Tech Bros Say One Thing, FBI Experiences Another Thing
September 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Technical innovation and its metaphorical home is Silicon Valley. Two of the wizards manifesting the best and brightest ideas shared some information at the United Nations. CNBC said:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei addressed the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday and called for international coordination to address the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence.
That sounds almost Googley, doesn’t it? “international coordination” and “potential risks.” Here’s a snippet of what Sam AI-Man, the top wizard at OpenAI said:
“In our history, there have been times where countries who compete and don’t always like each other very much still come together for shared interests and the collective good in the face of a powerful new technology. We believe this must be one of those times”
Clap clap clap.
The only flaw in this statement is that OpenAI and Anthropic, along with a handful of other Silicon Valley-types are the gushing oil well for smart software. Just like a innovators in Pennsylvania who hit the Frazier well in Pithole Creek, that “powerful new technology” was tough to control. The Frazier well was capped, but it created quite a mess in 1865. It made headlines and sparked iconic illustrations of a make shift drill rig and a giant plume of black gold shooting into the sky. Too bad for the fish in Pithole Creek. But carbon fuels have been a winner? The tech bros and their smart software are like those drillers more than a century ago. A discovery and now we know about the knock on consequences.
The gusher at Pithole Creek. Too bad for the fish, frogs, and varmints in the vicinity. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
How likely is international cooperation? Since smart software rolled out its AI intentions with party hats and plastic horns in 2022, the smart software boom is behaving in some unpredictable ways. Bad actors can use smart software to reduce the time and cost of creating malware and using that smart software to figure out how to get around security systems. One innovator based in Hong Kong envisions a future where billions of agents achieve the goals of the humans who said, “Yeah, let’s do this.”
And what about security?
It seems that some allegedly well-secured US government agencies are concerned about security. I don’t know if smart software available from open source repositories or low-cost intermediaries played a direct role in the problem described in “Hacked FBI Data Has Sensitive Information about Employees’ Intelligence Roles.” Nor do I know if a bad actor or merely some careless tech bros created the problem described in “OpenAI Climbed the Fence: Taskforce Scrambles after Long Delays Flagging [Australian] Medicare Hack.” Further I am not sure if the Strike48 Appliance can deal with these agentic actions.
What strikes me is that since Microsoft did its carnival barker presentation about AI and Copilot, some issues have surfaced; for example:
- The tech bros smart software has diffused globally, and bad actors are the winners. Regulatory and law enforcement take downs take months if not years to orchestrate. The smart software world changes the clock speed for cyber crime. Okay, speed is one bonus for using AI to complete tasks.
- The idea of slowing down AI is performative. The reality is that the technology is out there. We poked into FraudGPT, a service accessible via the Tor browser. Take it down or put the data center hosting the service out of business. Those actions will be temporary. When the cat is out of the bad and eating steroids in the local pharmacy, here kitty is probably not going to get said cat to wiggle back into the bag.
- Whether it is a 75 year old grandma scammed by a Telegram phishing campaign using smart bots or the FBI losing most agents’ personal information and probably some other goodies as well, yip yap a global cooperation is downright crisis PR go wrong. Plus, there are special operations in Ukraine, the not-a-war in Iran, the dust ups in the Golden Triangle. I would like to see someone organize that meeting at one of those pricey off-site facilities in Silicon Valley. Yeah, that’s going to happen.
As my team and I work on a report for a government unit, several points jumped out of our distillation of one of the chapters in our report about future cyber crime. Like it or not, I am going to share some high-level observations:
First, existing cyber security systems are now being retrofitted with services that will deal with agentic attacks. That’s good news. The bad news is that evolution of agentic operations at scale is zipping along at a pace that makes Moore’s Law look like something from horse race data compiled in 95CE at Circus Maximus in Rome.
Second, AI struggles to deliver results for commercial enterprises. However, based on our examination of information related to Telegram’s Cocoon AI initiative, bad actors see smart software as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I am not sure how one Web3 sage knows that billions of agents working on a task is pulling into the bullet train of crime station now. Woo woo.
Third, the silliness of the companies creating this Six Flags over Fraud crime theme park outputting philosophical nonsense and jargon to show that these tech bros really care about functional security, social stability, and “making the world a better place” is crisis management after too many pumpkin lattes from Philz’ Coffee.
