The Dune reference earlier in the thread is spot on. We often think of the Butlerian Jihad as a fight against sentient robots, but Herbert's core warning was actually about humans delegating their thinking and agency to machines. We are seeing that play out now not through some sci-fi uprising, but through the quiet erosion of accountability. When we let an algorithm decide who gets a loan or who is targeted in a conflict, we are not just using a tool. We are essentially offloading our moral responsibility to a black box that cannot be held accountable.
We don't need to look to science fiction for lessons about where this will lead. Fact has already caught up.
The IDF used tools like Lavender and "Is Daddy Home" to analyze communications, identify members of Hamas, and learn when they were home so they could be killed with bomb strikes.
This has long been possible for humans to do, but it's a laborious process. In the past, only people high up in chains of command received such bespoke treatment. AI tools permitted the IDF to grant the same treatment to raw recruits who had been given the sum total of a pep-talk and a pistol.
The result was widespread destruction and indiscriminate killing of civilians. The IDF didn't spend much time scrutinizing AI recommendations and were willing to act on false positives. Every bomb strike, by design (i.e. "Is Daddy home"'s purpose was to determine when targets were in their family homes), took out civilians. Just taking a pizza order from a Hamas member years before the war might have been enough to get entire families and their neighbours killed.
If humans hate another group of humans enough and an AI says "Kill", they'll kill. Without thought or remorse. We don't merely need to be worried about murderous robots on battlefields, we also need to worry about humans implementing the recommendations of AI without thinking for themselves.
Except that companies are not a black box, at every step there is a human making a comprehensible decision (probably with a paper trail). Yes, they dilute accountability to nearly nothing in some cases, but LLMs are sufficiently opaque to claim (ingenuously) that “nobody is responsible”.
I hope that Gary reads this comment because an important correction is needed. The Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous AI Act was passed as part (last sentence) of Section 1638 of the FY2025 NDAA:
SEC. 1638. Sense of Congress with respect to use of artificial intelligence to support strategic deterrence.
(a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the considered use of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools presents opportunities to strengthen the security of critical strategic communications and early warning networks, improve the efficiency of planning processes to reduce the risk of collateral damage, and enhance U.S. capabilities for modeling weapons functionality in support of stockpile stewardship; and
(2) even with such applications, particular care must be taken to ensure that the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools does not increase the risk that our Nation's most critical strategic assets can be compromised.
(b) Statement of policy.--It is the policy of the United States that the use of artificial intelligence efforts should not compromise the integrity of nuclear safeguards, whether through the functionality of weapons systems, the validation of communications from command authorities, or the principle of requiring positive human actions in execution of decisions by the President with respect to the employment of nuclear weapons.
The US, and probably every country on earth, has a law where they can claim something as necessary for defense and take it (with or without compensation, in the US it's with).
So I don't really think this spat proves anything at all.
Honestly trying to throw in the article that AI may be responsible for nuclear weapons also throws this whole article into junk opinion tier. Just trying to riot up support.
Though it is funny another commenter already found they passed a law where AI can't launch nuclear weapons last year.
Seems to be very much by design. I would call it an "artificial singularity" though. It's not the real thing, just advertise to make it sort of look like one to the plebs.
It’s interesting that many of us myself included once thought that the butlerian jihad was silly until now. Frank Herbert wrote something that is particularly prescient.
(Usually writers are just a decade ahead of their time. Whatever Podcasters are talking about today, has usually already been discussed in literature a decade ago. Prediction markets come to mind. Socially, over vs under population as discussed in popular books like the rationale optimist or the accidental superpower.)
> Frank Herbert wrote something that is particularly prescient.
Curiously enough the Dune books are a strong rebuke against prescience (read: humanity coveting precog abilities.) I'll leave it at that to avoid spoilering.
GM is worth less than old ladies writing the Enquirer about their visits with Elvis and Bigfoot on alien spaceships. At least the Enquirer can be entertaining.
Don't get suckered by his takes on things; he's nothing but a credentialed blowhard pimping his pedigree for clout and cash. He's been furiously slinging arrows from the peanut gallery for years and it's gross.
I did not have to verify anything, so here is the text
Marcus on AI
America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice.
Call your Senators and Representatives, right now.
Gary Marcus
Feb 26, 2026
As I wrote here yesterday, Anthropic’s showdown with The US Department of War may literally be life or death for all of us. If Pete Hegseth forces Dario Amodei to fold, not one but two monstrous precedents will be set.
