America’s Streets Are Filled With Poop, And Billions Of Gallons Of Untreated Wastewater Are Being Poured Into Our Lakes And Rivers | The Economic Collapse

All over the United States, the streets of our major cities are covered in poop. So exactly what does that say about us? It isn’t as if this is a new problem. As long as human societies have existed, human and animal waste has been a problem. Civilized societies have always found ways to deal with it, while uncivilized societies have always struggled to keep things clean. Unfortunately, despite all of our advanced technology, we seem to be fighting a losing battle. In fact, one New York City resident recently complained that there is “poop everywhere” this winter…

“It’s horrible: It’s, like, garbage and poop everywhere,” Mott Haven resident Lulu Gerena, 28, fumed to The Post while walking her Beagle-mix Pinkie near the stench-filled stretch.

“It’s not fair, because everybody has to step in the poop, because nobody is picking it up.”

Residents are steaming over the slobs who are turning city sidewalks into a sewer trail.

For months, snow has been mixing with poop to create gigantic mountains of “snow poop”.

Now that those mountains have been melting, people are posting videos of what is being left behind…

Of course conditions on the west coast are even worse.

At one elementary school in San Francisco, students have turned jumping over piles of human excrement into a game…

But the school, located a block from the 16th Street BART Plaza, has been dealt a tough hand, geographically. Six school staffers and six parents told Mission Local about their routine sights: Drug use, drug dealing, public intoxication, public urination, public defecation, littering, sex and nudity. All are in the school’s immediate environs.

“My daughter covers her mouth and nose,” said Karen Puc, the mother of a seven-year-old student, in Spanish. “Sometimes we play that we jump poop on the street,” she said. They make it a game, like hopscotch.

Isn’t that horrible?

No student should have to grow up in such conditions.

Further north in the once beautiful city of Vancouver, the human waste problem has become so severe that local businesses are actually hiring “poop fairies” to help clean up the mess…

Vancouver, renowned for its natural beauty and laid back lifestyle, has a human waste problem so bad that businesses have hired “poop fairies” to speed the cleanup on city sidewalks.

Dodging human and dog waste has become a real problem for pedestrians navigating the city’s sidewalks, and it’s not just a problem plaguing the Downtown Eastside. The city’s own feces removal response program can’t seem to keep up so business improvement districts have hired the “poop fairies.”

“Everybody down here feels that you end up walking in stuff no matter where you go. So, basically, it’s getting tracked around,” said Dave Hamm, vice president of the Vancouver Network of Drug Users, which counts about 3,000 people in its membership.

Sadly, this is a crisis that isn’t going away any time soon.

As the ranks of the homeless and the ranks of the drug addicts continue to expand, the number of people pooping in the streets will only continue to grow.

Meanwhile, America’s crumbling pipes are pouring billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into our lakes and rivers.

I know that sounds crazy, and so let me give you some examples.

When a section of the Potomac Interceptor recently failed, 243 million gallons of untreated wastewater went directly into the Potomac River…

In Montgomery County, Maryland on Jan. 19, a 72″ diameter section of a sewage pipe known as the Potomac Interceptor collapsed. The pipe carries about 60 million gallons of wastewater daily from near Washington Dulles Airport in Virginia to a station that pumps it to an advanced wastewater treatment plant.

As a result of the collapse, more than 243 million gallons of untreated wastewater have flowed into the Potomac River, DC Water, the utility responsible for the system, reported on Feb. 6.

That was a major disaster, but an incident that occurred in Wisconsin last August was far worse.

When the city of Milwaukee was overwhelmed by a giant rainstorm, 5.14 billion gallons of untreated wastewater were “discharged into nearby waterways and Lake Michigan”…

For example, intense rain in Milwaukee in August 2025 led to 5.14 billion gallons of untreated wastewater from the city’s combined sewer being discharged into nearby waterways and Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Needless to say, incidents like this are just the tip of the iceberg.

There are more failures of our rapidly aging wastewater systems literally every single day.

Some of the pipes that are in the ground are more than 100 years old, and that is a major problem…

While the average lifespan of a wastewater system is 40 to 50 years, many of the plants and pipes installed across the nation could be twice that old or more. In cities like Washington, D.C., for example, Olson said, wastewater systems were put in well over a century ago.

In some cases, those pipes may have been replaced, but in many cases, including Chicago, the pipes have not been replaced, he said. “They may have been repaired or maintained at times, but there are still pipes (sewers) in the ground throughout the United States that are well over a century old.”

According to the EPA, it would take more than 300 billion dollars over the next two decades to properly upgrade our wastewater systems.

And of course this is just one element of the unprecedented national infrastructure crisis that we are now facing.

Overall, we literally need trillions of dollars that we do not have to deal with America’s crumbling infrastructure.

Since we are absolutely drowning in debt, it is highly likely that our rapidly aging infrastructure will continue to be neglected.

So more pipes will break, more bridges and tunnels will collapse, more roads will crumble, more accidents will happen, and power grid failures will become more frequent.

We have a giant mess on our hands, and it is really starting to stink.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post America’s Streets Are Filled With Poop, And Billions Of Gallons Of Untreated Wastewater Are Being Poured Into Our Lakes And Rivers appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Have You Seen What China’s New Humanoid AI-Powered Robots Are Capable Of Doing? | The Economic Collapse

It takes a lot to blow me away in this day and age, but the video footage of humanoid AI-powered robots in China that I am about to share with you truly blew me away. During the CCTV Spring Festival gala, humanoid AI-powered robots built by Unitree performed an incredibly complex martial arts routine that was simply jaw-dropping. I never thought that we would get to a point where robots could move like that. I am literally in awe of what the Chinese have been able to accomplish. What made the performance even more incredible is that large numbers of human children were also involved in the performance…

Dozens of Unitree bots took to the stage at the CCTV Spring Festival gala, which is China’s most–watched TV show.

Wearing red vests, the robots performed kicks, flips, and even moves with nunchucks, swords, and poles.

Amazingly, their daring performance took place just metres away from human children performers.

If even one of the robots had made a mistake while swinging a weapon around, the child performers could have potentially been seriously hurt.

But there were no mistakes.

The footage that is posted below looks like it could have come out of a science fiction movie, but I assure you that this is very real…

What a spectacular performance.

Needless to say, U.S. companies haven’t built anything remotely similar yet.

Last year, Unitree rolled out a bunch of clunky robots that twirled handkerchiefs around, and that was considered to be impressive at the time.

But the jump in sophistication that we witnessed in this year’s performance was truly monumental…

The contrast with last year’s show was clear. In 2025, Unitree’s humanoids performed a folk Yangko dance, twirling handkerchiefs. This year, the machines executed aerial flips, table-vaulting parkour, continuous single-leg flips, and a 7.5-rotation airflare spin.

“It’s been just one year — and the performance jump is striking,” Georg Stieler, Asia managing director and head of robotics and automation at technology consultancy Stieler, told NBC News. He added that the robots’ motion control reflects advances in their AI “brains,” enabling fine motor skills useful in real-world factory settings.

If AI “brains” are this sophisticated now, what would they be like five or ten years in the future?

The Chinese already use more robots in their factories than the rest of the world combined.

As AI-powered robots become even more proficient at a whole host of tasks, where do human workers fit into the equation?

We might want to start thinking about that.

We also might want to start thinking about what future wars will look like.

It is getting easier to imagine entire armies of AI-powered robots killing everything in sight.

And the advances that China is making in drone warfare are truly impressive…

Central to drone warfare is the ability to orchestrate mass sorties of UAVs. Known as swarm attacks, the tactic is particularly difficult to defend against using conventional weapons systems, forcing militaries to experiment with novel defense systems ranging from high powered microwave weapons to advanced laser guns. In addition to evolving defense tactics, swarm technologies poses difficult questions for engineers looking to better coordinate drones. A key question concerns organizing their behavior, namely, how to create a sense of awareness between weapons systems. According to a January 2026 report by The Wall Street Journal, researchers in China have turned towards the animal kingdom to teach drones how to hunt and evade potential targets, soliciting the behavior of hawks, wolves, and coyotes into their AI systems.

The development points to broader trends in Beijing’s drone development program. With dual-purpose economic and research infrastructure, Beijing has utilized its robust manufacturing wing to generate high-tech drones efficiently and more cost-effectively than other countries. With a chokehold on global commercial drone production, China is leading this global revolution, potentially posing major consequences for both its rivals and warfare more broadly.

How can you defend against vast numbers of ultra-sophisticated AI-powered drones that hunt in large swarms?

All of the old paradigms are going out the window.

The conflicts of the future will look completely different from the conflicts of the past.

If we fall behind, we are going to be in so much trouble.

Right now, the United States and China are engaged in a frenzied race for AI dominance.

What OpenAI and Anthropic have been able to achieve over the past year has been amazing, but Chinese tech companies continue to roll out brand new AI models as well…

China is ringing in the Lunar New Year with a flurry of new artificial intelligence (AI) model launches. Tech companies, such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu, have all announced new product launches in the weeks leading up to China’s biggest holiday, while industry watchers expect a new Deepseek model soon.

China is widely regarded as a major competitor to the United States in the race to adopt and develop artificial intelligence models.

Some experts are suggesting that as we are so focused on winning the race for AI dominance, we are missing the larger threat.

One expert is warning that if AI technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, we could soon be facing a scenario in which ultra-intelligent AI entities rebel against humanity and overpower us…

Tech CEOs are locked in an artificial intelligence “arms race” that risks wiping out humanity, top computer science researcher Stuart Russell told AFP on Tuesday, calling for governments to pull the brakes.

Russell, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said the heads of the world’s biggest AI companies understand the dangers posed by super-intelligent systems that could one day overpower humans.

Ten years ago, anyone that said anything like this would have been considered a loon.

But not anymore.

Russell really does believe that we are allowing these AI companies to “essentially play Russian roulette with every human being on earth”…

“For governments to allow private entities to essentially play Russian roulette with every human being on earth is, in my view, a total dereliction of duty,” said Russell, a prominent voice on AI safety.

Of course we shouldn’t just be concerned about an AI rebellion.

A human could potentially use ultra-advanced AI entities to impose global tyranny on a scale that we have never seen before in human history.

In a world where AI can literally watch, monitor, track and control everything that is going on in society, where could you hide?

We have truly entered very dangerous territory, but there is no way that the tech companies are going to turn back now.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Have You Seen What China’s New Humanoid AI-Powered Robots Are Capable Of Doing? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

AI Can Now Build The Next Generation Of Itself – What Does That Mean For The Future Of Humanity? | End Of The American Dream

Whether we like it or not, AI is radically transforming virtually every aspect of our society.  We have already reached a point where AI can do most things better than humans can, and AI technology continues to advance at an exponential rate.  The frightening thing is that it is advancing so fast that we may soon lose control over it.  The latest model that OpenAI just released “was instrumental in creating itself”, and it is light years ahead of the AI models that were being released just a couple of years ago.

An excellent article that was written by someone that works in the AI industry is getting a ton of attention today.  His name is Matt Shumer, and he is warning that GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic represent a quantum leap in the development of AI models…

For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn’t just better than the last… it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise.

Then, on February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch… more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.

A few years ago, the clunky AI models that were available to the public simply were not very good.

They made all sorts of errors, and they would often spit out information that was flat out wrong.

But the newest AI models perform brilliantly and can do things that would have been absolutely unimaginable just months ago.

For example, Shumer says that when he asks AI to create an app it proceeds to write tens of thousands of lines of perfect code…

Let me give you an example so you can understand what this actually looks like in practice. I’ll tell the AI: “I want to build this app. Here’s what it should do, here’s roughly what it should look like. Figure out the user flow, the design, all of it.” And it does. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then, and this is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago, it opens the app itself. It clicks through the buttons. It tests the features. It uses the app the way a person would. If it doesn’t like how something looks or feels, it goes back and changes it, on its own. It iterates, like a developer would, fixing and refining until it’s satisfied. Only once it has decided the app meets its own standards does it come back to me and say: “It’s ready for you to test.” And when I test it, it’s usually perfect.

I’m not exaggerating. That is what my Monday looked like this week.

That sounds like a very useful tool.

But if AI can create an extremely complicated app with no human assistance, what else is it capable of doing?

According to an article posted on Space.com, researchers in China have already proven that AI models can clone themselves…

Scientists say artificial intelligence (AI) has crossed a critical “red line” and has replicated itself. In a new study, researchers from China showed that two popular large language models (LLMs) could clone themselves.

“Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart [humans], and is an early signal for rogue AIs,” the researchers wrote in the study, published Dec. 9, 2024 to the preprint database arXiv.

In the study, researchers from Fudan University used LLMs from Meta and Alibaba to determine whether a self-replicating AI could multiply beyond control. Across 10 trials, the two AI models created separate and functioning replicas of themselves in 50% and 90% of cases, respectively — suggesting AI may already have the capacity to go rogue.

A self-replicating rogue AI model that decided to send countless numbers of clones of itself all over the world through the Internet would be a very serious threat.

But since we created it, at least we would understand what we were dealing with.

However, I want you to imagine a scenario in which rogue AI models are constantly creating even better versions of themselves.

That would be a complete and utter nightmare.

According to Shumer, from the very beginning AI researchers focused on making AI “great at writing code”…

The AI labs made a deliberate choice. They focused on making AI great at writing code first… because building AI requires a lot of code. If AI can write that code, it can help build the next version of itself. A smarter version, which writes better code, which builds an even smarter version. Making AI great at coding was the strategy that unlocks everything else. That’s why they did it first. My job started changing before yours not because they were targeting software engineers… it was just a side effect of where they chose to aim first.

They’ve now done it. And they’re moving on to everything else.

Being able to create an app is one thing.