Net net: that gusher in Pithole Creek killed some fish. These tech bros are likely to generate more and unique problems in short order.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2026
AI Will Not Kill All Humans. Just One Billion
September 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have some skepticism about the function of the two brain humans who interacted with Jeffrey Epstein. Just pointing out my dinobaby biases. But here we are: “Bill Gates Says AI Is Powerful Enough to Cause a Billion Deaths,” a publication from Africa, reports:
Bill Gates has spent this month putting $1 billion into AI for the world’s poorest countries. He has now told NBC that the same technology is powerful enough to drive events causing a billion deaths and that companies cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.
Interesting. Wasn’t Microsoft stuck in some legal epoxy? Speeding, EU squabble, DoJ hassles? And we have my Epstein bias operating.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
Here’s another passage from the story:
He also said: "There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools." Gates said self-regulation by AI companies is not sufficient and that federal law is needed. The claim is about capability, not prediction. Gates is describing what the technology could enable in the hands of people who mean harm, not forecasting that it will happen. That distinction is the basis of his argument for legislation rather than alarm.
If I understand this, the techno-elite which Bill Gates helped kick start, run AI companies. Those companies chock full of techno-elite cannot manage “self regulation.” Okay, the father of Bob and Clippy knows about self regulation or the lack thereof. Let’s assume that he is not outputting big AI tech or BAIT PR. He makes it clear that the OnlyFans types, the “go fast and break things” folks, and the entire ecosystem that believes more technology makes more money cannot be trusted.
Al Capone allegedly said:
"Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I’m kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you’re going to remember about me."
Is Bill Gates kind? Are the BAIT leadership kind? Are the legions of workers who believe that going fast is kind? Sure they are, but some arrive with other qualities that make clear why Mr. Gates does not think these folks can self regulate:
- Entitlement
- Technology as a means to have power and control
- Rules made by others mean nothing in BAIT-land.
The BAITs want to go slow. Bill, Bob, and Clippy want to go slow.
But after the starting gun fired with Satya Nadella’s 2022 AI Copilot is the cat’s pajamas, what’s happened? We have the data centers. We have the $5,000 graphics cards. We have the hallucinating AIs.
So now it’s go slow. Going fast, therefore, must have been a trivial mistake.
The write up states:
Four subscribers are suing Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Musk’s SpaceXAI, alleging the companies illegally agreed among themselves to slow their products down, claims all four deny and which remain untested. And Nvidia’s Jensen Huang has put the chance of AI ending the world by 2030 at zero, calling the warnings "doomsday narratives."
Several observations:
- I can’t shake Epstein
- I can’t forget “go fast and break things”
- I can’t forget the tech bro ethos
- I can’t forget what’s happened to education and young people immersed in zippy digital floods.
Net net: Yeah, just kill a billion. Sounds good. What’s Copilot have to say? Oh, invest in Africa. Make lives better.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2026
BAITland Versus America: The Real AI Dispute
September 28, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I am not a political animal. My father had me hanging door knob messages for the Former House Minority Leader Robert Michel, who died in 2017. I was in grade school. Every year, rain or shine, I was canvassing, passing our fliers, or handing people GOP donation envelopes. I decided that I would follow a different path and avoid the door knob and door knocking thing. Why do I mention this ancient biographical factoid? I read “White House Is Isolated in Brushing Off AI Safety.” Let me highlight a couple of statements in the write up and then wrap up by pointing out what seems to me an issue mostly sidelined by Semafor.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
Item 1:
The White House and its allies are lonely in their insistence that AI development in America must accelerate without governments setting ground rules. At the UN General Assembly in New York City, as well as in meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington this week, President Donald Trump’s team was clear: US companies are the leaders in AI; they plan to keep it that way; and they reject any international attempts to rein in the technology. Trump, with his call to leave AI “exactly where it is” contrasts with Xi, who said responsible AI development is necessary — as other Chinese officials said this week that they support a global governance framework.
I noted the word “lonely” and “accelerate.” The context: No ground rules for AI. Anything goes. Notice that there is some international disagreement with this zip zip AI thing.
Item 2:
As Semafor first reported on Thursday [September 24, 2026], Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., has asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to convene National Security Council meetings with cyber experts and AI developers about potential national security threats, including possible AI-enabled attacks on critical infrastructure.
