Author Archive: Stephen Green

IF YOU THINK MISSILE DEFENSE IS EXPENSIVE, TRY LOSING A CITY: U.S. Approves Quadrupled THAAD Interceptor Production to Counter Rising Missile Threats. “U.S. Company Lockheed Martin has signed a landmark framework agreement with the U.S. Department of War (DoW) to expand Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor production from 96 to 400 units per year. This decisive industrial ramp-up responds to advanced missile threats and signals a Pentagon shift toward sustained high-volume strategic defense manufacturing.”

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: His Car Was So Hot… “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how not to get into the cocaine industry, what not to do with a vacuum cleaner, and too much about Louisiana’s not-so-littlest mermaid.”

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Democrats Charge Forward With Shutdown Threat Over ICE Funding. “Republican Sens. Ted Budd of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Ashley Moody and Rick Scott of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama also opposed advancing the funding package. The conservative group of lawmakers contains several leading fiscal hawks and opponents of abortion. Budd told reporters he voted “no” over concerns about ‘abortion funding’ in the package.”

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL A LEFTY ANYTHING THEY DON’T WANT TO KNOW:

WELL, GOOD: Canadians Tell Their Authoritarian Government Where They Can Put Their Gun Confiscation Scheme.

Canadian media is reporting that half of all the provinces, plus the Northwest Territory and Yukon governments are telling Ottawa the country’s massive gun “buyback” scheme is a non-starter, and they will not participate.

“This is a remarkable—and welcome—wake-up call to Canada’s liberal national government, and it is long overdue,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, one of the largest U.S. gun rights organizations. “Gun control in Canada has crossed the line when it pushes a massive ‘buyback,’ which is really nothing more than compensated confiscation. What the governments in those provinces, and the territories are saying on behalf of the citizens is that this massive gun control scheme is a non-starter.”

According to published reports, the Newfoundland and Labrador government is the latest to reject the gun “buyback” proposal, for which Canada’s federal government has reportedly allocated $250 million to compensate gun owners for the firearms they would be required to surrender because they were banned by the stroke of a pen.

Canadians might need a lot more guns before Mark Carney and the Liberals are done with them.

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH:

TO BE FAIR, FAVREAU ISN’T JUST A HACK, HE’S A HAM-FISTED HACK WHO HELPED CREATE THE CURRENT MESS:

More:

We warned the Left for 15 years that they wouldn’t like it when the Right started playing by their new rules, but they didn’t listen.

WHERE’S THE OFF SWITCH? AI’s HAL 9000 Problem, and What It Portends For the Future.

We are repeatedly told that large language models (LLM) will soon “plateau.” Likewise, we were repeatedly warned that “Moore’s Law,” the observation that microchip transistors double approximately every two years, was dying. But both claims miss the point.

Even as raw transistor scaling has dramatically slowed, real computing power has accelerated through architectural specialization, algorithmic efficiency, massive parallelization, and domain-specific hardware. AI supercomputer performance is currently doubling every 9 months, fueled both by increasing the number of AI chips and improving chip efficiency. A new chip from NVIDIA apparently will compress that, at least temporarily, to six or seven months.

Likewise, we will find a way around the LLM plateau. When one scaling regime saturates, engineers invent another. And even at a 9-month doubling, in 10 years the computers will crunch 10,000 times faster and a million times faster in just 15 years. Yet, it was beating us at GO a decade ago.

The implication is simple: AI won’t level off; it will change gears.

And once it changes enough gears, it stops being a tool and becomes a system, widely referred to as “Artificial General Intelligence” or AGI.

That matters, because systems do not “obey.” They optimize.

I’m still dubious about AGI, but smarter people like Michael Fumento here insist it’s just a matter of time.

So here’s to hoping we don’t get “optimized.”

EVERYBODY LOVES THE FA, BUT THEN THE FO COMES ALONG:

TREK’S DEAD, JIM:

And to think I found just the first episode unwatchable.

WELL, GOOD: Meta Restricts ICE Agent Doxing Site Across Facebook, Instagram. “Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told the outlet the decision was tied to the company’s policy prohibiting the sharing of personally identifiable information or content that asks users to provide such information about others.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

BREAKING: Don Lemon Arrested by Federal Agents for His Role in Church Mob.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Plus:

When Trump was indicted it was treated as proof of guilt.

THEY’RE SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO FIND INCREASED TAXES IN THIS DEMOCRAT-RUN ESTABLISHMENT:

Gooder and harder, Virginia.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ICE Protest Teachers Are Trump’s Reminder to Shutter Dept. of Education. “Look, if the protest brats want to cut off their snotty noses to spite their stupid faces, I’ve got no problem with that. What’s really galling me is that there are schools closing here in Tucson to join the protest. It’s a perfect snapshot of all that is wrong in this country right now. It’s the public school union teachers who are the root of leftist evil in the United States.”

IT’S A MIXED-UP, MUDDLED-UP, SHOOK-UP WORLD:

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Iran rounds up thousands in mass arrest campaign after crushing unrest, sources say.

They said detainees had been placed in secret lockups.

“They are arresting everyone,” one of the activists said. “No one knows where they are being taken or where they are being held. With these arrests and threats, they are trying to inject fear into society.”

Similar accounts were given to Reuters by lawyers, medics, witnesses, and two Iranian officials speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by security services.

They said the roundups appeared aimed at preventing any serious revival of protests by spreading fear just as the clerical establishment faces rising external pressure.

Things might get exciting again soon, but who knows?