Episode 5206: Iran Continues To Lay Mines In The Strait Of Hormuz; AI Exceeds Cognitive Versatility
Stephen K. Bannon and guests dissect Iran's mine-laying in the Strait of Hormuz, where Trump claims victory after destroying 5,500 targets via Operation Epic Fury using AI-accelerated decision-making. While Pentagon strikes intensify, warnings loom of a destabilizing Shia civil war threatening Gulf oil stability, even as Eric Bowling notes volatile prices despite 400 million barrels released from strategic reserves. The episode concludes with Joe Allen's critique that tech labs aim to replace humans economically, citing hospital signs urging staff to "think less, GPT more," signaling a broader societal shift toward artificial general intelligence. [Automatically generated summary]
This new video of what the Pentagon says are strikes on multiple Iranian naval vessels, including 16 mine layers near the Strait of Hormuz.
CNN is reporting that Iran has begun laying mines in the strait.
That's according to two people familiar with U.S. intelligence reporting on the issue.
The video released a few hours after President Trump posted on social media, quote, if for any reason mines were placed and they are not removed forthwith, the military consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before.
The chokehold that Iran continues to have over the Strait of Hormuz sent the average price of gas here in the U.S. to $3.54 a gallon.
That's up 56 cents from before the war.
Now, earlier today, the Pentagon announced this would be the most intense day of strikes inside Iran.
Those were their words that seemed to stand in contrast with President Trump's pronouncement last night that the war, or as he called it, excursion, would be over, quote, very soon.
Well, I think that he's achieved his objectives the way that he's laid them out.
And you just put it beautifully, Jesse.
I mean, what is there really that's left to do that we haven't already done?
I mean, we have demonstrated to the world and anybody who's watching, by the way, that we have overwhelming military superiority and we know how to use it.
We have totally destroyed forever their nuclear program.
We have destroyed their ballistic missiles.
We have destroyed their Navy.
I mean, this has been a total success in whatever it's been.
11 days.
And I thought the president's remarks last night that he could declare victory today and it would be a 100% victory.
I think it's true.
I think we ought to say to our heroes, thank you for a job well done.
So U.S. Central Command, along with the President and the Secretary of Defense, they began saying earlier today that the U.S. has begun taking aggressive steps to try to sink these Iranian vessels that are believed to be mine layers in the Strait of Hormuz.
And that reaction started coming out in response to reports, including ours, that Iran has, in fact, begun laying some mines in the strait.
And we should note that, according to our sources, this is not extensive mine laying at this point.
A couple dozen in the last several days at most, according to one of the sources.
But Iran still retains roughly 80 to 90 percent of those small boats and mine layers that it uses to lay these mines, according to one of the sources.
And therefore, it could feasibly continue to do so and lay hundreds of mines in the coming days.
Now, President Trump has said that there are going to be serious military consequences for Iran writ large if they don't take steps to actually remove these mines.
But the U.S. military also said today that they have destroyed about 16 of these mine-laying vessels.
Of course, these are very small vessels operated by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
They can go undetected.
It is very difficult right now for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, including the U.S. military, because not only of these mines, but also because Iran is attacking ships that transit there with drones.
So it's a very fraught situation that, of course, has led to a ton of uncertainty in the global oil markets, given that this is such a key passageway for global oil production.
Look, for Israel, it's very clear what they want is to destroy the Islamic Republic in every sense.
And you can watch their bombing campaign.
They're going after the leadership, leadership compounds of military headquarters, but even police.
You know, they want an Iranian state that can function much in the way that what happened to Syria for 10 years, Syria-Mayan civil war, actually helped Israel.
One more enemy taken off the board, one more adversary you don't have to worry about.
But the United States has huge interests in the Middle East for peace and stability and the coexistence to a certain extent among the Sunni and the Shia.
The idea of an Iran that collapses into civil war with Shia militias running around with nuclear material.
With nuclear material, exactly dirty bombs that could be made.
You know, it's bad for Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf allies of the United States who want free flow of oil.
You know, the United States' objectives are peace, stability, economic integration, free flow of oil.
I'm asking you about gas prices that Americans are paying that are extremely high and having wild swings, in part because of the war with Iran that the president started.