The magic phrase “national security threats” jumped out for me. I liked the statement “possible AI-enabled attacks.” The “national security threat” label is one that has a tendency to stick to the person, factions, organization, or company receiving a T shirt from the US government with this phrase stenciled on the shirt front.
Item 3:
Trump’s allies often see ulterior motives behind much of the current advocacy for stricter AI safety rules. Some argue that companies as big as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic are seeking “regulatory capture” by trying to shape legislation that only their companies will have the means to comply with, therefore giving themselves a leg up. Others decry “doomerism,” or the belief that AI could kill off humanity or eliminate jobs, as hysterical and speculative. Criticizing the effective altruism community, which many AI safety groups have connections to, is another burgeoning White House tactic. But the core of the president’s message is simple: The US should do nothing that might give China, with its cheaper open-source models, an advantage in the AI race.
The us versus them angle is stated clearly. Three of the BAITs (big AI technology companies) are named and positioned as folks looking for an angle to spark PR and maybe notoriety? I liked the use of the word “doomerism” without suggesting that it may be partially due to a nation-state actor not thrilled with America.
What do I think the write up either ignored or overlooked.
The BAITs are operating like a coalition of nations. The viewpoints articulated as a group stand for the members’ ideas. If one considers these US companies individually, in my view, each does what it wants. Surveille users? Just do it. Create revenue traps? Implement them. Articulate factoids that have minimal connection to non-coalition ideas? Get those marketing engines spinning now!
From my point of view, the US BAIT outfits perceive themselves as the leaders of the technology revolution. At some point the coalition will dissolve. The members will probably go to some type of AI, marketing, or Fancy Dancing “conflict.” But these outfits are not acting like organizations subject to the laws, wishes, and whims of a government. Where’s the proof? How about Facebook’s and Google’s management of government penalties for actions in Europe? In my opinion, when one views the BAITs and their perception of the utility of AI, I think that the US is correct in monitoring Southeast Asia’s AI efforts. But the near-term problem is the existence of techno-nations within the borders of the US. These outfits have their own distinct cultures, and they make their own rules. Restraint from an external source is not part of the BAIT game plan.
BAITland: Think about life is this emerging country, please.
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2026
OpenAI Just Uses Input
September 25, 2026
OpenAI and other AI agents don’t care what happens to the information that is inputted into it. That means they will use whatever humans shares without discretion. It is sad that these big tech companies don’t give a crap about what happens within these agents as long as they can advance the technology to make the shareholders happy?
Come along with me as we review on OpenAI plans to solve a big problem without regard for context: “On The Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem.” One of the Millennium Prize Problems is the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness proof. This proof was developed by an OpenAI system and demonstrates that the dynamics off the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid motion can develop in a singularity in finite time. In other words, big mathematics for smart people. Anyone else feel stupid yet?
You will after reading this:
“The Navier–Stokes equations use Newton’s second law of motion (“F=ma”) to describe how fluids move. Importantly, they treat a fluid as a continuous medium rather than tracking individual molecules. These equations are used for aircraft design, weather forecasting, and the study of blood flow. A fundamental open question for these dynamical equations has been whether the continuum approximation of the fluid can break down. Specifically, can the Navier–Stokes equations for a three-dimensional incompressible fluid with constant density develop a “singularity,” even when the motion starts smoothly? Here, a singularity means the dynamics lead to speeds in the fluid growing without bound within a finite amount of time. The development of a singularity would have to happen despite the presence of viscosity, which tends to smooth out motion. Because a real fluid cannot move infinitely fast, this would mark a breakdown in how the equations model the fluid. To continue modeling the system, one would then need to track the behaviour of each particle individually.”
Dear goodness, how complicated are these mathematics? They’re much more complicated than what was taught in high school back in the day and certainly what they are attempting to teach kids now. The issue with OpenAI is not that they are attempting to solve one of the Millennium Problems, it is that they are using knowledge generated by experts who are not receiving credit and who might be paid for their knowledge.
It is the same with OpenAI using people’s writing and art. Here is what OpenAI has to say about this:
“This milestone represents substantial work by mathematicians and AI researchers. However, this is not a culmination, but rather a snapshot in time, of progress on AI development. We believe we are now in the next period of AI progress, and today’s results provide further evidence of this. We are focusing on understanding this model, and using what we learn to help us guide and pace how we pursue further advances in capability. One of our key goals is to build AI systems which are steerable, accountable, and connected to people, which may require more deliberate choices about the pace of progress, as we continue our mission to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.”