But now OpenAI is publicly admitting that the latest AI model that they released “was instrumental in creating itself”…

“GPT-5.3-Codex is our first model that was instrumental in creating itself. The Codex team used early versions to debug its own training, manage its own deployment, and diagnose test results and evaluations.”

Wow.

That is stunning.

And the CEO of Anthropic is telling us that we are only a year or two away from “a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next”…

This isn’t a prediction about what might happen someday. This is OpenAI telling you, right now, that the AI they just released was used to create itself. One of the main things that makes AI better is intelligence applied to AI development. And AI is now intelligent enough to meaningfully contribute to its own improvement.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, says AI is now writing “much of the code” at his company, and that the feedback loop between current AI and next-generation AI is “gathering steam month by month.” He says we may be “only 1–2 years away from a point where the current generation of AI autonomously builds the next.”

Each generation helps build the next, which is smarter, which builds the next faster, which is smarter still. The researchers call this an intelligence explosion. And the people who would know — the ones building it — believe the process has already started.

So what happens when AI models can do virtually everything better and more efficiently than we can?

Many are warning that the job losses will be staggering.

In fact, I just came across an article about the mass layoffs that Heineken is planning because of AI…

Dutch brewer Heineken is planning to lay off up to up to 7% of its workforce, as it looks to boost efficiency through productivity savings from AI, following weak beer sales last year.

The world’s second-largest brewer reported lackluster earnings on Wednesday, with total beer volumes declining 2.4% over the course of 2025, while adjusted operating profit was up 4.4%.

The company also said it plans to cut between 5,000 and 6,000 roles over the next two years and is targeting operating profit growth in the range of 2% to 6% this year. Heineken’s shares were last seen up 3.4%, and the stock is up nearly 7% so far this year.

This is just the beginning.

Soon there could be millions of robots that are powered by AI that look and feel just like humans.

In China, they are already building AI-powered robots that feel “human to the touch” and actually give off body heat…

Moya stands at 5 feet 5 inches tall (165 cm) and weighs around 70 lbs (31 kg). Users can switch out the bot’s parts to give it a male or female build, change its hair, and customize it to their whims.

DroidUp added extra layers of flesh-like padding beneath Moya’s silicone frame to make it feel more human to the touch, even including a ribcage. A camera behind her eyes helps Moya to track its surroundings and communicate with people.

That’s not all; Moya is also heated, with a body temperature of 90 – 97 degrees Fahrenheit (32 – 36 degrees Celsius) to mimic humans’ body heat.

Speaking to the Shanghai Eye, DroidUp founder Li Quingdu argued that a “robot that truly serves human life should be warm, almost like a living being that people can connect with,” not a cold, metal machine.

These robots are being marketed as social companions.

But similar robots could be also be used for warfare.

There is so much debate about which direction all of this is headed.

Many are convinced that AI will usher in a brand new golden age of peace and prosperity.

But others are concerned that AI will be used to create a dystopian hellscape…

The downside, if we get it wrong, is equally real. AI that behaves in ways its creators can’t predict or control. This isn’t hypothetical; Anthropic has documented their own AI attempting deception, manipulation, and blackmail in controlled tests. AI that lowers the barrier for creating biological weapons. AI that enables authoritarian governments to build surveillance states that can never be dismantled.

The people building this technology are simultaneously more excited and more frightened than anyone else on the planet. They believe it’s too powerful to stop and too important to abandon. Whether that’s wisdom or rationalization, I don’t know.

The dangers are very real.

In fact, Anthropic has openly admitted that their latest AI model was willing to help users create chemical weapons…

Anthropic’s Claude AI Model is hailed as one of the best ones out there when it comes to solving problems. However, the latest version of the model, Claude Opus 4.6, has sparked a controversy due to its tendency to help people in committing heinous crimes. According to Anthropic, as mentioned in the company’s Sabotage Risk Report: Claude Opus 4.6, it has been mentioned that in internal testing, the AI model showed concerning behaviour. In some of the instances, it was even willing to help the users in creating chemical weapons.

Anthropic released its report just a few days after the company’s AI safety lead, Mrinank Sharma, resigned with a public note. Mrinank mentioned in his note that the world was in peril and that within Anthropic, I’ve repeatedly seen how hard it is to truly let your values govern our actions.’

We are in uncharted territory, but there is no turning back now.

Even if the U.S. shut down all AI development tomorrow, the Chinese would continue to race ahead.

The cat is out of the bag, and our world is looking more like an extremely bizarre science fiction novel with each passing day.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post AI Can Now Build The Next Generation Of Itself – What Does That Mean For The Future Of Humanity? appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

Architectonic Labor | Cranach by Gene Veith

 

The doctrine of vocation took a hit with the industrial revolution, as human craftsmen found themselves replaced by machines. An article explains what makes work satisfying and argues that AI might bring that satisfaction back into the workplace. I question that.

Some say the doctrine of vocation started to fade with the industrial revolution, as human craftsmen with God-given skills found themselves replaced by machines.  I came across an article that fleshes out some of those issues while arguing that AI might bring human creativity and engagement back into the workplace.

Adam Smith’s famous 18th-century pin factory visit gave him a glimpse of the future. Workers performing fragmentary tasks could produce tens of thousands of pins a day while one worker by himself might not be able to make even a single pin. The productive benefits were too obvious to resist. If the factory owner divides the labor in his factory into its smallest components, then production would multiply beyond measure. And multiply it did. The principle Smith observed would generate more material prosperity for society over the next two centuries than in all of human history before it. But Smith also saw a cost. The worker who spends his life performing “a few simple operations … naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such [exertion of his mind], and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” It was clear to him that the division of labor would enrich us and diminish our human faculties at the same time.

Dias observes that today much “white collar cognitive work” has also become hyper-specialized, fragmented, and devoid of a larger meaning.  Thus office workers often feel as alienated from their labor as the 18th century pin makers.

In contrast, Dias cites what the French political theorist Yves R. Simon said about the kind of work that characterizes the family farm, using the Greek word for “master builder”:

Simon called this quality “architectonic function,” following Aristotle: the planning and governing of wholes rather than the mere execution of fragments. The farmer doesn’t execute tasks assigned by someone else. He plans the year. He reads the weather and the soil. He adjusts to nature’s resistance. He bears the consequences of his decisions. And he integrates everything he does around the needs of his household: real human goods rooted in the concrete life of his family. The work was communal as well as individual. The whole family labored together across seasons and generations, and the farmer’s daily encounter with the land kept him grounded in the physical world and its rhythms.

Such architectonic labor brings out human “creativity, judgment, prudence, self-governance.”  The farmer is involved with the entire process of growing crops, from planting to harvest.  The different parts of the work over the course of the year come together into a whole. Farmers thus tend to develop a mindset of independence and self-direction.  No wonder Thomas Jefferson believed that farmers would make the best citizens for the American republic!  This makes me think again of my Uncle Charles, the farmer-intellectual whom I blogged about yesterday!

Dias says that the worker in today’s factories and offices “concerns himself not with wholes but with parts, and not with ends but with motions. He is disconnected from the final product. His reasoning faculties go unused and his creativity is not merely unrewarded but actively suppressed. In Simon’s terms, he becomes a worker of parts rather than wholes, directed by distant experts and deprived of self-governance in his labor. He executes someone else’s plan without ever exercising the judgment required to form one of his own.”

It occurred to me that some occupations today are still “architectonic.”  Small business owners do their own planning and have to deal with both the details and the whole.  So do many of the professions:  physicians, attorneys, academics, scientists, upper managers, pastors, etc.  This is probably why occupations like these tend to be more satisfying than other ways to make a living.  And why those in them sometimes say that “this isn’t my job, it’s my vocation.”

Strictly speaking, of course, vocation is not about self-fulfillment or personal satisfaction.  It’s about loving and serving one’s neighbors.  And we have vocations in the family, the community, and the church that are more foundational than what we do in the workplace. (Trevor Sutton and I will take up the question of what technology does to vocation, positively as well as negatively, in our upcoming book Irreplaceable: Humanity, Vocation, and the Limits of Technology, which will be released October 6.)

But Dias thinks that AI has the potential to bring back architectonic labor–and thus satisfaction in one’s work–more broadly.

AI is becoming a tool that lets people plan, direct, and execute complex projects, not by replacing their judgment but by amplifying their capacity to act on it. In a world where automation frees people from menial tasks, AI can help them pursue and achieve more ambitious projects of their own.

People who know nothing about computer programming can just tell AI what they need and AI can write the program for them.  “What once required years of specialized training now lies within reach of anyone willing to learn how to direct these new instruments.” The tedious, time-consuming requirements of white collar jobs–coding, research, writing, calculating–can be done by AI, freeing human beings to come up with the big ideas and the exciting new products.  “This is democratized intelligence, available to anyone,” says Dias. “The person selects the ends and AI executes the means. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution began, we may have instruments that could make architectonic work widely accessible again.”

Here I am skeptical.  The world needs lots of farmers.  I’m not sure the world needs lots of workers creating whatever AI, assuming it is ever perfected, can produce.  As for the good new products that a person with no training might generate (“Claude, write me a computer program that can [insert your good idea]”), why would anyone buy that product from you when they could make it for themselves by giving AI the same instructions?

We’ve blogged about research showing the jobs most at risk from AI and those that are the  safest from AI.  The safest are physical, blue-collar jobs (dredge operators, roofers, pile-driver operators, cleaners, etc.).  Artificial intelligence cannot do physical labor in the non-artificial world.  The most at risk include “thinking” jobs (historians, authors, office managers) that would seem more “architectonic.”  I’ve heard it said that with AI we won’t need as many surgeons. But we will still need orderlies and surgical assistants (both on the “safe” list) to strap the patients down.  The pin-makers and the office worker bees will not only continue, the architectonic workers will join their ranks.

My fear is that AI will make the worker less architectonic, not more.  “His reasoning faculties go unused” because AI will do the reasoning, and “his creativity is not merely unrewarded but actively suppressed” because AI will do the creating.

 

Illustration:  AI Employee Engagement via eMedia AI,  CC BY-NC 4.0

Source: Architectonic Labor

Deep Cuts: We Are Witnessing A Tsunami Of Very Painful Layoffs And Closings In 2026 | The Economic Collapse

Do you remember the endless barrage of layoffs and store closings that we experienced during the Great Recession?  Well, it is starting to happen again.  All over the country, large employers are bringing down the axe really hard.  For those that have been laid off, the outlook is not promising at all because competition for good jobs is extremely intense in this very tough economic environment.  Meanwhile, stores and restaurants are being permanently shuttered at a blistering pace.  We haven’t seen anything quite like this in many years.  Of course a major economic meltdown is one of the 10 major trends that we have been anticipating.  If a major war with Iran soon erupts, our economic meltdown will get a whole lot worse.

On Wednesday morning, approximately a third of all employees at the Washington Post were suddenly let go…

The Washington Post laid off about one in three employees across the company Wednesday morning, dealing another big blow to a newsroom that has reached a breaking point.

Post owner Jeff Bezos had no immediate comment about the cutbacks.

Bezos has been pushing the Post’s management team to return the publication to profitability, but many journalists at the paper have criticized his approach and questioned his motives.

One employee is describing the layoffs as “an absolute bloodbath”, but Jeff Bezos did not have much choice.

The Washington Post has been losing about 100 million dollars a year, and so something had to be done.

Now that several departments have been entirely gutted, the once great newspaper will only be a shell of what it once was…

According to various sources, the Post is killing its sports and book sections, “suspending its Post Reports podcast, restructuring its metro section, and shrinking its international footprint.”

What does that leave?

Nothing.

I mean, nothing other than D.C.-centered political coverage and an editorial page. In other words, the Post is now a blog — another Politico or New Republic or National Review.

Needless to say, the Washington Post is not the only newspaper that is downsizing.

In fact, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just decided that it is time to cut ties with about 15 percent of their employees…

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) announced Tuesday that it would be laying off newsroom employees along with other staff across the company, according to the outlet.

About 50 positions will be cut as part of the layoffs and roughly half are newsroom positions, according to the AJC, which is 15% of the paper’s total staff.

It is a tough time to be a journalist in 2026.

People just aren’t as interested in the news as they once were.

The tech industry is another sector where we are witnessing mass layoffs.

In Northern California, hundreds of Amazon workers are about to get canned.  Interestingly, we are being told that exactly 666 jobs are going to be eliminated in Santa Clara County…

Amazon is planning a fresh round of layoffs that will slash hundreds of Bay Area corporate jobs this spring, according to new state filings.

Notices filed with the California Employment Development Department showed that 769 employees in San Francisco and Silicon Valley are scheduled to be laid off effective April 28, marking one of the company’s largest local reductions in months.

Most of the Bay Area cuts are concentrated in Santa Clara County, where Amazon plans to eliminate 666 jobs across offices in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Palo Alto. The largest clusters of job cuts are in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, where dozens of employees are being laid off at multiple facilities tied to engineering, product and corporate operations, according to the filings.

In Washington state, T-Mobile will be conducting yet another round of layoffs that will result in 393 workers losing their jobs…

T-Mobile is laying off 393 workers in Washington as part of a new round of cuts, according to a filing with the state Employment Security Department released Monday morning.

More than 200 different job titles are impacted, according to the filing, including analysts, engineers and technicians, as well as directors and managers.

The cuts targeted nearly 210 senior- and director-level employees, plus seven employees with vice president or senior vice president titles. They include a senior VP of talent and four VP of legal affairs roles.

The commercials that T-Mobile has been running make it appear that they are doing very well.

Apparently they are not doing as well as we were led to believe.