Americans are going to have to make some sacrifices, but we're operating from a point of strength.
Isn't it great that compared to when I was growing up in the 70s, we were so dependent upon Middle East oil, but now we're the largest producer of oil in the world, that we're the second biggest exporter of oil in the world.
So we're not going to be shut out economically from this.
We at least have the oil here.
Yes, it's a worldwide commodity, but this is one of the prices of war.
Are we willing to stand here for 47 years and let Iran beat the heck out of Americans and kill thousands of Americans?
Or are we willing to stand up and say enough to this?
I mean, the White House is still not ruling out ground troops.
It's hard to know how real that is and not.
There was some talk about special forces trying to locate, take or neutralize nuclear material.
That seems like it would be a long operation or a very intensive operation and involve larger ground troops just for perimeter security at the very least.
Wars are battles of will and the ability to sustain pain.
And what the Iranians are trying to do, and now with a few mines in the Straits, is to prolong the pain, to increase the pain for now, and also because they want to deter us if this war ends without it being real, with them still in charge.
They want to make it really so painful for us that we wouldn't dare to go back again.
So we are in a battle of wills, and the Iranians think they're in a better position to win.
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
war room here's your host stephen k band it's wednesday 11 march in the year of our lord 2026 That phrase, we are in it.
Now, we're in it now.
And so if you're in it now, you've got to win it, right?
However, we got here, whatever, you know, Lindsey Graham can keep talking about the 10 nuclear weapons that were a week away.
All these different wild excuses, but we're in it now.
So we've got to figure out how to win this.
Pete Heggs says, we're going to get to the CENTCOM put up a little while ago, I guess, a briefing, a video.
We're going to watch Admiral Cooper in his entirety in the next block because I think it's very important to continue to focus on one level on General Kane and Admiral Cooper.
Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, Admiral General Kane, obviously the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President's principal military advisor, uniform service military advisor, about what's actually happening as we go back and forth.
We know that Pete Hegs has said this was going to be the most intense day.
I think that's correct.
But the Iranians still showed that they got some fight left in them.
In fact, with this asymmetric warfare of these drones, my understanding from people in the region and from others of the Eric Prince caliber is that 25% of the drones got through in this hit to UAE today.
So between these little mining ships of which we took out 11, and I think we've put the vast majority of the Iranian Navy, including their submarines, to the bottom of the ocean.
And we are taking care of making sure they can have, it's as difficult as possible to mine the Straits of Hormuz.
The Iranians are, I think, and I think their strategy first is to peel off the Arabs, to make sure that, and this is why Lindsey Graham continues to go on TV after a couple of mint juleps, act like he's commander-in-chief and talking about giving the Arabs, promising Saudi Arabia in perpetuity defense pact.
And we will do anything to protect the monarchy forever if they join this fight and to warn them about double dealing this behind the back.
The reason is I think you're seeing from Kuwait to Qatar to Bahrain to UAE, even MBZ, because I think Dubai was hit again.
The Saudis, I think they're saying, hey, we didn't sign up for this.
We don't know what this is about.
And we don't want to attack back.
And a peel off of the Arabs would make things much more difficult, I think, particularly with air rights and everything else.
We need to get access.
Also, Netanyahu has put out a statement or I guess a proclamation for the Iranian people, for the Persian people to rise up, for the Persian people to rise up, that now's the chance for their liberty, that this entire Israeli-American attack was to give them their freedom.
This is after firebombing them on Saturday night, which as you see from at least what is available.
And I think if you talk to people in the region, it doesn't seem to be any general rise up, nothing compared to what happened a couple of weeks ago when Scott Bessant broke the currency.
In fact, the rallying looks like it's in back of the theocratic thug regime that has run this place forever.
I do think, and Senator Marshall, I appreciate him going into Caitlin Collins last night, but I think we have to have, I think we have to refine the pitch.
I just think going back 47 years, particularly with somebody who's there at the beginning, is not working.
It's not going to resonate with the American people.
This was initiated for other reasons.
And I think we've got to be very blunt with the American people because it's going to be a tough one.
You talk about off-ramps.