Are we doomed again? Probably. Get into the bomb shelters everybody.
Whitney Grace, September 25, 2026
You Keep Your Old PowerPoint Decks, Do You Not?
September 24, 2026
Another dinobaby post. If there is an image, AI did it. I am Grandpa Arnold, not Grandma Moses.
Years ago I made the decision to post the PowerPoint decks or “slide shows” I used when I was giving talks two or three times a month. I put these on my personal Web site along with versions of articles I wrote. I put pre-publication fair copies of some of my search engine profiles on my Xenky.com Web site. I retired in 2012 or 2013. I don’t remember now. Every once in a while, I will look at a slide deck or call up a profile of a long-forgotten search engine just for kicks. No one else cares, a fact verifiable in the log data. If you are curious, content is available without charge at ArnoldIT and Xenky. I found this to be a hassle and no one on my team, except the rare Type A intern wanted to chase me down, get a slide deck, convert it to PDF format, and post it. I didn’t care. Now I am not sure if I have the slide decks I created between 2002 and 2026. I am not a librarian, and now I just don’t care. I don’t even have copies of my 14 books and monographs.
But some people and organizations keep their slide decks, rough drafts, meeting notes, and outputs from bouts of spreadsheet fever. I enjoyed reading “An Undisclosed Microsoft Presentation Is Now Central to a Multimillion-Dollar Antitrust Fight.” Yep, a slide deck, apparently a killer one. The Computerworld article states:
Central to this development is a historic, potentially damning internal “Second-Hand Software” (SHS) presentation, referred to in the consent order as a “known adverse document.” The specific content of the presentation has not yet been made public, but Microsoft has until October 31 to explain why it did not disclose the presentation earlier.
The idea is that Microsoft had a slide deck that explained subscriptions were the future. The resellers groused. Now the Softies have to dig out that previously undisclosed presentation. Why does someone in discovery hide documents? [a] Gee, our search system can’t find that PPTX file. [b] The dog at that USB drive [c] We are a giant company, and we can do in the UK what we do when the Department of Justice hassles us? [d] Oh, what slide deck? I don’t remember a slide deck [e] I think a contractor did some work but she is no longer with us.
Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Microsoft’s team is apparently not adept at information retrieval. The Computerworld story points out:
The more than 40 search terms include “SHS,” “antitrust,” “competition,” “ValueLicensing,” “used licenses,” “do nothing,” “competition,” “revenue,” and “discount licensing.” These documents cannot be designated “restricted” or “confidential,” according to the consent order. They must also be disclosed by November 30.
I thought that Microsoft had superior search systems. One of the systems is Fast Search & Transfer. Another is one variant of the AI technologies marketed under the “Copilot” brand. The court decided to help out the Softies by providing the list of terms.
The write up continues:
Under EU law, it is fully legal to resell perpetual pre-owned (“second hand”) software licenses; software makers cannot use their Terms of Service (ToS) to override this right. ValueLicensing specializes in this secondary market, re-selling licenses for products including Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. But the company alleges that Microsoft has stifled the supply of these pre-owned licenses in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA) comprising 27 European Union member and non-member countries. It says Microsoft abused its market dominance and entered into agreements that “prevented, restrained or distorted competition” via clauses restricting customers from reselling their Microsoft perpetual licenses in return for subscription service discounts.
Yep, subscriptions and forced cloud interaction make life difficult for those resellers.
The story includes this statement some of which originates from a mid tier consultancy:
CIOs should pay close attention to licensing “penalties” or inflated costs for running legacy software on third-party clouds, like AWS or GCP, versus Azure, he said. They should also evaluate the benefits of hybrid licensing strategies. Combining pre-owned perpetual licenses for static workloads with cloud subscriptions for dynamic workloads can yield significant cost savings compared to all-subscription models, Maisto [the consultant spokesperson] pointed out.
Those who are paying attention are the resellers. CEOs are not in this type of thought loop.