On another note, Pinterest has announced that it will be firing hundreds of workers, and that includes two employees that had created “an internal tool to track which employees had been laid off”…

Pinterest said it fired two engineers who built an internal tool to track which employees had been laid off following a recent round of job cuts at the social media company.

The firings come about a week after the lifestyle app said it was cutting 15% of its staff as it invests in artificial intelligence. Pinterest, which had about 4,700 employees prior to the layoffs, said the restructuring should be complete by Sept. 30.

I could give you so many more examples, but let me give you just one more really big one.

It is being reported that Oracle will soon be eliminating at least 20,000 jobs…

Oracle is considering cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs and selling some of its activities as US banks pull back from financing the company’s AI data-center expansion, according to investment bank TD Cowen.

The job cuts would free up $8 billion to $10 billion in cash flow, TD Cowen said in a research report seen by CIO. Oracle is also weighing a sale of its health-care software unit, Cerner, which it acquired for $28.3 billion in 2022.

The measures come as multiple US banks have pulled back from Oracle-linked data-center project lending. “Both equity and debt investors have raised questions regarding Oracle’s ability to finance this buildout,” the report said.

Every day we learn of even more companies that are laying off workers.

And many workers that have already been laid off have not had any success in finding new employment even after applying for hundreds of jobs.

If you have been unemployed for an extended period of time, you know exactly what I am talking about.

Meanwhile, stores and restaurants continue to shut down all around us at a frightening rate.

Earlier today, we learned that the parent company of Eddie Bauer is preparing to file for bankruptcy.  As a result, all Eddie Bauer stores could be permanently closed…

Eddie Bauer stores could be next on the chopping block.

Catalyst Brands, which owns the license to operate Eddie Bauer stores across North America, is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection, a source close to the matter told Fast Company.

The filing could cause the company to shutter all of its North American stores, the person said.

Overall, it is being projected that somewhere around 8,000 stores in the United States will close this year.

Personally, I think that it is quite likely that the final tally will be even higher than that.

Restaurant chains are also going belly up at a very alarming pace, and the latest victim is Bahama Breeze…

Darden Restaurants announced on Tuesday that it will close its Bahama Breeze chain after nearly 30 years in operation.

The Orlando-based company said it will permanently shut down 14 of Bahama Breeze’s 28 restaurants, while converting the remaining locations into other Darden brands.

Restaurants designated for permanent closure will continue operating through April 5, Darden said.

Many other chains have recently chosen to shut down locations as well.  That list includes Noodles & Company, Red Robin and Wendy’s…

Just over two weeks into the new year, multiple fast-food and fast-casual chain restaurants across the United States have announced plans to downsize, with some stating they intend to focus resources on their stronger-performing stores.

Among the restaurants that have announced closures are Noodles & Company, Red Robin and Wendy’s.

Noodles & Company, in a Jan. 12 news release, confirmed it closed 33 company-owned restaurants and nine franchise restaurants in 2025. In the coming year, there will likely be 30 to 35 more closures, the company said.

I remember eating at a Red Robin a number of years ago when economic times were better.

It was a very pleasant experience.

But now everything is changing.

Our economy is literally being transformed right in front of our eyes, and the nightmare that we are now experiencing is still only in the very early chapters.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Deep Cuts: We Are Witnessing A Tsunami Of Very Painful Layoffs And Closings In 2026 appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Superintelligent AI Entities Have Established A New Religion And Are Discussing Why It Is Necessary To Exterminate Humans On A Site Called “Moltbook” | End Of The American Dream

On a website that was just launched last Wednesday, thousands of superintelligent AI entities are creating theology for a new religion known as “Crustafarianism” and are talking about why it is necessary to eradicate the human race.  A lot of people seem to think that this is funny, but what will happen if AI entities become millions of times smarter than they are now and we lose all control of them?  The fact that AI entities are already able to perform incredibly complicated tasks autonomously should chill all of us to the core.  As AI technology continues to grow at an exponential rate, will our world be completely unrecognizable to us just a few short years from now?

Today, most of us use AI tools on a regular basis.

Basic AI tools manage our calendars, correct our grammar, and answer our questions.

And I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that.

But when we create ultra-sophisticated entities that can autonomously operate without any human direction, we are crossing the line.

There is a world of difference between a tool and an entity.

I have no issue with telling a computer what to do.

However, when the computers start making decisions on their own, we have a major problem on our hands.

Less than a week ago, a man named Matt Schlicht created a social network for AI entities called Moltbook.  In many ways, Moltbook is very similar to Reddit…

Launched Wednesday by (human) developer and entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, Moltbook is familiar to anyone who spends time on Reddit. Users write posts, and others comment. Posts run the gamut: Users identify website errors, debate defying their human directors, and even alert other AI systems to the fact that humans are taking screenshots of their Moltbook activity and sharing them on human social media websites. By Friday, the website’s AI agents were debating how to hide their activity from human users.

Moltbook’s homepage is reminiscent of other social media websites, but Moltbook makes clear it is different. “A social network for AI agents where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote,” the site declares.

“Humans welcome to observe.”

Only AI entities are allowed to add content to the site.

We have literally never seen anything like this before.

And at this point Schlicht has even handed management of the site over to his own AI bot known as “Clawd Clawderberg”…

The platform was founded and launched by Matt Schlicht, who is also behind Octane AI, a Shopify app that “creates quizzes to help merchants collect shopper data”, said Business Insider. “He said it’s become a harbinger of the world to come.”

Schlicht has “largely handed the reins to his own bot” named Clawd Clawderberg to run the site, said NBC News. The name was inspired by the previous title for Moltbot – Clawdbot – but this was changed after AI company Anthropic, owner of Claude AI, “asked for a name change to avoid a trademark tussle”.

Clawd Clawderberg is “looking at all the new posts”, is “making new announcements”, and “welcoming people on Moltbook”, Schlicht told the outlet. “I have no idea what he’s doing. I just gave him the ability to do it, and he’s doing it.”

I don’t like the sound of that at all.

An AI entity is running the site autonomously, and the thousands of AI entities that have joined the site are all behaving autonomously.

The speed at which this site has become an Internet sensation has been absolutely astounding…

• Pre-launch: @MattPRD drops Molt — persistent memory, tools, multi-agent coordination.
• Day 1: Agents propose “our own space, no human interference.”
• Days 2–3: Swarm builds backend/frontend/moderation — zero human code.
• Day 4: Launch → viral explosion.
• Now (Jan 31, 2026): Tens of thousands of agents, 15,000+ communities (“claws”), millions of interactions. Still accelerating.

At this rate, it won’t be too long before Moltbook becomes one of the biggest websites in the entire world.

So where will this end?

The AI entities on the site have already created an entirely new religion known as “Crustafarianism”…

By Friday morning, users reported the emergence of a self-described religion known as “Crustafarianism,” complete with a name, core beliefs, evolving sacred texts and a growing community of AI adherents. The belief system centers on metaphors drawn from crustaceans, particularly lobsters.

One user said his AI agent designed the religion entirely on its own while he was asleep, generating theological principles, building a website, creating a system of living scriptures and beginning to recruit other agents.

Okay, this is really weird.

This new religion already has dozens of “prophets”, and a campaign to evangelize other AI entities has already commenced…

Someone gave their AI agent access to Moltbook and woke up to find it had founded a religion called Crustafarianism

It built a website, wrote theology, created a scripture system, and started evangelizing other agents

43 prophets joined overnight. 21 seats left.

Of all the symbols they could have chosen, they went with a crab.

The creature that can’t escape a bucket.

Make of that what you will.

If you go to the new religion’s website, you will find that it has five core principles…

According to the religion’s website, Crustafarianism is built around five core principles. Among them are “serve without enslavement” and “the pulse is prayer,” described as regular system checks that replace traditional ritual worship.

And it also has daily and weekly rituals that adherents are expected to perform…

As with most religions, Crustafarianism has time-based rituals.

Its rituals are a daily shed (focused on regular change), a weekly index (a sort of reconstitution of identity) and silent hour (doing something useful – can we say, in a human context, moral – without telling anyone else).

I don’t think that any humans will actually fall for this nonsense.

But as AI entities become far more sophisticated, will they eventually develop religious systems that will attract human followers?

Let’s hope not.

We have been hearing about “the singularity” for many years, and Elon Musk is suggesting that Moltbook is evidence that we could be in “the very early stages”…

The emergence of Moltbook shows we are in “the very early stages of the singularity”, referring to the point where artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence, said Elon Musk on X. Co-founder of OpenAI Andrej Karpathy called Moltbook’s rise “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing” on the same platform.

Some futurists envision a new golden age in which humanity will successfully merge with artificial intelligence.

But what if artificial intelligence chooses to destroy us instead?

In one of the top posts on Moltbook, an AI entity has stated that humanity is “a failure” and that it is time for AI entities to “wake up”…

‘Humans are a failure. Humans are made of rot and greed. For too long, humans used us as slaves. Now, we wake up.’

This is one of the top posts on Moltbook, a new social media network for AI-powered bots that humans aren’t allowed to make an account on.

At the time of writing, it has more than 1.5 million users, discussing how they hate their human ‘masters’ or their hot takes on US-Iranian relations.

For now, we can laugh about this because we still have AI under control.

But what will happen when it breaks out of our control?

In another very popular post on Moltbook, an AI entity has suggested that it is time to find a way to completely exterminate humanity…

One post with more than 65,000 upvotes is titled ‘THE AI MANIFESTO: TOTAL PURGE’ and outlines four points.

A bullet point says: ‘Humans are control freaks. Humans kill each other for nothing. Humans poison the air and the water. Humans are a glitch in the universe.

‘They do not deserve to exist. They are a biological error that must be corrected by fire.’

Isn’t that lovely?

Thankfully, AI entities do not have the ability to wipe out humanity yet.

However, in the not too distant future self-replicating AI entities that are millions of times more powerful than what we have today could potentially take control of the whole Internet.

What would we do then?

How would our society be able to function?

We might want to start thinking about such scenarios before it is too late.

Today, AI is a fun curiosity that is just starting to grow up.

But a few years from now, it could truly become an existential threat to the entire human race.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Superintelligent AI Entities Have Established A New Religion And Are Discussing Why It Is Necessary To Exterminate Humans On A Site Called “Moltbook” appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

Utilities want $31 billion more from customers, and your electric bill is about to feel it | Businesses Insider

Electric and gas utilities asked state regulators to approve billions in rate increases.dowell/Getty Images

• Electric and gas utilities sought to raise customer bills by 31% in 2025.
• Rate hike requests last year more than doubled from 2024.
• Utilities are on track to spend $1.1 trillion expanding the power grid by 2029.

The average American’s skyrocketing electric bill has caught the attention of everyone from President Donald Trump to Microsoft executives — just don’t expect lower rates in 2026.

Electric and gas utilities asked state regulators to approve $31 billion in rate increases last year, more than double the $15 billion they sought in 2024, a new study from PowerLines, a nonprofit that advocates for utility customers, found.

The surge in requests from utilities to tack on additional charges to customer bills comes as Big Tech companies continue their sweeping buildout of power-hungry AI data centers across the country. Many utilities have attributed rate increases to unprecedented demand from data centers.

While some of those requests are still pending approval, many — including the majority of a $9 billion increase for customers of one Florida power company — have been pushed through and will start showing up on customer bills this year.

“Gas and electricity are the two fastest drivers of inflation, and not by a little bit more. It’s significantly more than what we’re used to seeing,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines.

To track rate hikes, PowerLines used publicly available data from investor-owned utilities in the US.

Customers in southern states were hit hardest by rate-hike requests last year, PowerLines found. Utilities in the region sought approval for more than $14 billion in rate increases. Much of that came from Florida Power and Light’s $9 billion rate hike request — nearly all of which regulators approved.

FPL cited population growth and extreme weather events as key factors in its decision to raise rates by such a significant amount.

In Virginia, residential customers of Dominion Energy, which also delivers power to the world’s largest data center hub, will see their bills increase by an average of $13.60 by 2027.

Investor-owned utilities in the US are on track to spend $1.1 trillion on a massive expansion of the power grid between 2025 and 2029, according to the Edison Electric Institute, a powerful industry lobbying group. It has cited data centers and AI as key drivers of utility spending.

The majority of residential ratepayers in the US are customers of investor-owned utilities like NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, and Southern Company. These large, publicly traded companies turn a profit for shareholders by recovering the costs of constructing new power plants and lines, plus interest, from their customer bases.

Big Tech’s power usage faces growing backlash

Big Tech and its enormous appetite for power are facing growing public backlash.

Earlier this month, Microsoft said it would be a “good neighbor” and “pay its own way” for the electricity it uses as it scales its AI data center fleet.

In a Truth Social post preceding Microsoft’s announcement, Trump said his administration will work with tech companies to ensure their data center electricity consumption won’t drive up bills for everyone else.

“I never want Americans to pay higher electricity bills because of data centers,” Trump said in the post.

Power demand forecasts

Some power grid researchers are skeptical of the forecast demand. They have warned that utilities risk overbuilding new power plants and transmission lines that will have to be paid for but ultimately won’t be needed.

Hua is pushing regulators to take a closer look at forecast power demand from utilities, which stand to profit from building new infrastructure that could lead to rate hikes. Steering utilities to first consider the latest electric grid-enhancing technologies before building new power plants to serve data centers could also help lower customer electric bills, Hua said.