The off-ramp right now has to come from taking down the degradation and destruction of their military capability for force projection and for projection against their people.
And that's a tall order.
We're going to take a short break.
We're going to have, we're absolutely packed today with many different things, but we're going to come back and I'm going to tee up.
We're going to hear from Admiral Cooper of Central Command next in the warland.
Okay, I think it's the IDF, and it's in Hebrew, so we can't, I can't translate it, but we'll try to get it up.
I had a press conference or had a briefing for the Israeli people said there's no time limit on this.
It kind of is what it is.
I also, I strongly recommend this comes from the Baltimore engine room.
This phrase, freedom isn't free.
I think when you do wars like this, I'm not so sure that's a phrase that resonates with people.
I think we have to get very serious about this.
We have a lot of young men and women in harm's way.
We're pouring a ton of resources in there.
A lot of this is a massive opportunity cost.
Look at everything.
We could do a two-hour show today packed with some of the best people in the country on topics other than this.
And every day, as you know, we're taking an amazing amount of time, and that's because the nation, this is obviously, we're at war, so it's a huge focus.
And this is one of the things we're focused on totally.
You just, you know, we heard that we're not going to do any mass deportations.
And, you know, they're happy talking the SAVE Act.
House, the story in Politico, House is moving on.
They're glad Trump came down, talked to him at Dural, had a great conference.
You know, they're going to their next thing.
So there's so much going on politically, the Maricopa County.
We're going to try to jam as much in today Dr. Tucker with Make America Healthy Again, but obviously the center gravity of what we're doing is because we're at war and we have young men and women in harm's way.
So, and like I said, we're in it.
I'm not happy that we're in it, but you're in it.
So you got to figure out how you have victory because victory is what matters here.
It would be catastrophic for us to not have victory in this.
And I realize that may rub some people the wrong way, but I think that's just a hard reality, what we have to deal with.
Let's go.
And this is why I think it's very important for us to listen to General Raisin Kane and Admiral Cooper, Admiral Cooper, the head of CENTCOM.
Let's go ahead.
We're going to play his, he put up a video of kind of a mini brief, I guess.
I'm Admiral Brad Cooper here at United States Central Command, where I'm leading the forces executing Operation Epic Fury.
First, I want you to know that we continue to keep the families of our fallen heroes and our wounded teammates in our thoughts and prayers.
I'd also like to acknowledge and thank the families of the 50,000 American servicemen and women deployed in and around the Middle East.
I'm grateful for your selfless sacrifice, and I know that Americans across the country hold you in their hearts.
Let me start by offering my overall assessment of Operation Epic Fury.
In short, U.S. forces continue delivering devastating combat power against the Iranian regime.
I've said this before, but it bears repeating.
U.S. combat power is building.
Iranian combat power is declining.
And we remain centered on very clear military objectives in eliminating Iran's ability to project power against Americans and against its neighbors.
Every day, we're striking hard at Iranian ballistic missile and drones.
To date, we have struck more than 5,500 targets inside Iran, including more than 60 ships using a variety of precision weapon systems.
Just yesterday, we had strike waves nearly every hour from different locations and directions going into Iran.
We also took out the last of four Solomania-class warships.
That's an entire class of Iranian ships now out of the fight.
I'd characterize our strikes as being unpredictable, dynamic, and decisive.
Since the first 24 hours of this campaign, Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks have dropped drastically.
But it's worth pointing out that Iranian forces continue to deliberately target innocent civilians in Gulf countries while hiding behind their own people as they launch attacks from highly populated cities in Iran.
Of course, forces executing Operation Epic Fury aren't just defending against Iranian threats.
We are methodically dismantling them by hitting Iranian missiles and drones as we also strike their defense industrial base.
Just last night, our bomber force hit a large ballistic missile manufacturing facility as an example.
So it's not just about what's shooting at us today, it's also about eliminating the threat in the future.
Now, let me show you a few of the results from the tremendous efforts by America's joint force.
Here, you see an Iranian Jamron-class warship, a large patrol ship, a drone smuggling vessel, and four other surface combatants docked at Chabahar Port in the Gulf of Oman the day before we launched Operation Epic Fury.
Here's the same pier four days later, all ships taken out of action.