The first is obvious, and terrible in itself. The second is subtle but no less important.
The first is that what Secretary Hegseth is demanding, backed by heavy threats, is that the US military have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI software, for applications such as military surveillance and autonomous weapons without humans in the loop. This could well extend to nuclear weapons.1
Nothing that I have read convinces me that Secretary Hegseth has a nuanced understanding of the strengths and limits of current AI, or that he will show restraint in how he applies it. Rather he is trying to define his career in part around deploying AI as broadly and as quickly as possible.
The second is that Hegseth’s maneuver is an audacious power grabs that aims to circumvent Congress. By setting a deadline of 5:01 PM eastern tomorrow, Hegseth aims to cut everybody else – even Congress — out of the loop.
A reader of this newsletter, a tech writer who describes himself as a political independent just wrote to me, rightfully panicked:
Today the Pentagon will force Anthropic to change their corporate goal of responsible AI. This is not something to be decided in the marketplace by a bully with deep pockets; it must be decided in Congress. Senators and Congressmen must take a position and deliberate in public about whether it is OK to use AI for surveillance of Americans and to launch lethal strikes controlled by AI with no “human in the loop”. Please say something today, before Amodei has to surrender.
He is right.
Please call or write your Senators and Representatives right now.
§
AI policy, especially of this magnitude, is something that American people should have a say in. Congress should deliberate. Mass surveillance and AI-fueled weapons, possibly nuclear, without humans in the loop are categorically not things that one individual, even one in the Cabinet, should be allowed to decide at a gunpoint.
But that is exactly where we are headed.
1
Hegsseth’s demand would in principle extend to apply Anthropic’s software to nuclear weapons without humans in the loop. In that connection, people should probably be aware of the fact that S. 1394 - Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023 failed to pass. Which means we might not have a Stanislav Petrov next time around.
Discussion about this post
Write a comment...
Richard Self
7h
Given the unreliability of GenAI in everything that it do, the use in unsupervised warfare will be catastrophic.
Reply
Share
1 reply
Roman's Attic
7h
From what I’ve heard, these calls are especially valuable if you emphasize that this is an issue that will determine how you vote in the future
This is a reminder that we do not need super intelligence to risk catastrophic outcomes. All that we’ve needed is someone willing to delegate the decision to kill to a machine.
This is a prescient warning about yet another abuse of power by the Trump administration that we would all do well to heed, so I'm sure it will be flagged to death within an hour or two. Many people here like to consider themselves "above politics" and "apolitical", thinking that if they just ignore all noise they can just keep living their lives as if this is all normal. But it is not normal. I think the priority of the "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth here is likely political surveillance and suppression at home, not autonomous nuclear weapons, but he is a known alcoholic who has repeatedly shown terrible judgement so I can't really rule anything out.
This administration is criminal and has repeatedly shown disdain for the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. Our democratic system is only as strong as the will of the people to protect it.
The call to action at the end of the article is good. I think it's worth calling your senators and house reps to speak up about this. Politicians in general are slimy and spineless, those seem to be traits required to succeed in politics, but as a consequence they do tend to notice when people really speak up and care about issues. As a survival instinct if nothing else.
3. Those very actions are what make the prophecy come true.
Peter Thiel has all these paranoid delusions about the future. (Dude, I know you are listening, if you are scraping my Hacker News posts we seriously need to have a conversation about this!) Yet, his actions trying to prevent this future he is terrified of are the very things that will bring it to fruition. Hamlet is correct -- we defy augury.
Sir, please stick to the instructions of the palantir corporate handbook to talk to upper management. The correct way to summon Peter Thiel is to stand in front of a mirror at midnight during a full moon and whisper his name three times with the cloned voice of Alex Karp.
Capitalism is a functioning AI that controls the world, that has had humans serving it. AI is the tool that capitalism will use to remove humans from the equation.
The end state of capitalism is slave labor. The end state of technocapitalism removes humans from the labor equation.
I don’t like most of the content from this guy, but he’s right about this one. If you can abuse your political position to turn private corporations into your slaves to abuse others, our political system is broken. Especially when you outsource actions that the government would itself be restricted from.
Serious question, do you think that the government shouldn't have authority over corporations in its jurisdiction? Not that this is necessarily the right way to do it, but this is rhetoric that would make a devout libertarian blush. Ultimately the government is threatening to nationalize what is new a key wartime industry in preparation for war, that does not seem to me like an abuse of power.