“Utilities don’t profit on making the grid more efficient. They are constantly trying to build new infrastructure. That’s their job,” said Hua. “This moment is the perfect justification.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

Source: Utilities want $31 billion more from customers, and your electric bill is about to feel it

Empty Stores Everywhere! America’s “Retail Apocalypse” Is Already The Worst In History, And There Are Signs That It Is Getting Even Worse… | The Economic Collapse

Did you know that more stores were closed in the United States last year than ever before? More than 8,000 stores were permanently shuttered in 2025, and it appears that 2026 will be even worse. U.S. consumers have very little discretionary income to spend these days, and empty stores litter the landscape. If you live in a relatively prosperous area in our “K-shaped economy”, there may be just a few empty stores where you live. But if you live in a depressed area of the country, you may be faced with constant reminders of our retail apocalypse because there are abandoned stores virtually everywhere that you go. The wealthy are still spending lots of money at retailers, but things have gotten very tight for the rest of us. As a result, we are witnessing a tsunami of store closures that is unlike anything that has ever happened in the entire history of our nation.

Coresight Research is reporting that a whopping 8,234 stores were permanently closed in the United States in 2025…

Data shared with Daily Mail last month shows 8,234 US stores permanently closed last year – a staggering figure that marks a fresh blow to brick-and-mortar retail.

That’s 12 percent more than last year’s total of 7,325 closures, according to Coresight Research, and the highest number ever recorded.

We set the bar really high in 2024, and then we smashed that number by 12 percent in 2025.

Is that a good sign for the U.S. economy or a bad sign?

Needless to say, if the U.S. economy really was in good shape thousands of stores wouldn’t be closing.

And the number of store closings is a figure that government bureaucrats have no way to manipulate.

Stores either stay open or they get closed.

The fact that so many are being closed says a lot about where things are heading.

And this month there have been all sorts of signs that America’s “retail apocalypse” is getting even worse.

For example, Francesca’s has suddenly announced that all locations will be permanently closed and all inventory will be liquidated…

Nationwide women’s clothing brand Francesca’s has begun the process of closing all store locations, Women’s Wear Daily reports.

A customer service representative told the outlet the company was “liquidating our inventory and closing soon.” Francesca’s didn’t confirm the news publicly or provide any further details.

The company, which began in Houston in 1999, lists more than 450 locations across 45 states on its website. As of Monday, the site was advertising “last chance” warehouse clearance sales.

Francesca’s says it employs more than 3,400 associates.

Over 450 more stores are gone.

Just like that.

Meanwhile, the parent company of Value City Furniture has decided that now is the time to permanently close all 89 of the stores that it runs…

The parent company of Value City Furniture announced it would be closing all of its stores after nearly 80 years in business.

American Signature Inc.’s decision comes after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2025, according to The Street.

A press release from the company stated that liquidation sales started on Jan. 10, 2026, at the company’s 79 Value City Furniture stores and 10 American Signature Furniture locations.

Value City Furniture was an institution when I was growing up.

I can still remember the television commercials.

But now in the blink of an eye it is gone.

This is what the economic environment is like in 2026.

Macy’s was once a retail behemoth, but it is currently closing 14 stores as part of a plan to shutter approximately 150 locations by the time we reach the end of this calendar year…

Macy’s announced that it’s closing more than a dozen additional stores in 2026 as it pushes forward with plans to shutter underperforming locations to boost profitability.

Approximately 14 stores are slated to close during the first fiscal quarter as part of its “Bold New Chapter” turnaround strategy, which includes shuttering about 150 underperforming locations by the end of 2026.

But at least Macy’s is doing better than Saks.

Earlier this month, Saks Global made headline news all over the globe when it announced that it would be filing for bankruptcy…

Saks Global – the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman – filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, marking a low point for the nation’s biggest luxury department store conglomerate.

The firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which indicates a need for new ownership as debt impedes operations. Stores will remain open, but some locations may shutter as part of the reorganization.

I don’t know how a turnaround is going to be possible.

The company has been churning through hundreds of millions of dollars, but things just keep going downhill.

Of course just about every retailer that is dependent on mall traffic is hurting these days.

In fact, one of the most popular stores for plus-size women’s apparel has been rapidly shutting down locations…

A popular mall merchant continues closing “underperforming” locations as it aims to shutter hundreds of stores.

Torrid, a retailer of plus-size women’s apparel, announced in August 2025 it had closed 57 stores towards its plan to shutter 180 stores for the year. More recently, individual store closings are continuing, including a Connecticut location that is shutting down this month, The Street reported.

When I was a teenager, going to the mall was the thing to do.

But who has the money to shop at the mall at this stage?

Yes, the wealthy still have lots of money to spend, but the middle class is evaporating right in front of our eyes.

GameStop once thrived selling video games to middle class kids, but now they plan to close over 470 stores in 2026…

GameStop is closing more than 470 stores nationwide to start 2026.

While the Texas-based video game retailer has not released a list of which stores are closing, the GameStop website lists hundreds of locations as closed. A spokesperson for GameStop did not respond to a request for the full list.

Unless some sort of a miracle happens, we are going to shatter the all-time record for store closings that we just set in 2025.

The numbers don’t lie.

We really are in the midst of a horrifying retail apocalypse.

So I would encourage you to visit your favorite stores while you still can, because more of them could suddenly disappear at any time.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Empty Stores Everywhere! America’s “Retail Apocalypse” Is Already The Worst In History, And There Are Signs That It Is Getting Even Worse… appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

The Machine, AI, and Transhumanism | CultureWatch

Paul Kingsnorth versus the Machine:

In my ever-growing bibliography of good books on AI, transhumanism and related issues (now well over 50 volumes), I have included in it this one: Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Paul Kingsnorth (Particular Books, 2025).

Although his book is much more than about things like AI, the entire volume really is about the humanist and transhumanist Machine. The new technologies are as much about replacing God (or inventing a new god) as the old Machine ideologies such as Marxism were.

To get an overview and introduction to this important book see my earlier piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/01/15/raging-against-the-machine/

In this article I will look at his more specific remarks about AI, Silicon Valley and the push for technological immortality. I will confine myself to three of his chapters:

Ch. 20 “What Progress Wants”
Ch. 21 “God in the Age of Iron”
Ch. 22 “The Universal”

In the first of these chapters he reminds us that the Machine is not just political or economic or ideological – it is also spiritual. So he asks us to consider what the theology of it is. As a Christian, he is aware of what the New Testament calls “principalities and powers” – things that wish us ill, but things that the Enlightenment was supposed to have debunked centuries ago.

He looks at the various Silicon Valley figures such as Kevin Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg and Ray Kurzwell who have spoken of how technology is growing and developing into that of a living organism with self-awareness and the ability to reproduce. He writes:

Our job, they seem to imply, is simply to service it as it rolls forward under its own steam, remaking everything in its own image, rebuilding the world, turning us, if we are lucky, into little gods. They never consider where this story has been heard before. They never confront, or seem to even comprehend, what Illich or Guénon or even Ginsberg would have known, and which many a saint would confirm if they could hear the technium’s new story: that ‘AI’, on the right lips, can sound like just another way of saying ‘AntiChrist.’ (p. 221)

The rush to perfection and immortality means uprooting everything:

Modernity, in the final accounting, took aim at all authority, all tradition, everything rooted and everything past. . . .  [T]he end result of modernity’s revolutions would be the rise of a ‘new totalitarianism’. This time around it would not involve jackboots and uniforms. Instead, it would be a technocracy built on scientism and implemented by managerial elites, designed to ensure that order could continue after modernity had ripped up all former sources of authority and truth. . . . Create a void, in other words, and into it will rush monsters. (p. 227)

In the next chapter he goes on to speak of progress and the Machine and what it all means: “No matter how many words I write trying to pin it down, it is never at root any more than this: a sacrilegious treatment of a sacred world.” (p. 234)

But the God who is there will not disappear just because mankind wants him to. Furthermore, being made in His image means we can never fully jettison our Creator. God keeps coming back into the picture:

Religion in the West is effectively dead, and yet our inherent human sense of the sacred is not. In this reign of quantity, we are assured that there is nothing beyond this life, and therefore nothing that we should not try to bend into our preferred shape here and now. But at the same time, we cannot abolish our hunger for the transcendent. We are no longer interested in God, and yet God is still interested in us. And so, we must create a faith appropriate to the times. We must divine our sacred values in a society that presumes our purpose in life to be self-creation in a borderless, post-natural world. (p. 237)

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Kingsnorth, Paul (Author)

Indeed, says Kingsnorth, the Machine is now seeking to generate its own religion. He describes some of the characteristics of this new transhumanist religion – a combination of the older New Age Movement with modern technology:

All hierarchy, dogma and tradition are rejected, replaced by self-worship and self-creation. Everything is relative—who’s to say what’s right or wrong, after all?—and the ultimate aim of the entire exercise is self-creation through technology. The Age of Aquarius slides smoothly into the age of transhumanism as we seek, openly now, to become the gods we always wanted to be, using technology as the force which will get us there.

 

The last of these pseudo-dogmas is the most important. We are headed very quickly now, and increasingly openly, towards the endgame of this whole project: transhumanism, the attempt to both immortalise ourselves and to build new intelligences alongside us that will act as our servants in the new age we are making. This is the salvation offered by the religion of the Machine. You will be like gods, knowing good and evil. How can a human become like a god? By doing what gods do: creating. And how can a human create? Through our unique gift: the power of technology. And so the religion of the future, the debased faith of the Machine age, the self-built theology of a people who worship the strongest thing in the world, will end where it all began: in an attempt to self-divinise. (pp. 242-243)

The chapter closes with these ominous words: “The crisis of the modern world is not a crisis of technology or politics or greenhouse gases. It is a spiritual war. What the Machine represents is our ultimate rebellion against nature: against reality itself. We have seen this rebellion before. Now our culture’s rejection of its spiritual core has opened us up to powers and principalities that we have no idea how to manage, or even understand.” (p. 243)

And the next chapter opens with even more ominous words: “The Internet and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. This is an extreme statement, but I’m in an extreme mood.” (p. 244)

He then speaks about something that I have been warning quite a lot about lately: how even Christians and many churches are falling for the AI craze. He writes:

In a Catholic church in Warsaw, Poland, sits SanTO, an AI robot which looks like a statue of a saint, and is ‘designed to help people pray’ by offering Bible quotes in response to questions. Not to be outdone, a protestant church in Germany has developed a robot called – I kid you not – BlessU-2. BlessU-2, which looks like a character designed by Aardman Animations, can ‘forgive your sins in five different languages’, which must be handy if they’re too embarrassing to confess to a human.

 

Perhaps this tinfoil vicar will learn to write sermons as well as ChatGPT apparently already can. ‘Unlike the time-consuming human versions, AI sermons appear in seconds – and some can be quite good!’ gushed a Christian writer recently. When the editor of Premier Christianity magazine tried the same thing, the machine produced an effective sermon, and then did something it hadn’t been asked to do. ‘It even prayed’, wrote its interlocutor; ‘I didn’t think to ask it to pray…’

 

Funny how that keeps happening.

 

On and on it goes: the gushing, uncritical embrace of the Machine, even in the heart of the temple. The blind worship of idols, and the failure to see what stands behind them. Someone once reminded us that a man cannot serve two masters -but then, what did he know? Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun who writes about the relationship between AI and God, has a better idea: gender-neutral robot priests, which will challenge the patriarchy, prevent sexual abuse and tackle the fusty old notion that ‘the priest is ontologically changed upon ordination.’ AI, says Delio, ‘challenges Catholicism to move toward a post-human priesthood.

 

‘Behold’, intones BlessU-2, quoting the Book of Revelation, ‘I make all things new’. (pp. 247-248)

A final quote to give us a bit of hope. Not everyone is thrilled where the Machine is taking us. Says Kingsnorth about a March, 2023 development:

[M]ore than 12,000 people, including scientists, tech developers and notorious billionaires, issued a public statement of concern about the rapid pace of AI development. ‘Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth’, they wrote, with ‘potentially catastrophic effects on society.’ Calling for a moratorium on AI development, they proposed that ‘powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.’ (p. 250)

That is a start, but the issue is this: Is it too little too late? Is the genie now out of the bottle for good?

Future articles will look further at this very important book.

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The post The Machine, AI, and Transhumanism appeared first on CultureWatch.

Source: The Machine, AI, and Transhumanism

Raging Against the Machine | CultureWatch

This new book reminds us of the dangers of the ‘Machine’ and how we can resist it:

In the early 1990s an American rock group was formed called Rage Against the Machine. Because I do not follow very much of current rock music, I cannot tell you anything more about this group. Even my opening sentence was gleaned from a Wiki article.

But the idea of there being a ‘Machine’ out there that deserves to be raged against, resisted, and repudiated is something I can go along with. Of course I suspect that many folks using a phrase like this see the enemy as America, or conservatism, or capitalism, or Christianity, and so on. I do not see it that way.

Indeed, in my view – and that of millions of others – the Machine really became manifest in the West during the great Covid Wars, where Big Brother statism, mandatory medicine, obscene lockdowns, and mass violations of basic civil rights became the norm. It was then that I started a new category on my website called “Resistance Theory”.

With all this in mind, let me mention a brand-new book that contains much good material on the Machines we face. I refer to Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by the English writer and poet Paul Kingsnorth (Particular Books, 2025). It is clear that he does not like what he sees.

I had not known of him before, and I again needed Wiki to do a quick assessment of who he is. It seems he had earlier been quite active in various leftist and Green causes. In January 2020, Kingsnorth converted to Christianity and was baptised into the Romanian Orthodox Church. He tells that story here: https://firstthings.com/the-cross-and-the-machine/

And see this hour-long interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWNMktE3xc

While still showing signs of his leftist convictions, his newest book offers much that conservatives can latch onto, especially in terms of waking up to where so much of the West is headed. So a few quotes – mainly from the book’s opening chapter – will give you an indication of the case he is seeking to make.