This Bayandar-class surface ship was hit and rolled on its side.
Here's another example.
Here you see two Iranian surface combatants docked at an Iranian naval base near the Strait of Hormuz, just hours into the campaign.
And here's what they look like three days later, engulfed in flames after we struck them with a precision weapon.
For years, the Iranian regime has threatened commercial shipping and U.S. forces in international waters.
Our mission is to end their ability to project power and harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
From the air, we've achieved a concentration of air power with back-to-back waves of advanced fighters creating constant pressure on the enemy every single day.
Our dominance is not a solo effort, it's a testament to the strength of our ironclad alliances.
We continue to coordinate closely and effectively with Israel in this very large operation, and we are also coordinating and serving side by side with all of our partners in the Middle East.
We're on a path to eliminating Iran's ability to threaten Americans and our friends, and we are achieving this through a combination of lethality, precision, and rapid innovation.
Let me highlight a few examples, at least the ones that aren't classified, of how we are achieving lethal effects in entirely new ways.
First, our warfighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools.
These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react.
Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot.
But advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.
I continue to be impressed with all the branches of the U.S. military.
The entire team is performing superbly.
Strike operations from our joint force continue, as I've said.
I assess that we are clearly exercising air superiority over vast swaths of Iran.
We have the most integrated air defense umbrella in the Middle East, and our defensive operations from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force teams are performing magnificently.
A note about the Space Force: our space superiority has been a critical enabler to this fight.
Unseen by the world, the Space Force is doing two things.
First, they're degrading Iranian capability, and second, they're helping to protect American forces, and I'll have to leave it right there.
All told, despite this incredible progress, make no mistake, we remain highly vigilant.
And I just could not be prouder of our Operation Epic Fury team, and I know the American people share that same pride.
To all our warriors out there, please keep up the great work and Godspeed.
That's about as close, I think, as we're going to get to a Norman Schwarzkopf-type brief, but very solid.
Admiral Cooper and General Kane, of course, General Kane started yesterday by talking about really going through an evolution on the deck of an aircraft carrier with all the enlisted men and women that have to make that happen and the bravery of those folks to train 24-7 to make sure that this can happen.
I think that's the valor.
I will point out the buried lead there, and that was, I thought, a pretty solid brief, but the buried lead with the military objectives.
One that's now missing is power projection on their own people.
Just a couple days ago, we were talking about unconditional surrender, and unconditional surrender was the inability to have power rejection or force projection against American forces, could not have power projection against their neighbors, particularly Israel and the Gulf states, and couldn't have power projection internally against their own people.
That now is not, and as these things get vetted, that is a pretty, I think, interesting deletion, or at least not a priority now, is power projection on the people.
Don't know how, and Axios had this story that we're now the supplicant asking Israel, will you please not bomb any more oil infrastructure in Tehran?
So I'm at a loss to understand how we can take that it's not a priority to take away the ability of the Revolutionary Guard, the military there, the police, all of it, to have power projection on their own people to suppress and kill like 30,000 they did, which is a consensus number.
a couple of weeks ago.
At the same time, Netanyahu calls, stands up, and asks, tells the people to rise up.
It's time to rise up and overthrow your theocratic Islamic overlords who are some of the worst people in the world.
I think we're all agreed on that.
At the same time, this Axios piece, remember, Axios, yes, is Axios a liberal site?
There is, but it's the White House that chooses to leak to Mark Caputo and Rabat and the Israelis leaked to him.
So that's why it's a people go to Axios because outside of President Trump's true social, it is probably the most, you get the most heads up or the most scoops of reality.
And now it's a situation where the Americans went back and asked them.
You don't ask them.
They're not driving this.
And they're not a co-ally.
You order them.
You're not going after the oil assets of the Iranian people.
As even Lindsey Graham put out, you know, maybe between drunken stupors that he tweeted out, hey, we need that later to convince the Iranian people that there's a future and they can, you know, sell oil and gas.
It's also what's happened, the shift, it's obvious.
The shift since Saturday night, a people that were your allies and one of the central allies we really had were the Iranian people who hate the Islamic Republic and want to overthrow these demons.
