from MintPress News:
The early January launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek’s Artificial Intelligence models, which rival, if not outright eclipse, the capabilities of all current industry leaders at a negligible fraction of the cost, has been widely hailed by Western news outlets as a revolutionary disruption of the U.S.-dominated tech world order. Hundreds of billions have been shaved off American AI giant Nvidia’s stock price. Silicon Valley is frenziedly imploring Donald Trump to take decisive action and regain Washington’s “strategic advantage” in the sphere.
The Trump administration can only be a receptive audience to such entreaties. In fact, the loudest and most determined pleading to beat Beijing in the global battle for AI supremacy will be emanating from individuals and organizations in intimate proximity to the President, up to and including members of his new cabinet. While unacknowledged in the mainstream, Trump is, one way or another, surrounded by people with extensive financial, ideological and political interests in AI products and applications to a marked degree.
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For example, Trump’s confirmed CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has for years sat on the board of and consulted for multiple AI firms with Pentagon contracts extending to billions. This includes Arctop, which uses Artificial Intelligence to “interpret brain signals to seamlessly translate thoughts into speech and digital actions” and currently has a $1.25 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to monitor the brain activity of cadets in training.
Moreover, from 2021-2022, Ratcliffe consulted for Shield AI. In the second year of his employment, the company received a $950 million Air Force contract to use Artificial Intelligence to pilot unmanned drones. The CIA has secretly long-exploited such tech to run its targeted assassination programs the world over. Shield AI isn’t the only company to which Ratcliffe is linked offering these services, and his nomination disclosure to the Senate links him to half a dozen companies inextricably tied to the Military Industrial Complex.
In that document, the CIA chief declares “none” of his business dealings could represent any conflict of interest with his new role or even “appear” to. Ratcliffe’s unconvincing denials are particularly difficult to reconcile with Trump announcing on January 23—the second day of his second term in office—a $500 billion AI initiative, Stargate. Under its auspices, 20 large AI data centers will be constructed in the U.S. by 2029, managed by a consortium of major private Artificial Intelligence firms and financial institutions.
Forbes branded the move “monumental,” aimed at reinforcing Washington’s “position as the undisputed global leader” in AI. However, DeepSeek’s launch, which saw the app almost instantly catapulted to the world’s top-rated, most-downloaded free app, demonstrated AI primacy can be achieved without vast computing power or mammoth public or private investment. Its ChatGPT killer took two months and under $6 million to build. Even the mainstream media acknowledged that DeepSeek threatened Stargate’s future before the project even took root.
It is indeed no coincidence then that DeepSeek has been subject to relentless cyberattacks since launch. Chinese state media has referred to this blitzkrieg – which shows no sign of slowing, only escalating – as a “massive brute-force” strike originating from “US IP addresses.” Given Ratcliffe’s background and new CIA position, Trump significantly loosening restrictions on Agency cyberattacks during his first term, and his administration’s dark handshake with AI giants, one wonders how many of those IP addresses are based in Langley, Virginia.
‘Best Behavior’
One of the Artificial Intelligence firms set to deliver Stargate is OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Its CEO Sam Altman has long been fawned over in the Western media as a key leader of the AI boom, a September 2023 New York Magazine profile comparing him to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb. At the White House press conference kickstarting Stargate, he stood beaming next to Trump before delivering an address of his own. He boldly declared: “This will be the most important project of this era…We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President, and I’m thrilled that we get to.”
Such effusive praise is in stark contrast to 2016 when Altman spent much of the year comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler and imploring U.S. citizens to vote for Hillary Clinton. Subsequently, he donated sizable sums to Democratic party causes and candidates, including $200,000 to Joe Biden. Eerily, his sudden political volte-face coincided with a prominent appearance at a July 2024 AI for Good conference. There, Altman made a number of deeply disquieting comments, chief among them:
Over a long period of time…I [expect] there will be some change required to the social contract, given how powerful we expect [Artificial Intelligence] to be. I’m not a believer that there won’t be any jobs, I think we always find new things to do. But I do think the whole structure of society itself will be up for some degree of debate and reconfiguration.”
Altman’s forecast sparked widespread concern he and fellow AI innovators were seeking to harness the unprecedented power of their patented technology for malign, world-changing ends. Yet, his dire projection pales compared to the routine utterances of Larry Ellison, chief of Oracle, the other major tech firm at Stargate’s forefront. While little-known, the company is one of the world’s biggest and most profitable tech players, reaping untold billions from contracts with U.S. government agencies over decades, the CIA being its most profitable customer.
Oracle’s foray into AI is a relatively new development, but Ellison – the world’s fourth-richest man, per Bloomberg – has grand, dystopian plans for the technology and no compunction whatsoever about broadcasting these designs publicly. At a September 2024 investor meeting, he bragged that artificial intelligence could be used to perpetually monitor every conceivable public and private surveillance system, from CCTV to vehicle dashboard cameras. Ellison also foresaw AI-powered drones replacing police cars in high-speed chases – “very simple in the age of autonomous drones”:
