Sep 15

Today’s News 15th September 2018

  • Politicians Warn Spy Chief: There Is A New Threat Called "Deep Fakes"

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    United States politicians are coming up with some wonderful descriptive terms to help use fear to get more restrictive laws passed.  Now lawmakers are warning the spy chief of a real threat called the “deep fakes.”

    Thanks to modern technology, the U.S. government ruling class now has another scary fear-mongering problem they are dubbing “deep fakes.”

    Technology has reached a point where people can now create near-perfect faked videos of people saying things they never actually said, reported Tech Crunch. “Deep fakes” use existing footage mixed with artificial intelligence and machine learning to be made to look like, or at least come close to, the real thing.

    Who else can see the writing on the wall and believes this could be nothing more than a fear mongering attempt to cull free speech even more? Politicians are always looking for reasons to remove rights from others, so it makes sense that they ‘d make a huge deal out of people being able to make realistic videos.  The fight to remain relevant as a politician has begun.

    US lawmakers are so worried about these faked videos that they now claim they can be “used by the enemy to harm national security.” Yet, unsurprisingly, one of the first uses of deep fake videos was for porn. Creators would make videos by superimposing faces onto the bodies of others.  The real issue to the political elites though is scaring the public over “national security.”

    Lawmakers think that deep fakes could be used as part of wider disinformation campaigns in an effort to sway elections or spread false news.  There it is… the fake news shadow. It isn’t the disinformation they care about, its that people just might be able to figure out for themselves who is oppressing them (hint: it isn’t Russia.)

    “Deep fakes could become a potent tool for hostile powers seeking to spread misinformation,” wrote Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in a letter to Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence.

    “As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security, with broad and concerning implications for offensive active measures campaigns targeting the United States,” said the letter, co-signed by Representatives Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) and Carlos Curbelo (R-FL). 

    If you guessed that the government is more likely than not going to use this as an excuse to continue to kill free speech, you’d most likely be correct.

    Schiff, Murphy, and Curbelo want the director of national intelligence (who oversees the nation’s intelligence community) to report back on its assessment of how deep fake technology could harm national security interests, reported Tech Crunch.  They want to know if there are countermeasures (laws, regulations, and the reduction of freedom) to protect against “foreign influence.” The DNI’s office was asked to report back to Congress by mid-December.

  • The Bailouts For The Rich Are Why America Is So Screwed Right Now

    Authored by Matt Stoller via Vice.com,

    Did they prevent a full-scale collapse? Yes. Was it necessary to do it the way we did? Not at all.

    These guys got off pretty easy. (Photo by Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)

    In 1948, the architect of the post-war American suburb, William Levitt, explained the point of the housing finance system. “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist,” he said. “He has too much to do.”

    It’s worth reflecting on this quote on the ten-year anniversary of the financial crisis, because it speaks to how the architects of the bailouts shaped our culture. Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson, the three key men in charge, basically argue that the bailouts they executed between 2007 and 2009 were unfair, but necessary to preserve stability. It’s time to ask, though: just what stability did they preserve?

    These three men paint the financial crisis largely as a technical one. But let’s not get lost in the fancy terms they use, like “normalization of credit flows,” in discussing what happened and why. The excessively wonky tone is intentional – it’s intended to hide the politics of what happened. So let’s look at what the bailouts actually were, in normal human language.

    The official response to the financial crisis ended a 75-year-old American policy of pursuing broad homeownership as a social goal. Since at least Franklin Delano Roosevelt, American leaders had deliberately organized the financial system to put more people in their own homes. In 2011, the Obama administration changed this policy, pushing renting over owning. The CEO of Bank of America, Brian Moynihan, echoed this view shortly thereafter. There are many reasons for the change, and not all of them were bad. But what’s important to understand is that the financial crisis was a full-scale assault on the longstanding social contract linking Americans with the financial system through their house.

    The way Geithner orchestrated this was through a two-tiered series of policy choices. During the crisis, everyone needed money from the government, but Geithner offered money to the big guy, and not the little guy.

    First, he found mechanisms, all of them very technical—and well-reported in Adam Tooze’s new book Crashed—to throw unlimited amounts of credit at institutions controlled by financial executives in the United States and Europe. (Eric Holder, meanwhile, also de facto granted legal amnesty to executives for possible securities fraud associated with the crisis.)