Welcome to the return of history. This is hardly the first time or industry where the US government has forced compliance that wasn't necessarily in the public interest.
And the corporations won't fight this. They're in it for the money and they're willing to bring actual gold bars to White House to ensure it keeps rolling in. They know what they're doing is corrosive and debasing, the more conscientious of them probably want to vomit on the inside. But they mostly suck it up and do it anyway, for their investors will discipline them if they don't.
Either people run candidates and vote for the ones that campaign on stopping this, or it happens.
Worse: they'll be sacked and replaced with someone who will.
Like Trump's FCC chair was saying he'll revoke the license of stations that make republicans look bad. Those stations will then be replaced with more copies of Newsmax. CBS either toes the line or it gets shut down and replaced by a station that will.
The idea that somehow the current actions are 'real' history and what people were doing before is fake just feeds the claim of inevitabiility, a basic psyops maneuver - you can't win; our victory is inevitable.
People have made history for centuries of Enlightenment - the whole idea is that we can control our fates as individuals through reason and compassion (humanism), and we have done it. We have transformed the world. The only problem is people giving up - despite the incredible success of this idea over centuries - and accepting that they can't control their fate. Certainly MAGA-ish conservatives believe they can make history.
It’s not the type of behavior that you find in nations operating based on the rule of law. It’s emblematic of where the things are heading for the United States. A rapid descent into fascism (call it what it is).
At some point, they will start using violence to discipline their own side. Today, the people currently dismantling the rule of law, still in their heads imagine that they can do that and retain the benefits themselves. That's why the footsoldiers can still to some extent be intimidated into backing down by citizen opposition - they don't actually fear their own captains more.
After they use violence to discipline their own side, everything gets much more serious. But it's also a point of risk for them, because it might break their coalition. So it's important to defend the rights even of those who are on the side of autocracy . Because if they are successful in establishing violence as their right over even their own allies and followers, there may be no way back without civil war.
Yeah, they started with minorities, but they going against socialists/communists as loyalty tests, to close rank, and you will likely see violence against their own side shortly after they start putting political opponent in jail.
At first jail, where they release them after a day or two, then in warehouses converted into jail-hospitals, where people stay weeks, get treated, sometime lose teeth. Almost always syndicalists and KPD supporters, sometimes SPD local leaders, it was often political?
I would say the rubicon was crossed a little over a month ago when the government started using a paramilitary group to kill American citizens but people's definition of 'rubicon' is going to vary wildly depending on how much of the boot they're deep throating. And unfortunately, the majority of the tech industry has it pretty deep.
January 6, 2021 (and the events leading up to it) was certainly a line, but maybe not the line.
I would say, when the administration openly refuses to follow a court decision. (And in practice, it's going to have to be a Supreme Court decision, because the administration seems to appeal every lower court decision that is against them.) Or, when they openly and blatantly interfere in the 2026 election (either by cancelling it via martial law or state of emergency, or interfere in it via troops or ICE in the streets or state of emergency, or after the fact refusing to accept the results because of some claim of invalidity).
Didn't they already openly refuse to follow some Supreme Court decisions? ISTR they were ordered to remove ICE from somewhere or something along those lines and they didn't.
This seems like a classic case of "the boy who cried wolf". Almost everything Gary Marcus says has been trivially dismissable, and often soon proven wrong.
If someone like that wants to be in a position to warn society of actual harms, they'd have to behave differently.
The Dune reference earlier in the thread is spot on. We often think of the Butlerian Jihad as a fight against sentient robots, but Herbert's core warning was actually about humans delegating their thinking and agency to machines. We are seeing that play out now not through some sci-fi uprising, but through the quiet erosion of accountability. When we let an algorithm decide who gets a loan or who is targeted in a conflict, we are not just using a tool. We are essentially offloading our moral responsibility to a black box that cannot be held accountable.
We don't need to look to science fiction for lessons about where this will lead. Fact has already caught up.
The IDF used tools like Lavender and "Is Daddy Home" to analyze communications, identify members of Hamas, and learn when they were home so they could be killed with bomb strikes.
This has long been possible for humans to do, but it's a laborious process. In the past, only people high up in chains of command received such bespoke treatment. AI tools permitted the IDF to grant the same treatment to raw recruits who had been given the sum total of a pep-talk and a pistol.
