truth.
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