    Second, Geithner chose to deny money and credit to the middle class in the midst of a foreclosure crisis. The Obama administration supported this by neutering laws against illegal foreclosures.

    The response to the financial crisis was about reorganizing property rights. If you were close to power, you enjoyed unlimited rights and no responsibilities, and if you were far from power, you got screwed. This shaped the world into what it is today. As Levitt pointed out, when people have no stake in the system, they get radical.

    Did this prevent a full-scale collapse? Yes. Was it necessary to do it the way we did? Not at all.

    Geithner, Bernanke, and Paulson like to pretend that bank bailouts are inherently unpopular—that they were wise stewards resisting toxic (populist) political headwinds. But it’s not that simple. Unfair bank bailouts are unpopular, but reasonable ones are not. For an alternative, look at how a previous generation of Democrats handled a similar, though much more serious, crisis.

    In 1933, when FDR took power, global banking was essentially non-functional. Bankers had committed widespread fraud on top of a rickety and poorly structured financial system. Herbert Hoover, who organized an initial bailout by establishing what was known as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, was widely mocked for secretly sending money to Republican bankers rather than ordinary people. The new administration realized that trust in the system was essential.

    One of the first things Roosevelt did, even before he took office, was to embarrass powerful financiers. He did this by encouraging the Senate Banking Committee to continue its probe, under investigator Ferdinand Pecora, of the most powerful institutions on Wall Street, which were National City (now Citibank) and JP Morgan. Pecora exposed these institutions as nests of corruption. The Senate Banking Committee made public Morgan’s “preferred list,” which was the group of powerful and famous people who essentially got bribes from Morgan. It included the most important men in the country, like former Republican President Calvin Coolidge, a Supreme Court Justice, important CEOs and military leaders, and important Democrats, too.

    Roosevelt also ordered his attorney general “vigorously to prosecute any violations of the law” that emerged from the investigations. New Dealers felt that “if the people become convinced that the big violators are to be punished it will be helpful in restoring confidence.” The DOJ indicted National City’s Charles Mitchell for tax evasion. This was part of a series of aggressive attacks on the old order of corrupt political and economic elites. The administration pursued these cases, often losing the criminal complaints but continuing with civil charges. This bought the Democrats the trust of the public.

    When Roosevelt engaged in his own broad series of bank bailouts, the people rewarded his party with overwhelming gains in the midterm elections of 1934 and a resounding re-election in 1936. Along with an assertive populist Congress, the new administration used the bailout money in the RFC to implement mass foreclosure-mitigation programs, create deposit insurance, and put millions of people to work. He sought to save not the bankers but the savings of the people themselves.

    Democrats did more than save the economy – they also restructured it along democratic lines. They passed laws to break up banks, the emerging airline industry, and electric utilities. The administration engaged in an aggressive antitrust campaign against industrial monopolists. And Roosevelt restructured the Federal Reserve so that the central bank was not “independent” but set interest rates entirely subservient to the wishes of elected officials.

    In 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered his view on what causes democracies to fail.

    “History proves that dictatorships do not grow out of strong and successful governments,” he said, “but out of weak and helpless ones.”

    Did the bailouts of ten years ago work? It’s a good question. I don’t see a strong and vibrant democracy in America right now. Do you?

  • China Pressures Wall Street To Intervene In Trade Fight

    If anyone still doubted President Trump’s determination to slap tariffs on all – or even more than all – Chinese goods flowing into the US, they probably don’t anymore. So far this week, the president has taken to twitter to trash his own Treasury Secretary’s efforts to restart talks with the Chinese, before Trump publicly declared on Friday that he intends to move ahead with plans to slap 25% tariffs on another $200 billion worth of goods.

    Given the president’s unflinching resolve in pursuing his trade agenda, it’s understandable why a shrewd businessmen would go to great lengths to avoid getting in the middle of what looks to be a protracted geopolitical dogfight.

    WS

    But unfortunately for top Wall Street firms, many of which harbor ambitions of expanding their business in China, that may no longer be an option. Because while the Trump administration has largely left them alone, the Chinese are now trying to use whatever leverage they can (i.e. preferential access to the world’s second-largest economy) to push America’s top bankers to intervene on Beijing’s behalf.