Now we've kind of galvanized them.
I shouldn't say we.
The Netanyahu's government, because of their out-of-control targeting of these people, have now galvanized them into a Persian nationalist.
Oh, we got to support the Ayatollah because at least he's Persian.
At least he's one of us.
That takes away our greatest opportunity to overthrow these folks.
You saw that when Scott Besson broke their currency.
So I think we need a reset on the strategy.
And I think people need to come out.
Is it not unconditional surrender?
If you're even looking at off-ramps, as Josh Hawley said to Jesse last night on Fox, you know, if there's an off-ramp, what are the military objectives to that?
And that's kind of beyond the pay grade of Edmund Cooper and General Kane.
But I think we need as much clear talking and focus from other folks as we're getting from our military commanders on the military objectives here, which once again, very methodical and very professional.
The United States military is degrading/slash destroying their military capabilities.
Now, they talked about artificial intelligence, a lot to go on there.
Joe Allen is with us.
He's in studio.
We've also got Eric Bowling.
The IEA just announced 400 million barrels of kind of the European and Asian strategic patrolling reserve.
We're going to get into all of it and much, much more in the war room.
Now more than ever, Bowling's going to be here in a minute, talk about commodities market oil and gas.
We're going to talk about the speculative nature and also the ability that companies need to hedge.
So we're going to get into that about what you think about these oil prices.
IEA just said they're going to dump 400 million barrels.
Of course, the media's their hair is on fire.
Bowling's going to really break it down what that means.
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Well, as you heard Cooper say, tasks, military tasks, attacks that would have been planned over the course of hours or weeks are being planned and executed in seconds.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the most important facet of the AI integration into the military, especially in this war, is the decision compression.
So when any commander is looking for what is a valid target, how to prioritize the targets that have been identified as valid, they're going to be using systems like Claude, pairing them with Palantir, raking over surveillance data, and then using the decisions made by the AIs to then make top-level human decisions.
What is really important to remember about that, Steve, is that yes, to the extent we always have humans in the loop, and that is the Department of War policy and has been and hopefully will continue to be, the decision to kill or not to kill begins in many cases with the AI making the decision and a human checking it.
And if the decision compression is, in fact, down to seconds, it's very difficult for me to imagine how it is that a human is going to be able to accurately assess what the AI has presented to him.
Yeah, that was the Washington Post a week ago published an article about the use of AI, especially Claude, in the initial attacks.
And the way it was reported was that of a thousand attacks, we know that AI was leveraged in some of those attacks.
Whether all, nobody really knows.
It's all behind the wall of classification.
It's been interpreted as a thousand attacks were conducted by AI by some people, but there's no reason to believe that.
But it is really important again, Steve.
Think that it's not being overstated how much the integration of AI into the military overall.
I mean, remember, Claude has been integrated since late 2024, and Claude from Anthropic was the only system that was raking over classified documents that were, by and large, organized by Palantir.
This is really, really important on many levels, especially in terms of identifying targets, accurately identifying targets.
It's an open question as to how much this has really improved that.
Department of War policy is that humans have to be involved in the decision-making here.
I thought the whole Anthropic thing, because Anthropic said that had to happen, and Department of War is saying we're not going to be handcuffed by that policy.
Is that our current policy right now in this Iranian war?
Joe, hang on a second because we've got a bigger fight on AI.
Breaking news, and I'm pretty proud of how we put this together because Axios has it up.
The President of the United States just called, wait for it, Axios directly on a phone call, Barack Ravid.
Now, Barack Ravid is the guy that's got direct pipeline to Netanyahu and the Mossad and IDF high command.
He's their guy.
Mark Caputo has a direct access pipeline from the White House.
But I want to quote the headline: Trump tells Axios there's, quote, practically nothing left to target in Iran.
President Trump told Axios in a brief phone interview Wednesday that the war with Iran will end soon because there's practically, and this is a quote, practically nothing left to target.
There's a little of this and a little of that, said the president.
Anytime I want to end it, it will end, said the president during a brief five-minute phone call.
Why it matters, Trump is publicly signaling that the operations, the military objectives are, by and large, he believes, wrapping up.
Now, this is why I said about the Israeli minister.