The UK court system is operating in a way different from the current US system. It is unlikely that a campaign contribution or a gold gift will alter the decision that emerges from this litigation.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2026
The World of Meta: Bad Stuff? No Way
September 24, 2026
Meta is not a bad actor. We love El Zucko, his approach to child safety, and his commitment to etchical business practices. Some folks do not have the same view point., We know this because, according to Ars Technica, Meta took days to remove ads that contained AI-generated sexual abuse material on Instagram and Facebook. You can read the full story, allegedly actual factual write up, here: “‘This Is The AI Men Actually Use’: Meta Ads Pushed Apps Nudifying Real Teens.” The Tech Transparency Project (TTP) discovered that Meta failed to detect 332 ads with child sexual abuse material (CSAM). These ads were mostly promoted in China and most were “nudify” apps that allow bad actors to digitally alter pictures of kiddos. Believe it or not, there is a brisk business is CSAM. It is probably a plus that Mark Zuckerberg does not have French citizenship and has not had an opportunity to interact with Madame Brousse of the French judiciary. (El Zucko could shoot Pavel Durov a message and ask for some color about his experience waiting for his criminal trial to address allegations that the GOAT did some sporty things.
Here is more of what TTP found:
“TTP matched “multiple CSAM ads to photos of real children that appeared online.” These ads seem to violate federal child pornography laws, since the Justice Department has clarified that AI CSAM is just as harmful as CSAM. The young royal’s image was “animated into a video of her performing a graphic sex act,” TTP found. Other ads animated a photo of a 14-year-old Instagram influencer “showing off her new sports club uniform” into “a video of her performing oral sex.” A third “preteen” victim “posing in a pink athletic outfit with pigtails” in a series of stock photos was morphed into a video where she looks frightened as she’s molested by an adult male, TTP reported.”
Most of the ads depicted preteen girls. Meta claimed they had new systems to detect CSAM. However, Wired and TTP teamed up and found hundreds of ads that the “new technology” didn’t pick up. (I know. I know. “We are working to resolve this problem.”) In short, Meta doesn’t respond to all of the CSAM ads that pop up on its social platforms and may be profiting because its systems are works in progress, have bugs, or have been hacked by a rogue AI from a country hostile to the US.
What are we going to do? Do not say, “Nothing.”
America is maybe possibly going to make an effort to hold the estimable firm accountable. Will companies doing CSAM attempt to “game the system” by routing around intercept nodes? Of course not. Stopping CSAM on a global scale is sort of hard.
Whitney Grace, September 24, 2026
Google Knows It Is Winner Take All: Go Go Go
September 23, 2026
Another dinobaby post. If there is art, it AI generated. I am Grandpa Arnold, not Grandma Moses.
Here are Beyond Search, we love Google. We love the loss of Boolean. We love the specious AI intrusions. We love the deplatforming of YouTubers explaining gardening. We love the advertising (just like the US courts do but more intensely). We love the personnel policies. We love the management steadiness. We love the customer support. We love the documentation written in a language everyone should learn. It is called “Googlese.”
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
Most of all we love Google’s love of explaining the obvious greatness of Google; to wit: “Google Just Dropped a Bombshell on AI Spending. Alphabet’s $200 billion AI Bet Is Starting to Pay Off.” Barchart delivers this Googley information without the encomia I think the Google deserves.
The write up says:
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian just supplied an unusually concrete answer. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference, Kurian said the aggregate payback period on Google’s AI servers is less than two years. More importantly, he said the payback period for Google’s own silicon is roughly half that — implying a period of less than one year.
Do Googlers wear T shirts with the word “Winner!” on them? Not only has DeepMind Google broken into self learning smart software, the company continues to innovate in saloon door online advertising mechanisms. Google is just doing outstanding work. Plus, legal decisions in the US continue to do the Googley stuff. Google does not have to dismantle its online advertising machine. Few pay attention to the payment rails starting to form from the China-certified Alibaba AliPay system. The only downside to Google taking over the world is the pesky European Union dullards.
What is Google’s secret to Cloud domination? According to the write up:
Google does not have to buy every AI accelerator from Nvidia (NVDA). It has spent years developing its own Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), allowing it to design chips around its specific workloads. Kurian said Google’s accelerator business, including TPUs, is already more than twice the size of the next-largest hyperscaler’s accelerator business. He also said Google offers 2.7 times better price performance for AI training and 80% better price performance for inference, compared with the relevant alternatives. That helps explain why Google’s enormous capital budget does not necessarily represent an enormous financial burden, despite producing negative free cash flow last quarter for the first time ever. If a server pays for itself in less than two years — and proprietary silicon pays back in roughly one year — Google can recycle that capital into the next generation of infrastructure much faster than a simple comparison of annual capex suggests.