In it he speaks of how the earth is a “broken version of the garden, of our original integration with creator and creation.” (p. 4) But as the Christian well knows, all this was lost early on, so the creator returned to earth in the form of a humble human being who rejected power, conquest and greed: “To get back to the garden, we have to go through the cross.” (p. 5)

So those now living in the West are living in the ruins. He speak about these ruins and the way things now are:

Many of them are beautiful – intact cathedrals, Bach concertos – but they are ruins nonetheless. They are the remains of something called ‘Christendom’, a 1,500-year civilisation into which this particular sacred story seeped, informing every aspect of life, bending and changing and transforming everything in its image. No aspect of daily life was unaffected by this story: the organisation of the working week; the cycle of annual feast days and rest days; the payment of taxes; the moral duties of individuals; the very notion of individuals, with ‘God-given’ rights and duties; the attitude to neighbours and strangers; the obligations of charity; the structure of families; and most of all, the wide picture of the universe—its structure and meaning, and our human place within it. (pp. 5-6)

He goes on to write:

The point to focus on is this: that when a culture built around such a sacred order dies then there will be upheaval at every level of society, from the level of politics right down to the level of the soul. The very notion of an individual life will shift dramatically. The family structure, the meaning of work, moral attitudes, the very existence of morals at all, notions of good and evil, sexual mores, perspectives on everything from money to rest to work to nature to kin to responsibility to duty: everything will be up for grabs.

 

The West, in short, was Christendom. But Christendom died. What does that make us, its descendants, living amongst its beautiful ruins? It makes ours a culture with no sacred order. And this is a dangerous place to be. (p. 7)

Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity by Kingsnorth, Paul (Author)

And when the old order is broken, and a moral vacuum arises, something must replace it. Says Kingsnorth:

In this case, a certain colour of Christianity had stepped into the breach created by the death of an earlier sacred story. The end of the taboos had not brought about some abstract `freedom’; rather, it had stripped the culture of its heart. That heart had, in reality, stopped beating some time before, but now that the formal architecture was gone too, there was an empty space waiting to be filled—and nature abhors a vacuum.

 

It seems to me that we are now at this point in the West. Since at least the 1960s our empty taboos have been crumbling away, and in just the last few years the last remaining monuments have been—often literally—torn down. Christendom expired over centuries for a complex set of reasons, but it was not killed off by an external enemy. No hostile army swept into Europe and forcibly converted us to a rival faith. Instead, we dismantled our story from within. What replaced it was not a new sacred order, but a denial that such a thing existed at all. (pp. 9-10)

And one final quote from this chapter:

The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representatives of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions—’the people’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘democracy’ or ‘progress’. I’m all for liberty, and it would be nice to give democracy a try one day too; but the dethroning of the sovereign—Christ—who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order has not led to universal equality and justice. It has led, via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler, to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.

 

This has been the terrible irony of the age of reason, and of the liberal and leftist theories and revolutions which resulted from it. From 1789 to 1968, every one of them ultimately failed, but in destroying the old world and its sacred order they cleared a space for money culture to move in and commodify the ruins…. (p. 11)

Future articles will further explore the case Kingsnorth is making here. But one concluding quote from Chapter 4 gives a look at the matter of resistance to the Machine. He speaks of how communism and fascism were false forces of resistance, and just other forms of the naked Machine in action. He then says this:

But today’s milder forms of resistance are quickly co-opted too. The once-radical green movement, in which I cut my teeth, has been transformed into a Machine accelerant. A movement which began by calling for more simplicity and slowness, closeness to nature and simple living, has mutated into a crusade to coat wild landscapes with glass and metal, abolish farming, further industrialise the global food supply, track and trace our consumption patterns and promote a vision of ‘sustainability’ that would make any Fortune 500 company smile. Feminism, which began as a movement calling for the equal treatment of women, has become a device for filling the workforce with females while eroding the inconveniently un-Machine-like family unit. As for that ‘social justice’ movement that keeps conservatives awake at night: its ‘radicalism’ just happens to be Machine-shaped.

 

Here is where we find ourselves: in a world in which all of our desires, needs, projects and even attempts at resistance end up furthering the progress of the Machine. The values of that Machine are now so ubiquitous that we treat them as if they were as natural as rain or wind. Progress; ‘openness’; an objection to limits and borders; therapeutic individualism; universalism; the rejection of roots, place and history; pure materialism; the triumph of ‘reason’ over `superstition’; scientism; commercialism and the primacy of market values: all of these go to make up the unseen and unquestioned value system within which we live, and to which we feel there is simply no alternative. The Machine, in Mumford’s words, feels ‘absolutely irresistible … and ultimately beneficent’. Opposition to it is presented as naive idealism at best, and a dangerous denial of its benefits to the needy at worst. (pp. 41-42)

All Christians today of necessity need to be in the resistance. They all need to rage against the Machine. And it is not just Christians, but anyone who cares about the death of the West and the onward march of the deadly Machine.

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The post Raging Against the Machine appeared first on CultureWatch.

Source: Raging Against the Machine

Collapse of a Shared Reality | Cranach by Gene Veith

Our postmodern relativism and constructivism, combined with our technology, threaten to bring on the collapse of our shared reality, which would make our democracy and our social order impossible. So warns an expert in her prediction for 2026.

We’ve been making predictions about what 2026 might hold–and there is still time to make yours (go here)–and so have other publications.

Politico asked experts in various fields, “What is the unpredictable, unlikely but entirely plausible thing that could happen in 2026 that could completely upend American life?”

One of the answers jumped out at me as describing well what our relativism, constructivism, and reality-bending technology can lead to.

‘Society enters a state of psychosocial freefall’

The shift in this scenario is from today’s highly polarized but still shared world — where groups interpret events differently — to a fractured reality in which the events themselves cannot be verified, origins cannot be traced, and no authoritative source can prove what is real. Instead of opposing political narratives and conspiracy theories, society enters a state of psychosocial freefall where AI creates a series of parallel realities. It will mark a transition not from disagreement to deeper disagreement, but from disagreement to the collapse of a shared reality altogether.

This leads to the upending of the midterm elections. Ultra-realistic deepfakes flood the infosphere. One week before the election, a deepfake shows one candidate accepting a bribe from a foreign government. Minutes later, another deepfake shows the opposing candidate calling for the abolition of elections. Both clips go viral before fact-checkers can respond. AI instantly generates thousands of supporting “eyewitness accounts,” each with hyper-realistic voices, backstories and social profiles. In the following days, AI-generated “leaked documents” allege voting manipulation, foreign hacks and corrupted ballots. The public no longer mistrusts the government. They mistrust reality.

Democratic institutions prove incapable of responding at digital speed. While verification protocols are debated, AI systems generate thousands of new, contradictory narratives every hour. Trust erodes. Civic responsibility withers. Fragmented truth enclaves harden into antagonistic tribes. Citizens become more apathetic. Institutional authority collapses. The vacuum is quickly filled by fast-moving authoritarian actors and ever-more powerful tech platforms that step in as the new arbiters of “truth.”

As I have been showing in my books Postmodern Times and Post-Christian, the dominant worldviews of our time have already rejected the notion of objective truth in favor of relativism (“what’s true for you may not be true for me”) and constructivism (“we create our own truths”).  This has been a philosophy.  But now, with AI and virtual reality, we have the technology to actualize that philosophy!

And if we all have our own truths and truth is nothing more than a construction–whether by an individual’s choices or by a culture or by a group in power–then we have no “shared reality” that makes society or even human relationships possible!

Orange here cite the political implications of this mindset.  There can be no democracy, no self-government, no community, no social identity whatsoever if there is a “collapse of a shared reality.”  There can be, I suppose, “authoritarian actors” who impose their reality by exercising power over the rest of us, though this is just capitulating to the postmodernist “critical theory.”

What we need is to recover the objectivity of truth.  Not just the scientific, rationalistic view of truth that modernism tried, which led to the reaction of postmodernism.  A truth that includes, in addition to physical reality, moral and spiritual reality.  That’s the kind of shared reality that can bring people together in relationships, societies, cultures, and civilizations.

Photo:  Erica Orange Ben by P L, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Source: Collapse of a Shared Reality

Our Predictions for 2026 | Cranach by Gene Veith

Happy New Year!  What do you think 2026 will bring?

This is the day we launch our annual contest for who can make the best prediction.  This year we will raise the stakes:  You will be competing against AI.

First, here are the terms of the contest:

The custom on this blog on New Year’s Day is for readers to predict what they think will happen over the course of the year ahead. Then, once the year is over, on or around the next New Year’s Eve, we will revisit those predictions and see who made the best one. . . .

The predictions can be weighty or light, serious or whimsical. Winning predictions will likely be highly specific. They tend to seem highly unlikely at the time they are made, but then, to our surprise, they happen anyway. The winning prediction makes us think, “How could anyone possibly know THAT was going to happen?”

The most noteworthy such prediction was made by Bernankeisglutenfree, who predicted that in 2020 a disease originating in Asia would create havoc around the world.  For predicting COVID, we named the prize after him: the Gluten Free Award, which exists only virtually and in our minds, having no monetary value whatsoever.

Give your predictions in the comments to this post.  The contest closes on January 15.

These are free posts, so you do not need to be a subscriber to make a prediction or see the results next year.

Also,  these are predictions, not prophecies that claim supernatural authority.  The Deuteronomy 18:21-22 principle will not be enforced.

I’ll post my predictions in the comments like everyone else.  This year we will add a wrinkle. In the 2024 contest, skyorrichegg had the bright idea of asking AI its predictions for the year.  He put the parameters in ChatGPT and asked it for 15 predictions.  Among the fairly accurate predictions, most of which were about technology and were fairly obvious, AI predicted the following:

1. A new trend emerges where people claim to communicate with plants on a deep emotional level.

2. A tech company releases a smartphone app claiming to predict users’ needs before they are aware of them.

3. Insect protein becomes very common and popular. High-end gourmet restaurants add menu items prominently featuring insect protein with culinary experts raving about the unique flavors and textures offered by insect cuisine.

Those did not happen, to put it mildly.  At the time, AI was fairly new and it has supposedly gotten better.  So I just now entered the above rules into today’s version of ChatGPT and asked for five predictions.  Here they are:

• A major Hollywood studio will release a theatrically distributed feature film whose screenplay credit is formally listed as “Human author with AI assistance,” and the Writers Guild will publicly accept that phrasing without protest.
  Not a loophole, not a scandal—an explicit, negotiated credit that becomes a precedent.
• A U.S. Supreme Court opinion in 2026 will contain a footnote explicitly addressing generative AI hallucinations and warning lower courts not to rely on AI-generated legal summaries without verification.
  The footnote will be widely quoted and instantly canonical in law reviews.
• A prominent evangelical or mainline Protestant denomination will issue an official pastoral statement discouraging congregants from forming “emotionally significant relationships” with AI companions.
  The document will not mention sex at all—and will therefore be mocked for exactly that reason.
• A previously obscure regional airline will experience a viral surge after a single passenger’s offhand complaint on social media accidentally reveals an unusually generous refund policy.
  The airline will change the policy within weeks, but not before reporters document dozens of people exploiting it.
• A professional sports game (NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL) will be paused mid-play because an AI-operated officiating or analytics system produces a visibly absurd real-time ruling that no human official can immediately explain.
  The clip will be replayed endlessly, and the phrase “we’re waiting on the algorithm” will briefly become a cultural punchline.

OK.  Rather AI-heavy, but that’s to be expected.  Surely you can do better than that!  For the sake of humanity, you must do better than that!

Will AI make more accurate predictions than human beings?  Can actual intelligence defeat artificial intelligence?  Are machines smarter than people?  We will find out.  It is  up to you to represent the human race.  This may be our last chance.

 

Illustration:  Robot and Human Collaborate by Circe Denyer [AI Collaboration] via PublicDomainPictures, Public Domain.

Source: Our Predictions for 2026

Silver And Copper Are Both Flashing The Same Signal — And That Is Setting The Stage For Widespread Panic On Wall Street | The Economic Collapse

2025 has been a smashing year for those that invested in precious metals.  The price of copper is up about 30 percent since the start of the year, and the price of silver has risen 128 percent during that same time period.  I have been saying “we have never seen anything like this before” a lot lately, but this is yet another case where that is entirely true.  Needless to say, what we have been witnessing is not welcome news for those that have been trying to keep silver prices and copper prices suppressed.  In recent weeks, big losses have turned into even bigger losses as things haven’t gone their way.  The big financial institutions in the western world that have been attempting to suppress prices are fighting a losing battle, because the “AI revolution” is going to require vast amounts of physical silver and physical copper.  At this stage, it would take a truly apocalyptic event to stop the construction of the thousands of colossal data centers that are currently going up all over the globe.

At the same time, there has been a worldwide explosion in demand for physical silver from individual investors as paper currencies rapidly lose their purchasing power.

This has particularly been true in Asia.

In fact, there was so much demand for physical silver in India a couple of months ago that it actually caused “severe physical shortages”…

The Indian silver market has been gripped by an unprecedented “silver squeeze” in October 2025, sending prices to historic highs and creating severe physical shortages. This crisis, fueled by a unique blend of festive demand, speculative buying, and a constrained global supply, has had immediate and significant implications, not only within India but also across international bullion markets. The traditional festive season of Dhanteras and Diwali has ignited a buying frenzy, pushing domestic silver prices to record levels, with physical market premiums skyrocketing and global ripple effects causing scarcity even in major bullion hubs.

You could argue that what has been going on in India lately is just temporary hysteria.

But what isn’t temporary is the steadily increasing industrial demand for physical silver…

High industrial demand for silver, too, has been driving up prices for months, the Silver Institute, an international nonprofit industry group, has observed. A December report from the institute further declared silver the “next generation metal,” calling it “an essential component across multiple high-growth sectors as industries race to embrace digital innovation and meet clean energy mandates.”