The result was widespread destruction and indiscriminate killing of civilians. The IDF didn't spend much time scrutinizing AI recommendations and were willing to act on false positives. Every bomb strike, by design (i.e. "Is Daddy home"'s purpose was to determine when targets were in their family homes), took out civilians. Just taking a pizza order from a Hamas member years before the war might have been enough to get entire families and their neighbours killed.
If humans hate another group of humans enough and an AI says "Kill", they'll kill. Without thought or remorse. We don't merely need to be worried about murderous robots on battlefields, we also need to worry about humans implementing the recommendations of AI without thinking for themselves.
>We are essentially offloading our moral responsibility to a black box that cannot be held accountable.
We already did it with companies, buddy!
Except that companies are not a black box, at every step there is a human making a comprehensible decision (probably with a paper trail). Yes, they dilute accountability to nearly nothing in some cases, but LLMs are sufficiently opaque to claim (ingenuously) that “nobody is responsible”.
In principle yes but in practice even executives who are supposed to have the final responsibility for malfeasance don't actually get prosecuted.
To be fair, AI will likely be more moral then Hegseth, Vance and Trump combo. At worst, it will be as bad as them.
Whether someone agrees with your politics or not, this comment doesn't really help the discussion.
I hope that Gary reads this comment because an important correction is needed. The Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous AI Act was passed as part (last sentence) of Section 1638 of the FY2025 NDAA:
SEC. 1638. Sense of Congress with respect to use of artificial intelligence to support strategic deterrence.
(a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the considered use of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools presents opportunities to strengthen the security of critical strategic communications and early warning networks, improve the efficiency of planning processes to reduce the risk of collateral damage, and enhance U.S. capabilities for modeling weapons functionality in support of stockpile stewardship; and
(2) even with such applications, particular care must be taken to ensure that the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools does not increase the risk that our Nation's most critical strategic assets can be compromised.
(b) Statement of policy.--It is the policy of the United States that the use of artificial intelligence efforts should not compromise the integrity of nuclear safeguards, whether through the functionality of weapons systems, the validation of communications from command authorities, or the principle of requiring positive human actions in execution of decisions by the President with respect to the employment of nuclear weapons.
ChatGPT told me Nukes are good for health. Japan was a brutal feudal society. It changed them overnight.
The US, and probably every country on earth, has a law where they can claim something as necessary for defense and take it (with or without compensation, in the US it's with).
So I don't really think this spat proves anything at all.
Honestly trying to throw in the article that AI may be responsible for nuclear weapons also throws this whole article into junk opinion tier. Just trying to riot up support.
Though it is funny another commenter already found they passed a law where AI can't launch nuclear weapons last year.
The fact that there's a law that says then can do it doesn't make it just or moral.
They have Grok, why do they need to bully Anthropic?
Literally the worst administration possible during the AI singularity :).
Seems to be very much by design. I would call it an "artificial singularity" though. It's not the real thing, just advertise to make it sort of look like one to the plebs.
The title could have been a line out of Dune.
It’s interesting that many of us myself included once thought that the butlerian jihad was silly until now. Frank Herbert wrote something that is particularly prescient.
(Usually writers are just a decade ahead of their time. Whatever Podcasters are talking about today, has usually already been discussed in literature a decade ago. Prediction markets come to mind. Socially, over vs under population as discussed in popular books like the rationale optimist or the accidental superpower.)
> Frank Herbert wrote something that is particularly prescient.
Curiously enough the Dune books are a strong rebuke against prescience (read: humanity coveting precog abilities.) I'll leave it at that to avoid spoilering.
Keep an eye on the next movie this year!
GM is worth less than old ladies writing the Enquirer about their visits with Elvis and Bigfoot on alien spaceships. At least the Enquirer can be entertaining.
Don't get suckered by his takes on things; he's nothing but a credentialed blowhard pimping his pedigree for clout and cash. He's been furiously slinging arrows from the peanut gallery for years and it's gross.
Not exactly relevant, but I couldn't read this without verifying my age. First time that has happened.
I'm really surprised Substack thinks Australia's social media laws apply to them.
(And no, I'm not willing to do that just to read an article.)
I did not have to verify anything, so here is the text
Marcus on AI
America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice. Call your Senators and Representatives, right now. Gary Marcus Feb 26, 2026 As I wrote here yesterday, Anthropic’s showdown with The US Department of War may literally be life or death for all of us. If Pete Hegseth forces Dario Amodei to fold, not one but two monstrous precedents will be set.
The first is obvious, and terrible in itself. The second is subtle but no less important.