The Google is making smart software payoff because it has chips, online advertising (eyeballs and advertisers), Baskin Robbins-type cloud services, and a line up of units, subsidiaries, partners like those fun loving folks at Alibaba, and much more. Google is vertically integrated just like Henry Ford’s River Rouge operation for auto assembly was. Coal and iron ore come in and nifty cheap autos roll out the other end of the “factory.”
I used to work at what once was a blue-chip outfit engaged in general business and technology consulting. In the day-to-day interactions with people who were described to me as the smartest in the world, I learned that the River Rouge model was important. It sold cars, but it was a bit of a problem for the ducks and fish near the facilities’ discharge pipes that dumped waste into the confluence of the Rouge River and the Detroit river. Once operational, the River Rouge facility, according to some of the world’s smartest MBAs was inflexible. Change at some levels with easy; at others, impossible. With most functions in one vertically-integrated stack, even Henry had to figure out how to maintain and manage the operational complexity of the manufacturing stack. The investments in infrastructure were hefty, and the Ford outfit had to make sure that money kept flowing in. But what made the original Model T the cat’s pajamas required some strong engineering capabilities and managerial (maybe somewhat crazy mono-maniacal management methods) became more tricky in the sprawling River Rouge facility. That worked until Alfred P. Sloan set up a decentralized, flexible manufacturing model. Ford found itself Number 2. Sure, it made money but vertical integration is somewhat less nimble that Sloan’s set up. Since I majored in medieval poetry, I just accepted what those slick MBAs spouted at me at the blue-chip firm.
Google’s approach seems to be Henry Ford, River Rouge-play. Google doesn’t like to lose in advertising, in AI, or court. The cited article concludes:
Alphabet’s roughly $200 billion capex plan for 2026 looks far less frightening if Google’s AI infrastructure really pays back in under two years — and its own silicon in roughly one year. Granted, Kurian’s figures are company disclosures, not guarantees. AI demand could slow, chip economics could deteriorate, or competitors could close Google’s performance gap. Yet, the latest numbers point in the opposite direction. Google Cloud revenue grew 82% in Q2, backlog reached $514 billion, and Google’s custom accelerator business is already more than twice the size of the next-largest hyperscaler’s accelerator business. GOOGL stock trades at roughly 16 times both trailing and forward earnings, with a PEG ratio of less than 1 times. Wall Street maintains a consensus “Strong Buy” rating for GOOGL stock based on 54 analysts with coverage. For investors, that makes Alphabet look less like a company simply spending $200 billion on the AI boom and more like one building an AI infrastructure machine designed to pay for itself. Alphabet remains one of the more compelling ways to participate in AI spending without betting entirely on someone else’s chips.
Can Google avoid the types of issues that allowed Mr. Sloan to become number one? Of course. Google is stuffed with the smartest people in the world. Google is fast. Google is flexible. Google is diversified. The decentralized and distributed approach is already integrated into the Googley machine.
What could go wrong? Here at Beyond Search we believe that Google is not subject to the lessons of the past learned by studying Henry Ford’s obvious failure and demonstration of ill-advised management decision making. Loser! But Google? Winner!
Stephen E Arnold, September 23, 2026
Big Boy Pants Time: Big Tech Is Harsh
September 22, 2026
Another dinobaby post. If there is an image, AI did it. I am Grandpa Arnold, not Grandma Moses.
One of my team pointed me to a post by Connect-Employ-4708 or orangewhiteshirt. On a personal level the story of a large firm borrowing open source code and presenting the work as that of the BAIT (big AI tech) outfit struck me as improper behavior. I am no lawyer. The actions by the large firm may be “illegal”, but BAITs have fleets of legal eagles to make litigation unpalatable to some people and smaller organizations. When an elephant fights with a poacher, the poacher gets trampled. (This happened within the last two weeks. Elephants killed a poacher who was lining up a kill shot on a rhino.) Fighting a BAIT can end in an equally deleterious way.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
The basic story involves an open source license. The original developer’s identify was suppressed. The code remained available. But the original developer’s contribution transmogrified into work by one of the BAITs’ engineers. My take is that the original developer was cheated. Lawyers and open source licenses may say something entirely different. But I am entitled to my personal opinion. For the name of the BAIT pulling this card trick, consult the Reddit.com post located at least for now here.