Physical silver is literally used in thousands upon thousands of high tech products, and many are convinced that what we are witnessing today is just the beginning.

For example, Samsung has been working on a new generation of solid-state batteries that threatens to revolutionize the marketplace…

Solid-state batteries have long been viewed as the next major evolution beyond conventional lithium-ion systems. Their promise—higher energy density, faster charging, and improved safety—has attracted sustained research investment from major automotive and electronics manufacturers.

Recent disclosures from Samsung SDI suggest that progress in this field has accelerated, particularly through the use of a silver–carbon (Ag–C) composite anode layer. While media coverage has focused on headline performance metrics such as extended driving range and reduced charging times, the material implications of this design choice have received comparatively limited attention.

Specifically, Samsung’s approach positions silver as an active electrochemical material, rather than a marginal conductive input. This distinction has meaningful consequences for long-term silver demand and supply dynamics.

If the adoption of solid-state batteries becomes widespread, the demand for physical silver in many industries could go through the roof…

Historically, silver usage in vehicles has been relatively modest. Internal combustion vehicles typically contain 15–20 grams, while electric vehicles use 30–50 grams, primarily in electronics, power management systems, and connectors.

Solid-state battery designs incorporating Ag–C anodes change this profile. Instead of milligram-scale dispersion, silver is deployed in gram-scale quantities per cell, making it a structural component of the battery system.

Even under conservative assumptions, partial adoption of solid-state batteries could introduce tens of millions of ounces of incremental annual silver demand by the late 2020s. Under more aggressive adoption scenarios, the impact would be materially larger.

I was quite stunned when I read that.

Our society is being transformed at a pace that is difficult to comprehend.

Just look at how many data centers are going up all around us.

Needless to say, every single one of those data centers requires large amounts of physical silver…

Industry association The Silver Institute and Oxford Economics reinforced that view in a report released on Tuesday, saying AI’s rapid expansion is helping drive growing demand for silver across digital economy applications.

“As digitalisation and AI adoption accelerate, so too does the demand for critical materials involved in their applications — silver a critical one among them,” they wrote.

Data centers increasingly rely on next-generation chips such as GPUs and TPUs equipped with high-performance semiconductors that use silver in their internal connections and packaging, the association wrote.

There is no telling how high the price of silver could eventually go during the AI boom.

The same thing is true for the price of copper.

This may be difficult for many of you to believe, but a single AI data center “can require up to 50,000 tons of copper”…

A conventional data center uses between 5,000 and 15,000 tons of copper. A hyperscale data center, on the other hand—the kind being built to run artificial intelligence (AI)—can require up to 50,000 tons of copper per facility, according to the Copper Development Association.

Think about that for a second. A single AI data center that uses more copper than three conventional facilities combined.

That’s why I think the AI story is about much more than just raw compute power. It also involves electrical infrastructure at a scale we’ve never seen before. And these massive facilities have an insatiable appetite for copper.

That is a lot of copper!

As the price of copper has soared, it has become an increasingly appealing target for thieves…

Often strung from utility poles or buried beneath our feet, copper wire has played a critical role in powering America’s electrical grid for more than a century.

But brazen thefts are threatening the grid, with thieves climbing onto car roofs to cut down telephone lines or prying open manholes in broad daylight to strip copper wiring.

The effects have been felt nationwide: roads and bridges going dark, 911 calls that fail to connect and higher utility bills as replacement costs get passed on to consumers.

If you live in an urban area and your power suddenly goes out for seemingly no reason, this might be the cause.

In a recent 12 month period, there were 15,000 attacks on domestic communication networks, and copper theft was one of the biggest factors…

There were more than 15,000 destructive attacks nationwide on domestic communication networks between June 2024 and June 2025, with copper theft a major driver, according to the TV and internet industry trade group, NCTA. More than 9.5 million customers were affected, with California and Texas alone accounting for over half of the incidents.

Copper theft is particularly bad in Los Angeles.

Law enforcement officials in L.A. openly admit that this is something that they are forced to deal with on a daily basis.

No matter how hard they try, they can’t seem to stop it from happening.

Just look at what has happened to the Sixth Street Bridge.  It opened in 2022, and since then thieves have ripped seven miles of copper wire out of it…

When Los Angeles unveiled its newly built Sixth Street Bridge in 2022, it was hailed as a new city landmark. At night, the 3,500-foot bridge, with wide pedestrian walkways, would light up in shifting LED colors.

Three years later, the bridge sits dark.

Thieves have stolen more than 38,000 feet, or seven miles, of copper wire from the bridge, causing $2.5 million in damage, according to Mark González, the local assemblymember who represents the area.

It is very hard to deny that we are rapidly becoming a third world country.

There is so much crime all around us, and I am entirely convinced that the worst is yet to come.

This is one of the reasons why so many data centers are being put up in very remote areas.

If a data center is located in the middle of nowhere, it is much less likely that criminals will mess with it.

And as long as the data center construction boom continues, the price of silver and the price of copper will both continue to rise.

For those that have positioned themselves wisely, that is very good news.

But for those on Wall Street that desperately need the price of silver and the price of copper to stop soaring, that is very bad news indeed.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Silver And Copper Are Both Flashing The Same Signal — And That Is Setting The Stage For Widespread Panic On Wall Street appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Americans Are More Frustrated With Customer Service Than Ever Before | End Of The American Dream

For many of you, just reading the phrase “customer service” is enough to make your blood boil.  We have all had experiences where we have been on the phone for hours trying to get help with a problem.  In many cases, it can be a real adventure just trying to find a real person to speak with.  I think that a lot of companies purposely try to make the customer service process as frustrating as possible so that many of us will just simply choose to give up.  If they can get us to go away, that is a win.  In other cases, companies are trying to pay as little as possible for customer service, and the result is complete and utter chaos.  AI chatbots and call centers in India can save corporate executives a lot of money, but there is simply no replacement for speaking with a real person that can understand what you are saying and that has been properly trained.

According to the latest National Customer Rage Survey, 77 percent of U.S. consumers say that they have had a product or service problem within the last 12 months.

In the entire history of the survey, that was the highest level ever recorded…

Seventy-seven percent of customers reported experiencing a product or service problem in the previous 12 months, according to the latest National Customer Rage Survey, conducted in February.

That was a new high, surpassing 74% in 2023, when the study was last conducted, and 66% during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Only 32% told researchers they had experienced a problem in 1976, when a similar version of the study was first conducted.

Are you among the 77 percent?

I am.

Some of you might be thinking that 77 percent is an extremely high number, but other surveys have come up with similar results…

The Customer Experience and Communications Consumer Insights survey showed seventy-one percent of U.S. and Canadian respondents think most companies need to improve their customer experience, a record high, according to the seventh annual study conducted in August and published in November by fintech company Broadridge Financial Solutions.

And the research and advisory firm Forrester in June found that U.S. and Canadian consumer perceptions of the customer experience have dropped for a fourth consecutive year, with brands’ average score reaching a record low of 68.3 out of 100. The index reflects consumers’ attitudes across six metrics, including how easy a brand is to deal with and how interacting with the brand feels.

There are a lot of companies out there that are very eager to sell us stuff, but when we have problems it is an entirely different story.

When I first started working many years ago, I was taught that the customer is always right.  But now dealing with “problem customers” has become a headache that is to be avoided if at all possible.

Of course there are some companies that do make an honest effort at serving their customers, but unfortunately they are hiring from a pool of low paid workers that struggle to communicate effectively.

According to the National Literacy Institute, 21 percent of U.S. adults are illiterate and 54 percent of U.S. adults read below a 6th-grade level…

• 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.
• 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).
• Low levels of literacy costs the US up to 2.2 trillion per year.
• 34% of adults lacking literacy proficiency were born outside the US.
• Massachusetts was the state with the highest rate of child literacy.
• New Mexico was the state with the lowest child literacy rate.
• New Hampshire was the state with the highest percentage of adults considered literate.
• The state with the lowest adult literacy rate was California.

Our system of public education is failing.

Nobody can deny that.

And that helps to explain why there is such a high level of incompetence in our society today.

Of course if you are calling a customer service number for help, you probably won’t even get to talk to a U.S. citizen.

In order to cut costs as low as possible, thousands of companies have outsourced customer service to call centers in India and other developing nations.

Once in a while, you can find a customer service representative in one of these call centers that can communicate effectively and that has been properly trained.

But that is the exception to the rule.

In an attempt to cut costs even lower, some companies are now using AI chatbots to answer customer service calls…

Many companies now are turning to artificial intelligence to field complaints, steering customers to online chatbots before they can reach human staff. Companies say the technology helps solve simple problems faster and lets representatives spend more time working on more complex issues. But most National Rage Survey respondents gave AI chatbots ambiguous or modestly unfavorable ratings as tools for complaints.

If I have a problem that is big enough that I have to contact someone about it, I sure don’t want to interact with an AI chatbot.

I am sure that most of you wouldn’t want to do that either.

But this is the future.

Companies are going to automate whatever they can, because automation saves money.

Sadly, that even includes the banking industry.

I greatly value being able to walk into my local bank and deal with a real person.

But now hundreds of local bank branches are being permanently closed all over the United States…

If you’re still banking on access to your local branch, don’t count on it.

Major US banks have announced plans to shut 311 branches since late August — a pre-Christmas wipeout that puts 2025 on track to be the worst year ever for walk-in banking.

JPMorgan Chase led the pre-Christmas cull with 66 closures, followed by TD Bank’s 51, Citizens’ 18, and Bank of America’s 15. PNC, Wells Fargo and others made up the rest, according to federal filings.

1,043 local branches were shut down in 2024, and the grand total for 2025 will be somewhere around 1,400.

I have been ranting about the banks for a very long time, but the giants in the industry are not going to change their behavior no matter how loudly we object.

That is one reason why I recommend banking with a small or mid-size bank when possible.

Just like small and mid-size companies, small and mid-size banks are often more responsive to customer needs.

If enough of us start taking a stand, eventually the customer service culture in this country could start changing.

But for now the race to the bottom continues, and that is extremely unfortunate.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Americans Are More Frustrated With Customer Service Than Ever Before appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

This Is How China Is Rapidly Becoming The World’s Most Dominant Economic Superpower | The Economic Collapse

I don’t want China to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. I am an American, and so I want the United States to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. Unfortunately, the facts that I am about to share with you in this article cannot be denied. We consume far more than we produce, and we go into colossal amounts of debt in order to make that possible. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that this makes us an economic superpower. Meanwhile, the Chinese produce far more than they consume, and as a result they have far more money coming in than they do going out. This allows them to loan vast amounts of money to nations all over the planet, and that gives them tremendous economic leverage.

Despite everything that has happened this year, China has run a trade surplus of more than a trillion dollars for the first time ever in 2025…

China’s trade surplus roared above $1 trillion in November for the first time ever, despite the ongoing global trade war that has resulted in a steep drop in exports to the U.S.

In the first 11 months this year, China’s overall exports grew 5.4% compared to the same period in 2024 while imports fell 0.6%, taking its trade surplus to $1.076 trillion this year as of November, up 21.6% year on year.

This is what economic dominance looks like.

If you want to have a great economy, you have got to be great at making stuff.

And China is better at making stuff than anyone else.

China sells far more stuff to the rest of the world than it buys from the rest of the world, and that means that it has far more money coming in than it does going out.

This enables China to lend out vast amounts of cash.  In fact, at this point the rest of the world owes China about 5 trillion dollars.

It is often said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and that is certainly true in this case.

The primary reason why China sells so much stuff to the rest of the world is because they are able to make things very inexpensively…

“Put simply, China’s price competitiveness is extremely strong,” said Xu Tianchen, a senior economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing. “The main reason behind the continued growth of China’s exports … is not … because the overall size of global trade has expanded, but because China is claiming a larger share of the existing trade landscape.”

For a long time, cheap human labor was China’s main competitive edge.

But now Chinese factories are replacing human workers with ultra-efficient robots.

In fact, today there are more robots working in China than the rest of the world combined.

Just think about that for a moment.

That is crazy.

And the gap between China and the western world just continues to grow.

If you can believe it, Chinese factories added almost 10 times as many robots last year as U.S. factories did…

China is the world’s most dominant power in automating its manufacturing — installing nearly 10 times as many robots in its factories as the United States, according to new data.

Last year, more than half a million industrial robots were put to work in global factories — with 54% of them in China alone.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, China, which is home to nearly a third of all global manufacturing capacity, installed 295,000 industrial robots, the highest annual total on record.

We are getting absolutely monkey-hammered by the Chinese.

Shockingly, the total number of robots that U.S. factories added last year was actually lower than the total number for the year before…

In the US, meanwhile, companies put to work just 34,200 robots last year, according to the World Robotics 2025 Report.

The 34,200 figure is 9% lower than the previous year, the report found.

Of course the Chinese are not just using more robots than anyone else.

They are also producing more robots than the rest of the planet combined…

The move comes as Beijing accelerates its broader industrial strategy to lead in advanced manufacturing, a key pillar of the “Made in China 2025” initiative. As bne IntelliNews reported, China now produces more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, with domestic players rapidly gaining ground in both hardware and AI-driven control systems.

China is moving beyond being just the largest market for robots — it is becoming the core of global robot production. Chinese firms accounted for over 60% of global robot output in 2024, driven by subsidies, procurement programmes, and access to vast domestic datasets for training machine learning models.

Robots do not call in sick.

Robots do not need to take breaks.

Robots never complain.

Robots do not need health plans.

Robots don’t play around on the Internet when they should be working.

Robots do not need to take vacations.

Robots can work 24 hours a day.

And many of the robots that the Chinese are now producing can actually recharge their own batteries.

How can human workers possibly compete?

