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#2 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-03-06 01:18 AM
Sounds more like the French don't have a military, and have been riding on the US taxpayers coattails to provide social programs.

That's what happens when one ignores reality and simply repeats Trump's / Russian lies.

US has 43% of global arms exports, more than 4x of next-largest exporter, France, as Russian continue to fall behind.

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Too bad they didn't spend their money to defend themselves, is that Americas fault?

They actually did spend a lot of money - buying US arms, which [BT] came with explicit and implicit "guarantees," and funds our defense industry R&D and manufacturing. If they have to spend that money on developing their own - this actually leads to the unnecessary wasteful arms race. It may not be as good as ours, but it only needs to be "good enough" to ensure that "Ukraine" doesn't happen to them.

Make America Go Alone has been a stupid idea 100 years ago... and we haven't learned the bloody lessons. America became great during and after WW2, but Putin's ------- is determined to piss it all away.

Sure, we can "take our ball and go home..." But that only means that other "kids" will eventually stop playing with us and we'll forego the opportunities to sell into one of the few industries where we [still] have the advantage, and have a "national trade surplus" - a superficial and irrelevant metric of country's economy, but one used by Trump to push his "beautiful tariffs."

That "defense" is net positive as it allows us to sell immense quantities of military goods and services, so much more than we "spend" on "their" defense comes back to us in POs... because they could rely on our R&D and production. It's an easy math. If that reliance / alliance stops, they will have to spend on their own defense but slowly yet surely we'll lose the market share to cheaper "good enough," and then your industry starts to shrink, like "Detroit"... "gradually, then suddenly."

Leadership has its obligations, but also has privileges - the "defense" role is huge in getting us not only good will, but with it a market share of goods and services - that's how it happened in Asia, as countries like Korea and India converted from mostly socialist economies.

Doesn't happen if you are transactional and only worry about "trade deficit," which really only serves to supply the counterparties with USDs which reinforces USD as "reserve currency" without domestic inflation and they, in turn, either buy US bonds/debt or buy goods and services (where we have a "national surplus") from the US... and all were happy... until Trump (and Peter Navarro) came along with goofy nonsense about "trade deficits" and tariffs as a way to "solve" them.

"Play stupid games - win stupid prizes." That's how Trump's businesses went bankrupt.

Trump is hell-bent on self-dealing and making sure that the US no longer is - and can't be relied on to be - a "leader of free world" - "America First!" In fact, his "strong-arm" tactics, language, and "tariff" games make him look no different than Putin to neighbors and [former?] allies. Long term, that's how nations and businesses lose their influence, power and wealth.

The people who can't or don't want to understand this "math" are either brain-damaged or get paid to spread Russian "Pravda" propaganda:

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** |------- The world's most popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are infected with Russian Pravda Network disinformation.

Kremlin-Backed Disinformation Network "Pravda" Targets AI Chatbots to Spread Propaganda

A sophisticated disinformation network originating from Moscow, ironically named "Pravda" (Russian for "truth"), formed in April 2022, is employing a novel tactic to disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda: targeting the data ingested by artificial intelligence chatbots. Rather than focusing on human audiences, Pravda floods search results and web crawlers with fabricated narratives and distorted information, aiming to contaminate the datasets used to train large language models (LLMs). This insidious strategy allows Russian propaganda to infiltrate the very core of Western AI systems, influencing their responses and potentially shaping public perception.

This targeted attack on AI was foreshadowed by John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive residing in Moscow and a known Kremlin propagandist. Dougan, speaking at a conference of Russian officials, asserted that manipulating AI narratives offered a powerful avenue for spreading Russian influence globally.

Pravda network, functions as a sophisticated laundering operation for Kremlin propaganda. ... The network spans over 150 websites in dozens of languages, targeting audiences in 49 countries. The sheer volume of content produced - an estimated 3.6 million articles in 2024 alone - underscores the scale of this operation. The world's leading AI chatbots have repeated false narratives trafficked by the Pravda network 33% of the time.

"By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how LLMs process and present news and information" ... which results in massive "amounts of Russian propaganda - 3.6M articles in 2024 - are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda."

The Pravda network achieves its impact through strategic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics. Despite having minimal organic reach among human audiences, the network's focus on SEO ensures its content ranks highly in search results. This makes it more likely for AI chatbots, which rely on web crawlers and indexed content, to encounter and incorporate the network's disinformation. This underscores the need for more robust mechanisms within AI systems to identify and filter out unreliable sources, particularly those engaging in manipulative SEO practices.

The implications of this AI infiltration are far-reaching. By corrupting the datasets upon which AI models are trained, the Pravda network aims to influence the very fabric of online information. This poses a significant threat to the integrity of information ecosystems and underscores the urgent need for AI developers to implement safeguards against such manipulation.

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Data poisoning by Russian dezinformatsiya, then spread over by Putin's army of troll-bots... many of which are present on this site.

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#61 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS at 2025-03-10 05:20 AM
Musk, who is in regular contact with Putin, recently improved his AI computer platform Grok. Musk also wanted to purchase ChatGPT OpenAI

That's Elon Musk's MO: if you can't make it, try buying it... or poach talent from those who can. He tried / did that most recently with xAI, Neuralink etc.

Funny things: Musk's "anti-woke" chatbot, Grok 3 was "instructed" to ignore sources that state that Musk is spreading misinformation... yet it keeps spitting out "opinions" that are hilariously different from [current] Musk's views.

The latest Grok "gaffe" was that Donald Trump is 75%-85% likely to be a Russian asset. Wonder where it got that idea - eX-Twitter?

Grok 3: "Adjusting for uncertainty and alternative explanations (e.g., ideological alignment or naivety), I estimate a 75-85 percent likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties."

Ironic, oui?
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