I want to highlight a larger issue. The pirating of another’s work illustrates a problem with open source. There is licensing confusion about which license to use; for instance, Apache or MIT. The attribution requirements leave people in a fog. Plus there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between what an open source developer expects and what a BAIT outfit or a large corporation’s engineers do. Open source has one set of assumptions, but corporate realities
In my experience. large technology outfits have layers of customs, conventions, and rules. The incentive plans for some individuals require “proof of work”. The idea is that a technical professional can answer the question, “What did you do this week that contributed to [a] revenue, [b] clicks, or [c] a competitive advantage for the company. A blank look is the first step toward being ignored or terminated.
In order to get the bonus, raise, or promotion, the individual takes action. Those actions are often overlooked by either the team leader or the middle manager (assuming there is one around). In an environment such as the one I have outlined, ripping off someone’s open source code is not a big deal.
One tactic is to use an open source software. Developers are encouraged to support a particular open source project. These outfits then do little to “give back” to the open source community. When a contributor distinguishes himself or herself, that individual will be hired to work at the corporation. Bingo. The big company has the software and a key contributor. Let the rest of the potential users fend for themselves. (Does this work Amazon? Oh, right. Impossible. I understand.)
Is this behavior part of the system and method? Open source has the idea of giving credit to developers, sharing credit, and contributing the idea of open source. A big US technology outfit operates like a separate country populated by superior leadership and worker bees. Open source serve a purpose, and that purpose is to help the company attain its goals.
The open source rip offs have been around for years. What’s interesting is that many open source contributors don’t know how to select a license and then watchdog those who get in the hen house and kill the chickens. We have an education gap, but, to be fair, this license confusion is just one area residing within a cloud of unknowing.
My view is that the incentive plans at big technology outfits allow open source behaviors to thrive. I don’t see much change in incentive structures; therefore, open source piracy is going to flourish in the lakes and streams next to the Information Highway.
Net net: Aggrieved open source developers, it is time to put on your big-boy pants.
Stephen E Arnold, September 22, 2026
Does a Data Center in a War Zone Need a Red Target on Its Roof? Nah, the Huge White Roof Shouts, “Target”
September 21, 2026
Another dinobaby post. If there is an image, AI did it. I am Grandpa Arnold, not Grandma Moses.
The Wall Street Journal reports “AWS Says It Can’t Restore Some Data from Mideast Facilities Struck by Iran.” Imagine that. I hopped online and snagged a generic picture of a data center viewed from the air.
Source: Russian Alibaba, September 17, 2026
What are the characteristics of this generic data center? Here’s my Monday morning quarterback observations. It looks big. It seems to be a shoebox type of design. It has a white room. It has outbuildings for odds and ends.
How hard would it be for a teenager in the army of a power hostile to the US to fly a drone with a kinetic to the roof of this structure and set off the kinetic charge? The answer is, “Pretty easy.” What if there were so-so missiles with close enough for horse shoes guidance systems? Several missiles could do the job.
I have driven by some Fancy Dan data centers; for example, the facility in Ashburn, Virginia, where one of my US government projects ran. The front and sides of the structure were hardened. But the roof? Nah. Why not bury the data centers following the Iron Mountain approach to document storage? Cost. Why not harden the roof? Cost. Why not equip data centers with anti-drone and anti-missile defenses? Cost and maybe some pushback from neighbors with no interest in having missile launchers near their subdivision.
So where are we? Here are a few comments from the YCombinator Hacker News’ comments about the Wall Street Journal story:
- cmiles8 posted: This interview with an AWS leader isn’t aging well, from CBS Sunday morning: Pogue asked, “I don’t mean to give anyone ideas, but let’s say I figured out that one of these unmarked buildings was an AWS data center, and I blew it up. Are you saying that it’s so backed up and redundant that you probably wouldn’t notice?” Wood replied, “Yeah, you wouldn’t notice. I mean, we might be a bit upset, but you wouldn’t notice!” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cloud-computing-loudoun-county-…
- avereveard posted: Aws cto is basically opening every presentation with a everything breaks all the time slide, idk where you get that idea they oversell the cloud resilience
- jaggerest posted: I feel like if this was done correctly it would eat a bunch of the market, but I question how many people are actually willing to pay for “the right way”.