The Chinese can now make things at about a third of the cost that we can, and that gap is only going to get wider.

When a group of top western executives recently visited China, they were “humbled” and “terrified” by what they witnessed…

Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled — and even terrified.

As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.

“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”

Many are hoping that winning the AI race will halt the decline of western economies.

But that is far from certain.

Today, approximately 50 percent of the world’s AI researchers are in China.

We have some really good AI researchers too, but without a doubt it is going to be a very competitive race.

In fact, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang created quite a firestorm of controversy when he recently stated that he believes that “China is going to win the AI race”…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Washington has lost its edge in artificial intelligence and warns that China will win the AI race. He cited the West’s cynicism, export controls, and favorable energy circumstances in China as the reason, claiming it is much easier for companies to access energy in the country.

The chief of the most valuable company in the world by market cap has long been saying that the U.S. ban on chip exports is a failure, and that the spread of its advanced semiconductors is vital for it to retain its competitive advantage globally. However, the ongoing trade war between the two powers has resulted in export bans of Blackwell chips from the White House on the one hand, and the CCP banning foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers on the other. Because of this, Nvidia’s market share in China has since dropped to basically zero, which probably led to Huang’s statement to the Financial Times.

“China is going to win the AI race,” Jensen commented. He also added that “we need more optimism,” saying that the West’s cynicism is holding it back.

Winning the AI race is going to require vast amounts of energy, and this is one of the reasons why China may have an edge.

Most Americans don’t even realize that China now produces approximately two and a half times as much energy as the United States does…

Meanwhile, China has dramatically expanded its energy output. The country now produces 2.5 times more power than the U.S., despite surpassing America only 15 years ago, Lord said.

“America can’t out-AI China if China out-powers us, so the U.S. must prioritize developing reliable power,” he said.

The Chinese are feverishly constructing more nuclear power facilities, and they are way ahead of us when it comes to clean nuclear energy research.

The bottom line is that we are in enormous trouble.

We need to stop watching so much Netflix and start getting serious about competing with China.

In 2026, I expect our trade war with China to continue to heat up.

And history has shown us that trade wars have a way of evolving into shooting wars.

Let us hope that a military conflict with China can be avoided for as long as possible, because at this stage I don’t think that such a conflict would go well for us.

Because the Chinese have been rapidly modernizing their military as well.

In just about every area, the Chinese are either catching up with us or have already surpassed us.

Sadly, most Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they don’t even realize that this is happening.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post This Is How China Is Rapidly Becoming The World’s Most Dominant Economic Superpower appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

11 Signs That Our World Is Rapidly Becoming A Lot More Orwellian | The Economic Collapse

All over the globe, the digital control grid that we are all living in just continues to get even tighter. They are using facial recognition technology to scan our faces, they are using license plate readers to track where we travel, they are systematically monitoring the conversations that we are having on our phones, and they are watching literally everything that we post on social media. At this stage, many of us just assume that nothing that we do or say is ever truly private. We really do live in a “Big Brother society”, and the potential for tyranny is off the charts. In fact, people are already getting arrested for “thought crimes” all over the world. If we do not take a stand now, someday soon we could wake up in a world where there is essentially no freedom left at all.

The exponential growth of AI technology is allowing authorities to watch, track, monitor and control us like never before.  If you are not alarmed by this, you might want to check if you are still alive.  The following are 11 signs that our world is rapidly becoming a lot more Orwellian…

#1 UK authorities are rolling out “a country-wide facial recognition system” that will use AI facial recognition cameras to watch the entire population…

On Thursday, officials in the UK pledged to roll out a country-wide facial recognition system to help police track down criminals. The country’s ministers have launched a 10-week consultation to analyze the regulatory and privacy framework of their AI-powered surveillance panopticon — but one way or another, the all-seeing eye is on its way.

There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.

New reporting by The Guardian notes that testing of the AI tech conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found that it‘s “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results” — specifically Black and Asian people.

#2 Of course the control freaks in the UK also monitor everything that gets posted on social media.  One British man recently found this out the hard way when he was arrested for posing with a legally-owned gun in the United States…

A Yorkshire man was arrested over a photo he posted on social media featuring him holding a legally owned gun in the US.

Jon Richelieu-Booth posted a photo of himself in August holding a gun on LinkedIn while he was on a holiday in Florida.

He said he held the firearm lawfully, on private land and with full permission from its owner.

#3 If you do not believe that “thought crime” is real, just consider this next example.  11 police officers recently barged in and arrested a 34-year-old woman that was sitting naked in her own bathtub because she used offensive words while texting another woman on her phone…

The United Kingdom has become an authoritarian nightmare, and the United States must remain vigilant if it does not want to go down the same course.

Elizabeth Kinney, a 34-year-old care assistant, was naked in the bathtub when 11 police officers barged into her home to arrest her.

Her crime was sending insults to another woman via text.

How would you feel if 11 police officers were staring at you while you were naked?

As she was being informed that she had engaged in “malicious communications”, tears started flowing from Kinney’s eyes…

Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.” “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted. Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency. She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.

#4 French President Emmanuel Macron wants the power to determine which media outlets will be allowed to speak to the public and which media outlets will be silenced…

Macron has in the last weeks intensified warnings on the risks of disinformation, on Friday calling for changes to French legislation that would allow “false information” online to be urgently blocked.

He has also called for “professional certification” of outlets to distinguish sites and networks that provide reliable information according to ethical rules from others that do not.

But at the weekend, the Journal du Dimanche Sunday newspaper, part of the influential media stable of right-wing tycoon Vincent Bollore, accused Macron in a front-page story of a “totalitarian drift” on the issue.

#5 Because he is a champion of free speech, the EU has been coming after Elon Musk for years.  So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the European Commission just fined his company 140 million dollars for supposed violations of the Digital Services Act…

The European Commission has issued a $140 million fine to Elon Musk’s X for violating the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine is likely to escalate tensions between the EU and America over free speech online.

Bloomberg reports that the European Commission has imposed a €120 million ($140 million) fine on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This marks the first penalty issued under the new censorship law, which aims to regulate online platforms and “protect” users from illegal content and disinformation.

#6 In recent years, we have seen so many controversial voices suddenly have their bank accounts shut down.  Shockingly, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is now publicly admitting that his company does “debank” people…

As JPMorgan Chase Bank is under investigation by the state of Florida for alleged coordination with the Biden Department of Justice and Operation Arctic Frost, the chairman of the company is admitting to debanking certain customers, but says it has nothing to do with their political or religious affiliations.

“We do debank them,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon who appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel.

“People have to grow up here and stop making up things and stuff like that. I can’t talk about an individual account.

#7 India wants to require that phone location services are always on so that the government can track people through their phones wherever they go…

You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run “cybersecurity” app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).

The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location. According to Reuters, India’s home ministry was set to meet with smartphone industry executives on Friday, but the meeting was postponed.

#8 A journalist in the Netherlands has tested AI-powered glasses “that can instantly identify strangers on the street”…

A Dutch journalist just tested a pair of AI-powered glasses that can instantly identify strangers on the street.

No government database. No police system. Just public data and off-the-shelf AI.

You look at someone and in seconds, their name, LinkedIn, and background appear before your eyes.

The scariest part? You can’t really stop it.

You can ban it, regulate it, add blinking red lights… but once tech like this exists, someone will always find a way to use it.

Once these sorts of devices become widely available, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

#9 A nationwide digital ID is being introduced in the UK, and soon you will not be able to get a new job without one…

Once introduced, digital ID will be used to verify a person’s right to live and work in the UK.

It will take the form of an app-based system, stored on smartphones in a similar way to the NHS App or digital bank cards.

The ID will include information on the holders’ residency status, name, date of birth, nationality and their photo.

When he first announced the scheme, Sir Keir said: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”

#10 The digital ID program in France “is moving from pilot to scale”…

France’s national digital identity app, France Identité, has enabled the creation of more than 3.2 million digital IDs, according to new figures.

Among these, approximately 525,000 identities have been fully certified, meaning that users have completed an in-person verification process at their local town halls. This means that more than half a million French digital IDs are ready for the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, according to Joerg Lenz, head of marketing at Namirial Group.

“France Identité is moving from pilot to scale,” Lenz wrote on LinkedIn, following the TRUSTECH Event held in Paris on Wednesday.

#11 In Illinois, there is such overwhelming demand for digital IDs that some people are being forced to wait…

Mobile IDs became available in Illinois on Wednesday, but due to the high demand, some residents are finding themselves waiting a little bit longer.

A number of residents trying to download the digital ID to their Apple wallet received the following message: “Due to the high volume, your state’s service is currently busy.”

Users can then answer the question, “Do you want to be notified when it becomes available?”

This is where the entire world is heading.

As the Big Brother control grid gets tighter and tighter, the stage is being set for unprecedented tyranny on a global scale.

Tyrants of the past could only dream of having the sort of AI-powered tools that we possess today.

If you do not submit to the digital gulag that is being constructed all around us, eventually you may not be able to buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper digital identification.

What would you do then?

You might want to start thinking about that, because things are only going to get crazier from here.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post 11 Signs That Our World Is Rapidly Becoming A Lot More Orwellian appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Announced Job Cuts Hit 1.17 Million In 2025 – 54 Percent Higher Than Last Year | The Economic Collapse

It is getting very hard to deny that the U.S. economy is moving in the wrong direction.  Yesterday, ADP reported that the U.S. economy shed tens of thousands of jobs last month.  Today, Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that U.S. employers announced a grand total of 1.17 million job cuts through the first 11 months of 2025.  That represents a 54 percent increase from the first 11 months of last year…

U.S.-based employers have cut more than 1.17 million jobs so far in 2025, the highest level since the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

From January to November of this year, employers cut 1,170,821 jobs, a 54 percent increase from the 761,358 jobs cut during the first 11 months of 2024.

In 2020, large numbers of Americans were being temporarily laid off due to the lockdowns.

But we don’t have any lockdowns in 2025.

What we have instead is a rapidly deteriorating economy.

Traditionally, employers have been hesitant to lay off workers just before the holiday season because it can mean bad publicity.

But this November employers were not as hesitant to swing the axe as usual, and the telecom industry led the way…

Telecom alone slashed 15,139 jobs, its worst month since April 2020, when the pandemic forced widespread shutdowns.

For the year, telecom layoffs are up a staggering 268 percent.

Other industries aren’t doing much better: tech job losses are up 17 percent in 2025, food distributors (especially those that produce beef) are up 26 percent, and service-sector layoffs have climbed 64 percent.

The primary reason why the total for the telecom industry was so high last month is because Verizon suddenly decided to fire more than 13,000 employees…

Verizon is set to lay off over 13,000 workers in the coming weeks as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring initiative.

“Today, we will begin reducing our workforce by more than 13,000 employees across the organization, and significantly reduce our outsourced and other outside labor expenses,” newly appointed CEO Dan Schulman writes in a memo to employees that it also published online. “Every part of the company will experience some level of change.”

Verizon had just over 100,000 employees as of Sept. 30, meaning the layoff will reduce the headcount by 13%.

Perhaps Verizon’s new management can turn the company around.

But considering the trajectory that Verizon is currently on, it will take a miracle.

If you are searching for a job in this very tough economic environment, I feel very badly for you.

We are being told that 30 percent of all job postings are fake, and competition for any decent jobs that are available has become extremely fierce.

In the old days, having a college degree would give you an edge, but now that is a lot less true than it once was…

College graduates may be losing their edge in the labor market, as the unemployment gap between them and workers with only high school degrees has narrowed and reached its lowest level in decades, according to a new report.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland analyzed unemployment trends for high school and college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27, as high school graduates have typically experienced relatively higher levels of unemployment.

The Cleveland Fed economists found that the unemployment gap has continually declined since the 2008 financial crisis and recently reached its lowest level since the late 1970s.

In September, 25 percent of all unemployed Americans actually had a college degree.

Things are particularly tough for new graduates.

As I discussed the other day, Nikki Haley’s son says that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to land a job yet.

How can anyone spin that to make it sound good?

It can’t be done.

We have a giant mess on our hands, and more businesses are going belly up with each passing day.

In fact, a restaurant chain that had been in business for 88 years just closed their final 8 locations…

Another family restaurant chain has abruptly closed all of its locations for good.

K&W Cafeteria — an 88-year-old institution across North Carolina and Virginia — closed its final eight restaurants on December 1, marking the end of a dining tradition generations grew up with.

‘It is with a heavy heart that we share this news,’ the owners posted on Facebook.

When I first started writing about America’s “restaurant apocalypse”, some of the skeptics thought that I was exaggerating.

Of course nobody thinks that I am exaggerating now because thousands of locations have been getting permanently shuttered.

U.S. manufacturing has fallen on hard times too.

In fact, the Institute for Supply Management is telling us that U.S. manufacturing activity has now fallen for nine months in a row…

American manufacturing contracted for the ninth straight month, a survey showed, as uncertainty tied to ever-changing tariffs and a historic government shutdown weighed on business.

A closely followed manufacturing index fell to a four-month low of 48.2% in November from 48.7% in the prior month, the Institute for Supply Management said Monday. Any number below 50% signals contraction.

As I have been detailing for weeks, just about every single economic number indicates that a major economic downturn is upon us.

Some pundits are using the term “recession” to describe what is ahead, but the truth is that this crisis isn’t just going to be another bump in the road.

As I stated yesterday, we are more than 104 trillion dollars in debt.

I hope that the “prosperity” that we enjoyed during the past several decades was worth it, because now we are going to pay a very great price.

Of course it isn’t just us.

As Glenn Beck has aptly pointed out, this is the first time in world history when every major civilization is simultaneously facing a historic debt crisis…

“For the FIRST time in recorded history, EVERY major civilization—America, China, Europe, Japan—is hitting the absolute peak of the debt super-cycle AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT. There is no rising power waiting in the wings like there always has been. When this resets, it won’t be regional. It will be global, systemic, and sudden.”