    Reuters reported Friday that top Chinese officials have hastily organized an investment conference in Beijing and requested the presence of several top Wall Street firms. The conference will be chaired by former PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan and ex-Goldman Sachs President John Thornton, and feature an appearance by Chinese vice-president Wang Qishan. Dubbed “the firefighter” by the Chinese people, Quishan, in addition to being the most powerful of China’s vice presidents, is also one of the senior Communist officials involved in managing the trade dispute. 

    While market liberalization is certainly a priority for the Chinese, it’s difficult to imagine that these top officials are planning to attend this conference – especially with so much else going on – just to brainstorm ideas about how China can proceed with opening up its financial sector.

    The subtext here is obvious: China wants to figure out who in the US financial services community can help them get through to Trump and help stop this conflict before losses in China’s currency and stock market spiral out of control. And if the carrot of access doesn’t work, China has already proven adept at leveraging the stick.

    HONG KONG (Reuters) – China will ask Wall Street firms for ways to improve ties with the United States and suggestions to open up its financial sector at a day-long meeting in Beijing on Sunday, people familiar with the matter said.

    The Chinese government sent invitations for the hastily-convened meeting a few weeks ago as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies appeared to be headed for a full-blown trade war.

    Given the impossible nature of the task at hand, it’s hardly surprising that several top executives – afraid of enraging Trump – are planning to avoid the meeting altogether, citing unspecified “scheduling conflicts”.

    Top financial firms in both countries are sending representatives to the meeting, although heavyweight invitees such as Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman were unable to rearrange their schedules to attend the meeting, a source said.

    While Reuters’ reporters apparently didn’t question this excuse, a “scoop” published on twitter earlier this week by Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino, who reported that the Schwartzman & Co. are avoiding the meeting because they don’t want to feel coerced into carrying water for the Chinese.

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    The tweet didn’t stop Reuters from swallowing the official narrative spoon-fed to them by the “anonymous sources” cited in Reuters‘ story.

    Zhou and Thornton have asked participants to give one or two specific ideas on how to further open up China’s financial sector as well as suggest ways to “forge normal U.S.-China relations for the benefit of our two countries and the world,” according to the people and a meeting agenda seen by Reuters.

    The people, who have knowledge of the meeting, declined to be named as the roundtable details were not public.

    The meeting ideas should be accompanied by specific action points, said one source who was briefed on the agenda.

    “They don’t want something feel-good. It’s got to be specific actionable areas where reform and opening markets is needed,” said one of the sources.

    Chinese government officials will aim to reassure the U.S. financial firms that Beijing is genuinely receptive to their ideas, the source added.

    Reuters reported that several heavyweight names will be attending the conference…

    U.S. participants at the roundtable include Citigroup’s Asia head of corporate investment banking Jan Metzger, Goldman Sachs’ newly-named president John Waldron, JPMorgan Asia CEO Nicolas Aguzin, and Morgan Stanley head of international business Franck Petitgas, the people familiar with the meeting said.

    … however when approached by Reuters’ reporters, most of these companies declined to comment.

    CICC, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Hong Kong’s stock exchange and securities regulator, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

    If anything, Wall Street’s response to these overtures is, in a way, proof that Trump is right: The Chinese are getting desperate, and the US clearly has the upper hand – at least for now.

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    Fut fortunately for the Chinese, Wall Street isn’t the only industry where China has the leverage to push for a quid-pro-quo. We imagine we’ll be hearing more about China’s efforts to turn Apple’s Tim Cook and his now confirmed anti-Trump Silicon Valley peers into unwitting advocates for China’s cause in the not-too-distant future.

  • The Mueller Investigation Is Sending People to Jail – But Not For Collusion

    Submitted by the Strategic Culture Foundation

    The anonymous government official who revealed a “resistance” inside the White House has heightened the sense of doom hanging over Donald Trump’s presidency. A stream of disparaging claims from other White House insiders, the multiple criminal cases enveloping Trump’s inner circle, and the ongoing special-counsel investigation into possible collusion with the Russian government have all also added to anticipation of Trump’s imminent downfall. But the widespread perception that “the walls are closing in”; on a “ “teetering” Trump presidency is getting ahead of reality. While figures eyed as central to the suspected Trump-Russia conspiracy—campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos, longtime fixer Michael Cohen, and campaign manager Paul Manafort—have been convicted of criminal activity, their cases have not bolstered the case for collusion as many liberals had hoped.