- cyberax posted: AWS is designed to survive one datacenter being offline (which happened more than once, btw). When the first DC in ME was hit, AWS continued working normally, with only a few services experiencing issues. But it’s not designed to survive TWO datacenters going offline, and in a permanent fashion.
- wmf posted: They [Amazon] did build redundancy but most of it was bombed.
- betelbuddy posted: AWS always made very clear they wont copy your data to another region as only you know what your compliance and data residency requirements are. But at the same time they always said, its up to you to come your with your disaster recovery strategy based on your project requirements. And it has always been the case copying your critical data to another region is one of the first things on your check list.
- gilbetron posted: Force Majeure. Except for payment obligations, neither party nor any of their affiliates will be liable for any delay or failure to perform any obligation under this Agreement where the delay or failure results from any cause beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, labor disputes or other industrial disturbances, electrical or power outages, utilities or other telecommunications failures, earthquake, storms or other elements of nature, blockages, embargoes, riots, acts or orders of government, acts of terrorism, or war.
Net net: The killer comment is the CBS Sunday morning item. I seems the statement “You wouldn’t notice” is not entirely accurate.
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2026
No Wonder People Hate These AI Dudes
September 21, 2026
Another dinobaby post. If there is an image, AI did it. I am Grandpa Arnold, not Grandma Moses.
A flurry of news on one topic choked one of my newsreaders. The stories were variations on the theme “Yeah, we stole content, screwed publishers, and shafted copyright holders.” I added my own sub-title to these stories: “Now you can go pound sand.”
I have selected one write up to represent a dump truck full of write ups about the information sucking behavior of some big AI technology (BAIT) outfits. I like the term “bait.” Chum is good, but more people know that an earthworm on a hook can trick the pea sized brain of a fish into biting down and ending up in a frying pan.
Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Let’s take a quick look at “OpenAI and Microsoft Leaders Knew AI May Cause Doom Loop Hurting Entire Web.” The article reports:
Top executives at OpenAI and Microsoft admitted they knew artificial intelligence poses an “existential threat” to news publications as the New York Times sues the technology companies over copyright infringement.
I am not sure who briefed Brent Hecht, Microsoft’s “director of applied science,” before he went on the record. I want to make sure I know the name of the firm so I can mock that organization for some cheap laughs the next time I give a lecture. Brent, do you know why people dislike AI?
Here’s the statement which like everything I read on the Internet is probably really, really true:
“Our AI content strategy has started a ‘doom loop’ that will hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time. It is highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers, but that is the situation we have created for our LLM business with respect to its ‘content supply chain.’”
I think there is another PR firm helping these BAIT big wigs explain their trashing of writers, publishers, education, et al. The write up quotes one of those OpenAI wizards singing from the same hymnal. I quote:
Nick Turley, the vice president and head of ChatGPT, similarly said publishers face an “existential threat” from AI chatbots because they “are largely substitutive” and “will get more and more substitutive as they get better.” Hecht called the rising trend of chatbots accessing news articles for training “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” adding that perhaps it may be the “largest theft of labor in human history.”
I suppose the PR firms offer crisis communication services as well as media coaching. One thing is certain: Both MSFT and Sam AI-Man will have some damage control narrative spinning to output. I assume the smart software can provide assistance. I think the AI software is serviceable; for example, “White Hat Hackers Just Breached OpenAI Using Anthropic’s Claude in Less Than 72 hours — And It Is a Case Study in Just How Fast AI is Advancing.” Nifty because AI has flipped the checker board over for cyber security. Do you hear the cheering from the bad actors who are now using AI to steal data and money from 78 year olds with swarms of agents? I do. Rah rah rah.
Will the BAITs change their stripes? I am not too hopeful. Here’s the ceramic brake on change from the cited article:
The revelation of AI leaders’ thoughts on the key issues underpinning the legal case comes after the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting the defense made by OpenAI and Microsoft. The DOJ argued, in part, that preventing AI models from training on copyrighted material under a “misunderstanding” of fair use “would thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility.”
With serious consequences seemingly pushed to the curb, why not explain that these really smart BAIT folks knew what they were doing and did it anyway. On top of pushing forward, the BAITs have pumped more cash into the AI belief system. Why not? It is a winner take all game, and, based on my dinobaby experience, these BAITs want to catch lots of fish, maybe all the fish.
Someone said, “Confession is good for the soul.” I bet BAIT dudes have great souls.
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2026
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