I hold two beliefs at the same time. AI can wipe us out. And I can argue that AGI, ASI, whatever we end up calling it, is not as smart as a puppy.

Both are true. Here is why.

I own an FWF-60E and I’ve spent a good chunk of time pulling its firmware apart to see what’s actually in there. FortiOS doesn’t do casual encryption. The whole .out file sits under an outer XOR layer, and the filesystem image buried inside that has its own second scheme, which has changed shape several times across versions. None of this is exactly secret. Researchers have been chipping away at it for years. But every writeup solves one slice and then leaves you to stitch the rest together on your own.

In 1930, with the world sliding into the Depression, John Maynard Keynes sat down and wrote something wildly optimistic. The essay was called Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, and the bet at the center of it was simple: machines were getting good enough, fast enough, that within a hundred years the economic problem would basically be solved. His grandchildren, he figured, would work about fifteen hours a week. The rest of the time they’d spend on life. Art, friends, leisure, the stuff you actually remember.

There’s a popular version of Iranian history that goes like this: the Shah was in charge, then in 1979 the mullahs took over, and now we’re stuck with them. It’s clean, it’s simple, and it’s mostly wrong.

The US national debt is $38.8 trillion. Up until now, GDP growth has been just enough to service the interest and keep the lights on. It’s been teetering on the edge of the Japan scenario: either shrink the economy to pay it down, or print money and hope everyone else keeps buying your currency. The petrodollar arrangement, where Gulf states price oil in USD, has been doing the heavy lifting. Arab nations park their money in American assets, America gets to run deficits that would bankrupt any other country.

The White House posted a video mixing real strike footage with Call of Duty gameplay. Kill streak animations and all. Then they posted another one, real bombs hitting real buildings in Tehran, cut to SpongeBob asking “wanna see me do it again?” before looping back to more strikes. The official caption on another clip read “kaboom, kablow.”