    Last week, Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI about the timing of his contacts with a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud. According to Papadopoulos, Mifsud claimed to have connections to Russia and information that the Kremlin had obtained Hillary Clinton’s stolen e-mails. In May 2016, Papadopoulos relayed vague details about his conversation with Mifsud to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. According to press accounts, a tip from Downer about his encounter with Papadopoulos sparked the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into alleged Trump-Russia ties.

    Because Papadopoulos may have purportedly heard about stolen e-mails before their public release, he has been widely scouted as “Exhibit A” for a Trump-Kremlin conspiracy, part of a “secret channel through which the Russian government was able to communicate with the Trump campaign as it stole Democratic emails and weaponized them to help Trump win the presidency,” according to James Risen of The Intercept. In the end, Papadopoulos did not fill that role. According to special counsel Robert Mueller’s sentencing memo, Papadopoulos “did not provide ‘substantial assistance’” during his interviews in August and September of 2017. But in remarks made after his sentencing, Papadopoulos says that “I did my best…and offered what I knew.” It is not a surprise that he did not have much to offer. Not only did the Trump campaign rebuff Papadopoulos’s proposals to set up meetings with Russian officials, Papadopoulos now says that “I never met with a single Russian official in my life.”

    Mueller’s sentencing memo also confirms that after FBI agents interviewed Papadopoulos in January 2017, they interviewed Mifsud just weeks later in Washington, DC. Despite his being the figure whose comments ostensibly led to the opening of the Trump-Russia investigation—making him a suspected Kremlin cutout—Mifsud was not detained then, nor has he been charged since.

    Mueller appears to blame Papadopoulos for this. Papadopoulos, Mueller claims, “substantially hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question” Mifsud when they spoke to him just a few weeks later. Papadopoulos’s lies, they allege, “undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States.… The defendant’s lies also hindered the government’s ability to discover who else may have known or been told about the Russians possessing ‘dirt’ on Clinton.”

    The claim is puzzling. In his sentencing memo, Mueller acknowledges that Papadopoulos “identified” Mifsud to FBI agents voluntarily, though “only after only after being prompted by a series of specific questions.” That is why Papadopoulos has not pleaded guilty to lying about Mifsud, but only about the timing of his contacts with them: He falsely told agents that he was not yet a member of the Trump campaign when he and Mifsud spoke. In that same interview, Papadopoulos told agents that Mifsud informed him that the Russians “have dirt on [Clinton]” in the form of “thousands of emails.” Given that Papadopoulos not only informed FBI agents of Mifsud’s identity but also of the “dirt” he floated, how could Papadopoulos have “hindered” their ability to find out what Mifsud knows?

    As Papadopoulos appears to exit the collusion bracket, longtime Trump fixer Michael Cohen has recently emerged front and center. On July 26, CNN reported that Cohen is prepared to tell Mueller that Trump had advance knowledge of the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russian nationals. The incident has been the subject of intense focus because Donald Trump Jr. was promised compromising information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

    Veteran Clinton operative turned Cohen spokesperson Lanny Davis fanned the flames. Hours after Cohen’s indictment on August 21, Davis told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Cohen “is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows,” including about “the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude.… in the 2016 election” and even “whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time” about Russian e-mail hacking “and even cheered it on.”

    Davis’ qualified language (“obvious possibility,” “whether or not”) was easily overlooked, but the specter of perjury could not be. The co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr and Mark Warner, noted that Cohen had testified to them last fall that that he has no knowledge of any Trump-Russia collusion and that he didn’t even find out about the Trump Tower meeting until it was publicly reported in June 2017—one year after it took place. Burr and Warner also revealed that in response to CNN’s story, Cohen’s attorneys informed them that he is not changing his testimony.

