"Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key area of research and development, and while AI and machine learning algorithms begin to influence everything from our cars to our social media news feeds, the technology will soon be available to everyone.

That is if Gartner's predictions on emerging technology trends prove to be true."


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An interesting assessment of the race in AI research beyond the headlines of great power competition.  ~ Kevin Massengill

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Published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 16, 2018, by Itai Barsade and Michael C. Horowitz

"Much of the debate over how artificial intelligence (AI) will affect geopolitics focuses on the emerging arms race between Washington and Beijing, as well as investments by major military powers like Russia. And to be sure, breakthroughs are happening at a rapid pace in the United States and China. But while an arms race between superpowers is riveting, AI development outside of the major powers, even where advances are less pronounced, could also have a profound impact on our world. The way smaller countries choose to use and invest in AI will affect their own power and status in the international system."

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A former intelligence officer gives his take on John Brennan and the CIA’s role in the Russia hoax. ~ Kevin Massengill

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American Thinker, August 15, 2018, by Ishmael Jones

The FBI is being held accountable for its role in spy operations against the Trump campaign. John Brennan’s CIA should be held accountable as well.

An editorial by Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal on June 29, 2018 recommends an investigation of the CIA’s involvement in the 2016 election, and I agree. The WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel has commented on CIA involvement as well, as did Rudy Giuliani on August 13th.

If press reports are accurate, American spy operations targeted the Trump campaign by luring Trump associates such as George Papadopoulos to meetings in Britain. There are two key factors at work here.

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Since the advent of the Industrial Age, governments have found it more convenient to force businesses into an unpaid role as their tax collectors. While this efficiency has helped spur the uncontrolled expansion of governments, that policy has generally been confined to shaking down businesses in their own nation/state.

At least till now.

The always interesting Martin Armstrong has written an essay on Australia's recent decision to force a foreign business to collect taxes from Australian citizens for their international purchases. While a startling indication of how desperate the Australian government is for revenue, I think the larger picture is that all of the bankrupt governments will be forced into ever more desperate attempts to seize revenues. With global debt to GDP running over 375%, this Australian shakedown is just the beginning. You should expect more of such government lawlessness and arrange your affairs accordingly. KWM

 From Martin Armstrong:

"People who think that Trump alone embarked on protectionism, really need to look around the World. Australians have been blocked by Amazon from buying anything from their US site because the government has imposed effectively a tariff of 10% on anything an Australian may purchase under $1,000 from the internet overseas. The Australian government is violating international law demanding that anyone selling anything on the internet must collect a 10% tax from an Australian and pay it to the Australian government."

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photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Joseph-Siffred Duplessis portrait of Benjamin Franklin

Veteran traders on Wall Street know, "They don't ring a bell at the top of the market." But, as Joe Bob Briggs describes below, there are other signals as well.  Kevin Massengill


NEW YORK—So I’m standing behind a guy at the drugstore who says, “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything smaller,” and he pulls out a roll of hundreds.

In any other city this would be a drug dealer. But I live a few blocks from Wall Street and I’m looking at his shoes. You can always tell by the shoes. Wall Street guys don’t shop at Payless. They go to some secret shoe store where teams of cobblers use precision hand tools to put those little indentations on the side of the wing-tip and then coat the leather with a shiny lacquer finish normally used on muscle cars from the ’80s. The laces are different too. The laces look like piano wire, like silver garrotes that could be used to strangle International Monetary Fund employees in Venezuela—and probably are.

So, yeah, it was a Wall Street guy, and I’ve been through enough economic cycles for this to make me very, very nervous.

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From the always fascinating Jack Wheeler at To The Point News:

"My friends at Falun Gong who publish the marvelous Epoch Times tell me that in China, they call President Trump “Chuan Da Ye.”

“Chuan” is how “Trump” is pronounced in Mandarin.  “Da” means powerful or respected.  “Ye” is grandfather. Trump for the Chinese is “Powerful Respected Grandfather Trump.”

“For people who know the Chinese language well, the words “Da Ye” together carry connotations of affirmation, respect, affection, authority, capability, and more. When people call someone “Da Ye,” it often means that they are willing to follow this person, at least morally. They like (Trump’s) toughness, his personality, and the fact that he is super rich and successful.
 
A deeper meaning underlying the nickname is the fact that, in the eyes of some Chinese people, Trump is daring to stand up against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has been suppressing its own people for decades. As they themselves might not have the courage or ability to fight against the CCP, many Chinese netizens are happy to see Trump doing so.”

 It’s an apposite appellation. Here’s what TTP’s intel sources tell us:

The timing of Trump’s trade war with China is exactly right.  The Chicoms are in a weakened position right now, having a major slowdown economically.  The stock market is down 25%.  Everything and everyone is way over-leveraged.  Trump’s trade war is forcing the government to spend vast sums subsidizing and bailing out innumerable banks going belly up.

The whole world agrees China violates every rule on trade and steals IP.  Trump is just the only one who is willing to take them on with the rest of the world cheering him on from the sidelines. Now it appears the EU is willing to cooperate with Trump and revise the WTO and to push China on IP and other trade violations.  This is something they were never willing to do before.

Thus TTP’s intel agrees with the ET assessment: “If the trade war deepens, the Chinese regime will have nothing with which to fight back. Having far fewer imports from the United States than exports, the regime can’t match U.S. tariffs.”

Further, that Trump is fighting a “comprehensive war” against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).
“The trade war between the United States and China is not an international trade war as it appears on the surface. It is, in fact, a war between the nature of the CCP and humanity, and a war between the universal principles of the international world and the CCP’s party culture.”
 
And that it is a war Trump will win."


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