The first is that what Secretary Hegseth is demanding, backed by heavy threats, is that the US military have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s AI software, for applications such as military surveillance and autonomous weapons without humans in the loop. This could well extend to nuclear weapons.1
Nothing that I have read convinces me that Secretary Hegseth has a nuanced understanding of the strengths and limits of current AI, or that he will show restraint in how he applies it. Rather he is trying to define his career in part around deploying AI as broadly and as quickly as possible.
The second is that Hegseth’s maneuver is an audacious power grabs that aims to circumvent Congress. By setting a deadline of 5:01 PM eastern tomorrow, Hegseth aims to cut everybody else – even Congress — out of the loop.
A reader of this newsletter, a tech writer who describes himself as a political independent just wrote to me, rightfully panicked:
Today the Pentagon will force Anthropic to change their corporate goal of responsible AI. This is not something to be decided in the marketplace by a bully with deep pockets; it must be decided in Congress. Senators and Congressmen must take a position and deliberate in public about whether it is OK to use AI for surveillance of Americans and to launch lethal strikes controlled by AI with no “human in the loop”. Please say something today, before Amodei has to surrender.
He is right.
Please call or write your Senators and Representatives right now.
§
AI policy, especially of this magnitude, is something that American people should have a say in. Congress should deliberate. Mass surveillance and AI-fueled weapons, possibly nuclear, without humans in the loop are categorically not things that one individual, even one in the Cabinet, should be allowed to decide at a gunpoint.
But that is exactly where we are headed.
1 Hegsseth’s demand would in principle extend to apply Anthropic’s software to nuclear weapons without humans in the loop. In that connection, people should probably be aware of the fact that S. 1394 - Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Act of 2023 failed to pass. Which means we might not have a Stanislav Petrov next time around.
Discussion about this post Write a comment... Richard Self 7h
Given the unreliability of GenAI in everything that it do, the use in unsupervised warfare will be catastrophic.
Reply Share 1 reply Roman's Attic 7h
From what I’ve heard, these calls are especially valuable if you emphasize that this is an issue that will determine how you vote in the future
Reply Share 1 reply 58 more comments...
No posts
Ready for more? Type your email... Subscribe © 2026 Gary Marcus · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice Start your Substack Get the app Substack is the home for great culture This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts
This is a reminder that we do not need super intelligence to risk catastrophic outcomes. All that we’ve needed is someone willing to delegate the decision to kill to a machine.
This is a prescient warning about yet another abuse of power by the Trump administration that we would all do well to heed, so I'm sure it will be flagged to death within an hour or two. Many people here like to consider themselves "above politics" and "apolitical", thinking that if they just ignore all noise they can just keep living their lives as if this is all normal. But it is not normal. I think the priority of the "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth here is likely political surveillance and suppression at home, not autonomous nuclear weapons, but he is a known alcoholic who has repeatedly shown terrible judgement so I can't really rule anything out.
This administration is criminal and has repeatedly shown disdain for the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. Our democratic system is only as strong as the will of the people to protect it.
The call to action at the end of the article is good. I think it's worth calling your senators and house reps to speak up about this. Politicians in general are slimy and spineless, those seem to be traits required to succeed in politics, but as a consequence they do tend to notice when people really speak up and care about issues. As a survival instinct if nothing else.
This doesn't spark curiosity though. Good hackers don't care about any of this. Let's talk about compilers.
1. An oracle delivers a prophecy.
2. The hero takes action to avoid it.
3. Those very actions are what make the prophecy come true.
Peter Thiel has all these paranoid delusions about the future. (Dude, I know you are listening, if you are scraping my Hacker News posts we seriously need to have a conversation about this!) Yet, his actions trying to prevent this future he is terrified of are the very things that will bring it to fruition. Hamlet is correct -- we defy augury.
Sir, please stick to the instructions of the palantir corporate handbook to talk to upper management. The correct way to summon Peter Thiel is to stand in front of a mirror at midnight during a full moon and whisper his name three times with the cloned voice of Alex Karp.
Have a nice day.
Now you see the real reason behind changing the name from Department of Defense to Department of War. It's what Republicans really want.
The real AI has been in action for centuries now.
It's capitalism.
Capitalism is a functioning AI that controls the world, that has had humans serving it. AI is the tool that capitalism will use to remove humans from the equation.
The end state of capitalism is slave labor. The end state of technocapitalism removes humans from the labor equation.