    Davis quickly dropped the innuendo. Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on August 22 if Cohen has information that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting in advance, Davis replied, “ No, he does not.” Davis also abandoned his suggestion, made just 24 hours earlier to Maddow, that Cohen can tie Trump to advance knowledge of Russian e-mail hacking. Davis told Cooper that he was “more tentative on that” and that he only meant that he believes Cohen “may or not be useful” to Mueller, even though “it’s not a certainty the way [Cohen] recalls it.” Davis was, he clarified in the same CNN interview, just relying on his own “intuition.”

    Yet this clarification proved to be more consequential than perhaps Davis intended. The Washington Post and the New York Post revealed that they had used Davis as an anonymous source for their own stories “confirming” the initial July 26 CNN report. “I should have been more clear—including with you—that I could not independently confirm what happened,” Davis told The Washington Post, adding his regrets. Davis also continued to back off of his hacking claims, explaining that he was merely “giving an instinct that [Cohen] might have something to say of interest,” though, yet again, “I am just not sure.”

    But Davis was not done; he then revealed that he had also been used as anonymous source for CNN’s initial story. This did not just raise a sourcing issue for CNN but a potential scandal: In its initial report, CNN had falsely claimed that Davis had declined to comment. This meant that CNN had not just relied on a source who no longer stood by his story, but mislead readers into believing that he was not a source. To date, CNN has yet to offer an explanation for the gaffe—which, along with the failure to explain it—is not a first.

    In his dizzying retraction tour, Davis also raised doubts about another story that had been circulating for months. In April, McClatchy reported that Mueller’s team has information about Cohen that could corroborate a key claim in the Steele dossier, the DNC-funded report alleging a high-level conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The dossier claims that Cohen visited Prague in August or September 2016 to meet with Russian officials as part of his key role “in a cover up and damage limitation operation” over the hacking of Democratic Party emails. Citing two sources, McClatchy claimed that Mueller “has evidence” that Cohen secretly visited Prague during the period in question. Davis now says that that claim is false. Cohen, Davis told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, was “never, ever in Prague.”

    The only story Cohen has affirmed is the one he shared in court: that Trump, in order to influence the election outcome, directed him to make a hush-money payment to cover up for an extramarital affair. That allegation may or may not prove to be sufficient grounds for impeachment, but they decidedly do not fall under Robert Mueller’s purview.

    Cohen’s indictment coincided with Paul Manafort’s conviction on tax-evasion and bank-fraud charges related to his political consulting work in Ukraine. It is often speculated that Manafort’s Ukraine stint is relevant to a Trump-Russia conspiracy plot because, the theory goes, he served Kremlin interests during his time there. The opposite is the case, as Manafort’s former partner-turned-prosecution-witness, Rick Gates, reaffirmed during trial. Gates testified that Manafort pushed his client, then–Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, to align with the European Union and away from Russia. According to Gates, Manafort was paid lucratively to craft a policy known as “Engage Ukraine,” which “became the strategy for helping Ukraine enter the European Union.” Given that the tug-of-war between Russia and the EU (with US backing) over Ukraine sparked a full-blown international crisis and a new Cold War, Manafort’s strategy would be an odd one for a supposed Kremlin stooge.

    Putting aside Manafort’s record in Ukraine, there have been attempts to tie him to a potential Russia conspiracy via his financial debts to Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska. During the campaign, Manafort wrote to an associate about leveraging his position in the Trump camp in order to “get whole” with Deripaska, even suggesting that he offer “private briefings.” Could this have been, pundits suggest, where a collusion plot was hatched?

    Deripaska denies ever having been offered private briefings by Manafort. Another impediment to tying Deripaska to a Trump-Russia collusion plot is that Deripaska has connections to the figure arguably most responsible for the allegations of collusion. Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent whose DNC-funded “dossier” alleged a longstanding Trump-Kremlin conspiracy, has served as an intermediary for contacts between Deripaska and US officials. Deripaska even has a link to Mueller and the federal agency he once headed. In 2009, when Mueller was in charge of the FBI, Deripaska ponied up millions of dollars for a secret effort to rescue a captured CIA operative, Robert Levinson, in Iran. In return, the FBI—with the encouragement of Steele—helped secure a visa for Deripaska, who had been banned from the United States for alleged ties to Russian organized crime. In short, Deripaska’s various contacts make plain that Manafort’s financial ties to him, illicit or not, do not necessarily lead to a Kremlin conspiracy.

    Most critically, Mueller has yet to allege one. Prosecutors openly acknowledged before Manafort’s first trial that the case had nothing to do with “evidence or argument concerning collusion with the Russian government,” while the judge in Manafort’s upcoming second trial notes that the collusion investigation is “wholly irrelevant to the charges in this case.”

    The same could be said for all of the other charges in the Mueller investigation to date. Mueller has uncovered criminal activity, but not as of yet a conspiracy with a foreign power. Should that trend continue, it need not be a defeat for the resistance. The Russiagate fixation has diverted attention from many of Trump’s damaging policies and turned vast segments of the public into spectators of an endless drama. A political opposition mobilized around a range of issues that materially impact Americans—and no longer counting on Mueller’s investigation—may be the strongest threat that Trump could face.

    Aaron MATÉ | thenation.com

  • NFL Hell Continues As Ratings Crater For Dallas Cowboys 

    The NFL – suffering from dismal ratings for last week’s opening game and Sunday Night Football, may be in for a serious decline in viewers this season if Dallas local TV ratings are any indicator – after the Cowboys registered their lowest local ratings since 2009. 

    the Dallas market is an important market for one of the most watched teams in the country. There is a reason the Cowboys are valued at over $4 billion dollars. They absolutely own Dallas Fort-Worth. Nothing else really matters.

    …

    The NFL does not want to see one of it’s most important market losing fans. It’s not a good look. It’s cause for concern. –Touchdownwire

    That said, some have pointed out that the cowboys are “boring” now…  

    No one should be surprised. The Cowboys, while still a compelling aspect of the overall fabric of the NFL, have become a somewhat boring team, with a Salisbury-steak-and-lumpy-spuds offense that features two stars, a diminished offensive line, and a collection of No. 2 and No. 3 receivers. –Profootballtalk

    Less viewers, more money

    Despite a steady decline in viewership over the last three years, advertising revenues have continued to climb. 

    “Everyone loves to focus on the ratings, and everyone loves to focus on the NFL because it is the biggest ratings on television,” said Brian Rolapp, the league’s head of media. “But the reality is: Historically, the ratings of the NFL have always gone up, they’ve just never gone up in a straight line.”

    With ratings for regular-season games having fallen 17% over the past two years according to Nielsen, and youth participation in tackle football declined nearly 22% since 2012, Smith College Econ professor Andrew Zimbalist thinks “The NFL probably peaked two years ago,” adding “It’s basically treading water.” 

    Yet even a middling franchise, the Carolina Panthers, sold in May for a league record $2.3 billion. Advertisers spent a record $4.6 billion for spots during NFL games last season, as well as an all-time high $5.24 million per 30 seconds of Super Bowl time. The reason is clear: In 2017, 37 of the top 50 broadcasts on U.S. television were NFL games, including four of the top five.

    The Green Bay Packers, the only NFL team that shares financial statements with the public, has posted revenue increases for 15 straight seasons. Leaguewide revenue has grown more than 47 percent since 2012. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s official target is $25 billion in revenue by 2027, or roughly 6 percent annual growth. –Bloomberg

    That said, the future of the NFL’s advertising model may be on shaky footing – as their three-hour blocks of big-screen television run counter to the shorter formats, smaller screens and zero interruption format consumers have been gravitating towards. 

    “If I’m sitting at the NFL, I’m certainly getting nervous about the future of broadcast TV,” says BTIG media analyst Rich Greenfield.

    That said, the NFL’s Rolapp doesn’t seem too concerned. “The fundamental rule in media is money always follows consumption,” says Rolapp. “If you have the consumption, figuring out how to make money off it is not the hard part.”

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  • Visualizing The AI-mazing Patent Race

    Artificial Intelligence is transforming the way we live, and the tech giants are racing to stay ahead of the curve.

    AI-related funding totaled an estimated $15.2 billion in 2017, a 144% increase over the previous year. The U.S. tech industry leads with a 50% share of those investments, even with China swiftly closing the gap in terms of patents and AI research.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    AI itself isn’t new, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenny Scribani points out, boosted computing power, increased connectivity, and the sheer volume of data has paved the way for the fourth industrial revolution of AI.