Axios cuts right to that.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the war will continue, quote, without any time limit for as long as necessary until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign, end quote.
And it goes on to talk about CENTCOM.
They talk about the CENTCOM commander, Brad Cooper's, et cetera, et cetera.
So President Trump's saying there's little to continue to target.
It's kind of the Josh Hawley pitch from last night.
He's saying there's little to target and that he can end this war at any time.
So I think we ought to stand by for that.
Eric Bowling, and Joe, I'm going to get right back to you on the bigger and more important fight about AI than even the military, as big as that is.
Eric, IEA just announced, and we have the Strategic Petroleum Reserve here in the United States of America.
There is another strategic petroleum reserve, I guess, spread between Europe and Asia.
I think we're part of it, but just, I don't know if we're a member or whatever, but it's really their deal.
They've announced they're going to release 400 million barrels.
Wall Street and the markets are kind of skipping around on that.
Yeah, Steve, great catch on the breaking news because I'll tell you what happened.
I was watching the oil marks.
I'm watching it right now.
When Trump said I can end it anytime soon, and he said, you know, there's nothing left to target, oil dropped $7 a barrel immediately, within a minute, right?
And I'm watching it.
I'm like, People are going to get caught and smoked again on this.
It's now up that $7 back and another $3 higher right now because, look, there's a lot of rhetoric going on both ways.
Trump wants us to calm people's nerves down.
I mean, that's so he puts these missives out.
Markets react.
But when you take a step back, the 400 million barrels, Steve, what is it, a five or six day supply of oil if everything were stopped?
We talked about this over the last four days.
It's not an accessibility to crude oil.
There's plenty of crude oil sloshing around.
It's a dislocation issue right now.
And the other thing is Trump had said, we're going to bomb you 20 times harder if you line the straits.
And he wanted to be involved in whoever the next ruler of Ivoran was.
If he's going to walk back on all that, then maybe this, he just doesn't seem like the type to do that.
This is talk one way.
It goes up one way, it goes down.
Here's the bottom line.
The only solution, the only smart solution, so we don't get into this predicament again is the one that we've been talking about, you and I right here on the show for the last four days, which by the way, Susie Wiles now has, confirmed she has, and so has Pete Hexett says he's going to send it to the right people.
It's the one Trump walks away unscathed.
America is never going to be dependent on another drop of foreign oil ever again.
And our oil companies are going to love it the most.
They won't have to raise prices.
Steve, I guarantee $4 national average happens in America right now, even if peace breaks out tomorrow in the Middle East.
I guarantee we will continue to go up for the next month to two months.
They're a percentage of the price, but not the biggest percentage of the price.
The biggest percentage of price is exactly what you said.
You have oil producers who hedge their production.
So if they pull a barrel out of the ground at $40 a barrel, their risk is below $40.
So they will short the futures market to make sure that anything below $40, they'll make on the futures, even though they're losing with the physical oil.
On the other side of the coin, refiners need to buy oil.
So they're going to run oil through their refinery.
They can't shut a refinery down if the price goes too high.
So they risk, they have risk on the upside.
So they have the buy risk.
So those two factions playing together are massive.
I'll give you a good example.
When the World Trade Center was bombed, got knocked down by terrorists, lower Manhattan was devastated.
The whole lower Manhattan was gone.
And I was there because our exchange, the World Trade Center, housed the New York Mercantile Exchange where I traded for 15 years.
We were, no one in New York was allowed to go back in there besides the firemen.
Well, day three, it happened on a Tuesday by Thursday or Friday, the U.S. Navy was escorting us on a boat into the world trade, into the lower Manhattan, into our trading flow, which was still standing, the whole area, because they needed to have that ability, those hedgers, the buy and the sell hedgers in the international market.
They were fearful of a $500,000, $600,000 barrel of oil because speculators would take over.
And so, yes, the futures market provides massive stability to the oil market, even in times like this where the oil market is as volatile as it's ever been.
But the volatility, we got to bounce, but the volatility said, even President Trump, the release of this Axios piece, it dropped seven bucks immediately.
Then it clawed it back.
But just on the just on news or rumor or whatever, this thing's all over the map right now.