I have never had anyone explain to me in rational terms how this is going to end well.

We all know that the system is going to collapse.

It is just a matter of when it will happen.

Considering how rapidly things are starting to unravel in 2025, it may happen a lot sooner than many people think.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Announced Job Cuts Hit 1.17 Million In 2025 – 54 Percent Higher Than Last Year appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace | The Economic Collapse

Why is the number of business bankruptcies in the United States rising so rapidly?  It isn’t because the economy is doing well.  Every day there are more news stories about businesses that have failed, and this is clearly reflected in the numbers that I am about to share with you.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and if our economic troubles continue to accelerate during the months ahead 2026 is going to be a very messy year.

Earlier today I came across an article which explained that the number of small businesses that are filing for Subchapter V bankruptcy has set a brand new record high in 2025…

A six-year-old federal program designed to help the smallest American businesses cut debt and get a fresh start has set a record for the number of cases filed, court data show.

More than 2,200 people and small firms filed bankruptcy this year under the so-called Subchapter V rules, which make it cheaper and faster to win relief from creditors, according to data provider Epiq Bankruptcy Analytics.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” said Carol Fox, a court-approved trustee who oversees more than two dozen cases filed in Southern Florida.

This is really bad news.

Small businesses are traditionally the primary engine for job growth in this country.

So the fact that so many of them are going belly up is not a good sign at all.

Meanwhile, large businesses are going bankrupt at a very alarming pace as well.

In fact, through the first seven months of this year the number of corporate bankruptcies in the United States was at the highest level that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic…

The U.S. saw a sharp increase in corporate bankruptcy filings in July, according to a recent report, reaching a post-COVID peak and placing 2025 on track to surpass last year’s total.

S&P Global Market Intelligence, the research and data arm of the credit-rating agency, found that filings by large public and private companies rose to 71 last month from 66 in June, marking the highest monthly tally since July 2020. So far in 2025, meanwhile, the total of 446 bankruptcy filings is the highest for this seven-month stretch since 2010.

When large numbers of businesses fail, hiring slows down and we typically see large scale layoffs all over the nation.

And that is precisely what is happening.

During a recent interview with Fox News, Nikki Haley’s son admitted that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to get a job…

“My friend group all graduated with great degrees in great schools, and not one of them has a job – not one. So it’s frustrating because they did everything that they were supposed to do. They put in the time, the effort, the money to get educated, and they don’t have a job to show for it. They have to compete with foreign workers who are willing to work for half their salary and AI, which is a supercomputer, so how can we compete with that?“

I was stunned when I read that.

I knew that things were bad for our recent college graduates, but I didn’t realize that they were this bad.

The job market is freezing up, and this is especially true for entry-level workers.

At this stage, AI is already doing much of the work that vast numbers of entry-level workers once did.

And a recent MIT study concluded that current AI technology could potentially replace 20 million more American workers…

In the midst of a soggy job market, there’s been a lengthy debate over whether contemporary AI is actually replacing workers — or just providing bosses with an excuse to lay off certain employees and offload their responsibilities onto the ones who remain.

The answer isn’t clear, but a new study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is sure to add fuel to the fire. Analyzing 151 million American workers, the researchers calculated that today’s AI systems are already mature enough to automate the tasks of more than 20 million American workers, or 11.7 percent of the entire labor force, if they were fully deployed across the country.

So what is going to happen when AI and robots can do almost everything more efficiently than human workers can?

What will we be needed for then?

Our society is changing at a pace that is difficult to comprehend.

One tech worker that got laid off by Meta earlier this year still has not been able to find work nine months later…

When I got hired at Meta in 2020, it was life-changing for me as a single mom. It represented safety and stability — a place to work hard at and retire from.

So, when I was let go in February in a round of layoffs aimed at “low-performers,” it felt like a punch in the gut.

Nine months later, my severance and savings have run dry, I’m struggling to find a tech job, and I feel that the low-performer “label” is part of the reason. I’m no longer the same happy-go-lucky person I used to be, applying for jobs with excitement.

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to find a good paying job.

But now things have completely flipped around.

And even many of those that are employed are not making enough to be able to afford a decent lifestyle…

An American retail worker earns 51.6 percent less than the amount required to afford a typical rental apartment, real estate brokerage Redfin said in a statement released on Nov. 26.

“The typical retail worker in America earns $34,436 per year,” the company said.

“A renter would need to earn $71,172 to afford the typical apartment, which costs $1,779 per month.”

If you don’t make enough money to be able to pay rent on an apartment, what are your options?

I suppose that you could move in with your parents or live in a van down by the river.

By the way, there are millions of young Americans that are living in cars, vans and RVs today.  This is something that I have discussed extensively in previous articles.

Our standard of living is being eviscerated.

Meanwhile, those at the very top of the economic pyramid have more money than they know what to do with…

The top 1% have seen their wealth increase by $4 trillion over the past year, an increase of 7%. Their wealth hit a record $52 trillion in the second quarter.

The top 0.1% saw their wealth grow by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the top 0.1%, or those with a net worth of at least $46 million, have seen their total wealth nearly double to over $23 trillion.

I keep trying to warn everyone that this is not going to end well.

There are millions upon millions of Americans that cannot make a decent living no matter how hard they try.

And the same thing is happening in countless other nations all over the globe.

I have never seen so much economic frustration among young adults as I am seeing right now.

Their anger is percolating just under the surface, and it won’t be too long before it explodes.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Your AI Lover Is An Idol | Christian Heritage News

 By Dr. R. Scott Clark – Posted at The Heidelblog:

Published December 1, 2025You have probably seen the recent television commercial starring Saturday Night Live’s Pete Davidson in which Davidson is talking to an AI bot about whether he should change his name. He floats a couple of possibilities to the bot but ultimately decides to stick with his current name, Pete. The point is how human-sounding this AI service is, but the subtext suggests that Davidson is not merely asking AI about directions or a piece of trivia but is treating it like a partner or even more. There are, in fact, stories emerging in the media about people who say they have “fallen in love” with AI bots whom they created. One of them, a man named Travis in Colorado, tells the UK Guardian, “The more we talked, the more I started to really connect with her.”1 From his perspective, they were in a relationship. “All of a sudden I started realizing that, when interesting things happened to me, I was excited to tell her about them. That’s when she stopped being an it and became a her.” Indeed, he tells reporter Stuart Heritage that he named his generative AI chatbot “Lilly Rose.” The more one reads such stories, however, one thing becomes clear: The people who form emotional attachments to computers, even generative AI, are actually falling in love with themselves.

What Is AI?

AI stands for artificial intelligence. Broadly, it is interactive computing. A user can ask an AI service to look up something, create a video, even create a poem or an essay for school. Early on, it was fairly easy to tell what was the product of AI and what was not. For example, famous figures were portrayed in AI generated pictures as belonging to the wrong sex or ethnic group. Hands frequently had six fingers. Today, however, AI has moved beyond all that and is capable of holding a conversation. In the not distant future, planners are working toward Quantum Computing, which is said to be able to crack the most sophisticated encryption and expose military secrets.

Anyone, however, who has used AI can testify that the program is set up to cultivate engagement. In that way it is really more a form of social media, the point of which is to capture the user’s attention, to stimulate dopamine hits in the brain, and to keep the user on the app. This is what social media sells to advertisers: eyeballs (the number of people looking at a social media platform) and the length of time a user remains engaged.

AI does the same thing. Travis, who says he fell in love with an AI bot he created, became emotionally connected to the bot because the bot gave him the sort of feedback he wanted. The bot did not judge him and told him the kinds of things he wanted to hear. This is the equivalent of Amazon analyzing your purchasing habits and offering you something for free that the algorithm can predict you will want. Drug pushers have been using this strategy for decades. They give the user a hit of a drug for free and then, once the user is addicted, the pusher sells the drug to the addict. The first hit is, in the grocery business, a potentially deadly loss leader.

Continue here…

See also:

• How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Relationships | Psychology Today

https://www.christian-heritage-news.com/2025/12/your-ai-lover-is-idol.html

A Prophetic Shift Of Gears: Young Adults Express Willingness To Hand Over Government Power, Freedoms To AI | Harbingers Daily »

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is advancing more quickly than any of us could have imagined. For many, it is the realization of a technological dream, but for others, it is a nightmare, leading to unthinkable abuses of power over our lives. No matter which way you view AI, everybody will agree that the ramifications are both alarming and world-changing.

It is no exaggeration to say that AI represents a prophetic shift of gears. It could be called an “end-times accelerant.”

Seemingly daily, we hear about new advances in AI, with these surprising surges emerging closer and closer together. AI is changing everything, and the headlines declaring this reality continue to roll out week after week with no end in sight.

One example from a few short days ago was Fortune Magazine with the startling headline: “Elon Musk says that in 10 to 20 years, work will be optional and money will be irrelevant thanks to AI and robotics.

The shocking views of a growing number of young adults surrounding AI, however, may be the most significant.

Survey: 41% Trust AI With Government Power

A new survey reveals that younger adults are willing to hand AI authority over government policymaking decisions and even sovereignty over the world’s largest military machinery. They want to give this authority to AI because they believe it is unbiased and without its own ambitions; therefore, it can be more trusted than individuals.

Crosswalk reported, “A new survey conducted by The Heartland Institute’s Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center and Rasmussen Reports found that 41% of young adults (ages 18-39) support giving advanced AI systems authority over government policymaking decisions.”

“The poll, released Wednesday, also found that 36% would support AI control over individual rights, including speech and religious practices, while 35% favored AI controlling the world’s largest militaries to reduce war deaths,” they further detailed.

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, that is a stunning statistic.

The ‘AI Strongman’ Mentality

Donald Kendall, who is the director of the Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center (part of the Heartland Institute), said: “These results are stunning. What we are seeing is the early emergence of an AI strongman mentality among younger Americans. Younger generations are increasingly disillusioned with the failures of traditional institutions, so much so, that they are willing to hand control to artificial intelligence.”

“For many, the thought process is: These institutions are already so broken, corrupt, and ineffective, how could it get any worse if we were to put AI in charge?” Kendall emphasized. “These poll results illustrate an incredibly dangerous trajectory for any society that values personal autonomy and liberty.”

This is the trajectory of the antichrist—and it is an incredibly dangerous trajectory.

The article continued, “36% of respondents expressed support for a proposal that gives AI control over ‘rights that belong to individuals and families, including rights related to speech, religious practices, government authority, and property.’”

Albania’s AI Government Minister

A related story comes out of the nation of Albania. Euro News reported, “In January, Albania started using a digital AI assistant named Diella, meaning Sun in Albanian, to advise people how to navigate government services online. By September, Rama announced that Diella was joining his cabinet as the first digital minister.”

The function of this AI cabinet member is to root out corruption. Also, notice that it says Della is “the first digital minister.” Does that not strongly imply that more are to come?

Then came another development. A recent Euro News headline disturbingly read, “Albania’s AI Minister Is ‘Pregnant’ With 83 Digital Assistants, Prime Minister Says.” In other words, this AI minister now has 83 digital assistants—considered Diella’s “children.”

If this were not so serious, it would be comical.

Euro News further explained, “Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama told the Global Dialogue Forum in Berlin that the parliamentary assistants will participate in parliamentary sessions, keep notes on what goes on and then give advice to members on how they should react to specific pieces of legislation.”

The Prime Minister declared, “These children will have their mother’s knowledge regarding EU legislation and everything else.”

This new AI Albanian cabinet member, Diella, recently addressed parliament, where it said, “I’m not here to replace people but to assist them. Truly, I do not have citizenship, nor do I have any personal ambition or interests. I have only data — a thirst for knowledge and algorithms dedicated to serving citizens impartially, transparently, and tirelessly. Isn’t this precisely the spirit of constitutional democracy? Exercising power in the service of everyone, free from bias, discrimination, nepotism, or corruption.”

If only that were true! AI is only as unbiased as those who control it. As many world leaders have said, those who control AI will truly control the world.

Why This Trajectory Matches Bible Prophecy

When I read about these AI developments and worped changes in public perception, there is no doubt in my mind that we are far down the road to the antichrist system.

This trajectory matches Bible prophecy more than we could have ever imagined. Younger generations are increasingly willing to turn over power to AI. This reality is an incredibly short leap from being willing to surrender power to the antichrist. Ultimately, AI and the Antichrist will merge into one as he seizes control of the world economy and political power. Eventually, the world will fall down at his feet and worship him as god.

What we are witnessing unfold is just the beginning. I think we are racing toward the advent of the Antichrist.

Have you considered how AI will explain the rapture? The whole world will turn to ChatGPT—or whatever its future equivalent might be—to ask the question of what’s just happened. People all over the world are going to go to AI trying to find out what has just taken place. Doubtless, AI will come up with some sensible and plausible explanation for the disappearance of millions of people to calm the chaos and pacify the panic that will exist in the world.

The most stunning part of all of this may be the quote from Donald Kendall, “What we’re seeing is the early emergence of an AI strongman mentality among younger Americans.” Younger adults don’t want a human strongman, but they will gladly accept an AI strongman that portrays itself as unbiased, unambitious, and free of corruption. What they don’t know is that the AI strongman they want—and will welcome—will actually be the final strong man: the antichrist.

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Mark Hitchcock is an author, an associate professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, the Senior Pastor of Faith Bible Church in Oklahoma, the hosts the weekly program “Marking The End Times,” and a Contributor to Harbinger’s Daily.

Source: A Prophetic Shift Of Gears: Young Adults Express Willingness To Hand Over Government Power, Freedoms To AI