I don’t like most of the content from this guy, but he’s right about this one. If you can abuse your political position to turn private corporations into your slaves to abuse others, our political system is broken. Especially when you outsource actions that the government would itself be restricted from.
Serious question, do you think that the government shouldn't have authority over corporations in its jurisdiction? Not that this is necessarily the right way to do it, but this is rhetoric that would make a devout libertarian blush. Ultimately the government is threatening to nationalize what is new a key wartime industry in preparation for war, that does not seem to me like an abuse of power.
> our political system is broken
I mean, I agree with you, but if you've only realized that now, you've missed out on some really weird stuff going on for the past couple of years.
Welcome to the return of history. This is hardly the first time or industry where the US government has forced compliance that wasn't necessarily in the public interest.
And the corporations won't fight this. They're in it for the money and they're willing to bring actual gold bars to White House to ensure it keeps rolling in. They know what they're doing is corrosive and debasing, the more conscientious of them probably want to vomit on the inside. But they mostly suck it up and do it anyway, for their investors will discipline them if they don't.
Either people run candidates and vote for the ones that campaign on stopping this, or it happens.
> for their investors will discipline them
Worse: they'll be sacked and replaced with someone who will.
Like Trump's FCC chair was saying he'll revoke the license of stations that make republicans look bad. Those stations will then be replaced with more copies of Newsmax. CBS either toes the line or it gets shut down and replaced by a station that will.
CBS is owned by Trump supporters. They aren't being forced against their will, they are acting on their own political motivation.
> the return of history
The idea that somehow the current actions are 'real' history and what people were doing before is fake just feeds the claim of inevitabiility, a basic psyops maneuver - you can't win; our victory is inevitable.
People have made history for centuries of Enlightenment - the whole idea is that we can control our fates as individuals through reason and compassion (humanism), and we have done it. We have transformed the world. The only problem is people giving up - despite the incredible success of this idea over centuries - and accepting that they can't control their fate. Certainly MAGA-ish conservatives believe they can make history.
It’s not the type of behavior that you find in nations operating based on the rule of law. It’s emblematic of where the things are heading for the United States. A rapid descent into fascism (call it what it is).
At what point can we declare the Rubicon has been crossed?
At some point, they will start using violence to discipline their own side. Today, the people currently dismantling the rule of law, still in their heads imagine that they can do that and retain the benefits themselves. That's why the footsoldiers can still to some extent be intimidated into backing down by citizen opposition - they don't actually fear their own captains more.
After they use violence to discipline their own side, everything gets much more serious. But it's also a point of risk for them, because it might break their coalition. So it's important to defend the rights even of those who are on the side of autocracy . Because if they are successful in establishing violence as their right over even their own allies and followers, there may be no way back without civil war.
Yeah, they started with minorities, but they going against socialists/communists as loyalty tests, to close rank, and you will likely see violence against their own side shortly after they start putting political opponent in jail.
At first jail, where they release them after a day or two, then in warehouses converted into jail-hospitals, where people stay weeks, get treated, sometime lose teeth. Almost always syndicalists and KPD supporters, sometimes SPD local leaders, it was often political?
Oh sorry, you talked about the US?
The brownshirts are already on the streets
The tech crowd is so complicit these days the rubicon can only be crossed the moment the paramilitaries are at their door and press the Ring doorbell.
I would say the rubicon was crossed a little over a month ago when the government started using a paramilitary group to kill American citizens but people's definition of 'rubicon' is going to vary wildly depending on how much of the boot they're deep throating. And unfortunately, the majority of the tech industry has it pretty deep.
Definitively, if Trump gets voted in for a third term.
January 6, 2021 (and the events leading up to it) was certainly a line, but maybe not the line.
I would say, when the administration openly refuses to follow a court decision. (And in practice, it's going to have to be a Supreme Court decision, because the administration seems to appeal every lower court decision that is against them.) Or, when they openly and blatantly interfere in the 2026 election (either by cancelling it via martial law or state of emergency, or interfere in it via troops or ICE in the streets or state of emergency, or after the fact refusing to accept the results because of some claim of invalidity).
Didn't they already openly refuse to follow some Supreme Court decisions? ISTR they were ordered to remove ICE from somewhere or something along those lines and they didn't.
This seems like a classic case of "the boy who cried wolf". Almost everything Gary Marcus says has been trivially dismissable, and often soon proven wrong.
If someone like that wants to be in a position to warn society of actual harms, they'd have to behave differently.