Wise children from birth will have an artificial intelligence as a companion that will learn them, that will instruct them, that will watch them, and will report back, one imagines, to the boss man in Silicon Valley.
And so you have AI as a tool and AI as a teacher, AI as a companion, AI as a creature with a consciousness of its own, more powerful, more intelligent, at least in the imagination of those pushing it, than any human being.
And so you have AI as God.
What we need is a politic that is humans first.
And to get that, we have to have a culture that is humans first.
And at the deepest level, a worldview that is humans first.
Why should you put humans first?
Why should you reach out and take hold of life and direct the future of life?
And I think that the deepest argument to be made is because you are a child of God.
You were made in the image of God.
And these systems are a perversion of that image.
And to hand power to those systems is a perversion and a dereliction of the duty and responsibility of human beings.
You're made in the image and likeness of God and have the spirit of the Holy Spirit in you.
And remember, as Jesus Christ told us, the only unforgivable sin is to blaspheme and mock the Holy Spirit.
Unforgivable, mortal sin.
Said, I can't help you, which shocked the apostles and the disciples.
Joe Allen, you talk about where, and folks, we're going to be putting up information, my getter account.
This is where you're going to get her, Grace Mo, Elizabeth, putting up information all day long about this war because we're in it now.
We're in it.
And we got to figure out how to win it.
And we got to figure out how to bring this thing to a close.
But we're in it.
We're going to put out tons of information so that you can help form your own judgment.
That's what we need is the war impossibility to form its own judgment, not to be dictated to by a bunch of people.
Same way here.
We're in it.
And in fact, the reason Joe's starting Humans First, we're so proud of him, is that not only are we in it, the hour is late.
Joe Allen, I'm going to go back to Humans First, and Amy Kramer is going to join us what you guys are doing in Florida.
But I want to, here's what's concerning me: the accelerationists are winning, and why?
Because we're accelerating at an accelerating rate.
You have Elon Musk, who shut down his safety department.
You have two of the other four.
So there's four Frontier labs.
Maybe throw in five, there's one more, but let's say the four labs, three of them are signaling to people: we're going to be at artificial general intelligence by the fall.
Sir, how late is the hour here that we're dealing with?
Well, one thing is for absolute sure, Steve, and that is that all four of the Frontier Labs, plus Meta, if you want to tag them on there, all of them want to create systems that have completely replicated every capability that the human being has, and then to replace every human being on Earth, economically, maybe socially.
They used to talk about this in much more just explicit terms, kind of perverse terms.
But now, more and more, as people have started to pay attention, they couch it in terms of radical abundance or augmentation.
Denver will throw up just the two graphs that I sent.
I think that this will give you some idea of not only what they want to see happen, but what's actually happening right now.
The first one, if we can see the Center for AI Safety's AGI definition, if not, then I guess the audience can imagine it.
We'll let the audience imagine it.
So there are two studies that have been published recently that I think the audience should know about.
The first is the definition of AGI, artificial general intelligence, by the Center for AI Safety.
And what they found was that the increases in capabilities of just GPT alone in reading and writing, in math, in knowledge, in reasoning, in memory retrieval, show dramatic improvement, dramatic improvement.
And what that also shows, it's not just one simple line, right?
It's not one capability such as language processing.
You're talking about mathematics here.
You're talking about general reasoning abilities.
I think that it's really important to understand that just because these systems are improving and basically kind of eating up the potential that human beings otherwise would have doesn't mean that they're going to succeed in creating a total human replacement.
But what we know is that they want to.
We know they have profound influence in corporate America.
They have profound influence in the education system and in the hospitals.
And they are, at the moment, deploying these systems all over all of these institutions and basically forcing people to use them.
I'll give you a really good example someone gave me from a hospital, a hospital administration office.
And in that administration office, there's a sign that says think less, GPT more.
And the whole notion is that we don't need you to make decisions.
The more these guys have power and leverage over every institution in society, and the more they're buying off politicians through PACs like leading the future, then the more we're going to see this crammed down people's throats.
And the more you're going to see actual replacement.
So this is a completely different graphic that we're seeing here from the one I asked for in Denver, but it does show some extra.