    “The coming era will be looked back upon as the ‘AI era,’ when AI became the defining competitive advantage for corporations, government agencies, and investment professionals,” predicts David Nadler, founder of Kensho Technologies.

    THE POTENTIAL OF AI

    Artificial Intelligence is less about sentience and more about accelerated learning.

    AI technology looks for patterns, learns from experience, and predicts responses based on historical data. An AI-powered computer can’t produce a unique thought, but it can probably predict yours. The end result: AI is able to learn new things at such a speed that it can predict your behavior and preempt your requests.

    From the advancements in natural language processing that make Siri and Alexa possible, to the machine learning advancements that give robo-advisors their trading chops, AI’s ability to simulate human thinking means it can also streamline our lives. It can preempt our needs and requests, making products and services more user friendly as machines learn our needs and figure out how to serve us better.

    This makes AI a vital source of competitive advantage.

    AI’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

    In their quest to stay on top of the Silicon Valley food chain, familiar tech and retail giants are dipping their toes in AI to execute diverse strategies:

    Amazon
    Amazon leverages AI technology to analyze and predict your shopping patterns. Alexa is very Artificially Intelligent indeed, and the revolutionary Amazon Go model continues to push the boundaries of AI tech on the ground.

    Google
    Google uses machine learning and pattern recognition in its search and facial recognition services, as well as natural language processing for real-time language translation. The company has also released a series of smart home products, like the Nest thermostat. After acquiring more than 50 AI startups in 2015-16, this seems like only the beginning for Google’s AI upgrade.

    Microsoft
    Microsoft’s Cortana is powered by machine learning, allowing the virtual assistant to build insight and expertise over time. In 2016, the tech giant added Research and AI as their fourth silo alongside Office, Windows, and Cloud, with the stated goal of making broad-spectrum AI application more accessible and everyday machines more intelligent.

    Apple
    Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about their AI research, but it’s safe to say Siri is only the tip of the iceberg. The tech giant received a patent this year for augmented-reality glasses, slated for a release in 2020.

    Facebook
    Facebook uses artificial intelligence to suggest photo tags, populate your newsfeed, and detect bots and fake users. The social media giant has also come under fire for their widespread use of AI analytics to target users for marketing and messaging purposes.

    These tech kings are driving the research that will increasingly intertwine our lives with artificial intelligence, and it’s that investment that just might secure their future.

  • Yet Another Unfunded Liability: Too Many People In Hurricane Alley

    Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

    One of the big recent changes in American life is the ongoing mass-migration from the middle of the country to the coasts, especially those of the Southeastern and Gulf States. Florida and the Carolinas, along with Houston and surrounding Texas counties, have gained millions of new residents seeking to trade snow and monotony for sun and water. Coastal state governments have by-and-large encouraged this immigration and the resulting construction, paving, and deforestation because new residents pay taxes and developers contribute to political campaigns.

    This is turning out to be a huge, perhaps insanely expensive mistake, similar in a lot of ways to out-of-control public pensions: A short-term benefit that produces long-term costs – i.e., an unfunded liability – which accumulates more-or-less secretly until something happens to turn an accounting issue into a cash flow nightmare.

    Consider Houston. Over the past few decades hundreds of thousands of people have moved in, and developers have accommodated them by paving over much of the land that used to absorb floodwaters during storms. When hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, the city found itself underwater for days, with damages totaling $125 billion. Much of this was covered by tax payers via federal flood insurance.

    Now fast forward to today’s North and South Carolina, also very popular destinations for Americans from colder climes, and the scene of rapid construction of homes, hotels and stores within a few miles of the ocean. In the following article, the New York Times lays out the downside of this kind of short-sighted public policy.

    Why the Carolinas Have Become More Vulnerable to Hurricanes

    Twenty-nine years ago this month, Hurricane Hugo barreled ashore just north of Charleston, S.C., a category 4 storm with maximum winds estimated at 140 miles an hour and the highest storm tide ever recorded on the East Coast.

    Here is where people lived in the region in 1990. Hugo was the nation’s costliest hurricane ever at the time, with damages of about $7 billion.

    Over the next three decades, an estimated 610,000 homes were added within 50 miles of the coastline, according to my research.

    Most will be affected by Hurricane Florence, the monster storm that is advancing on the coast, with landfall expected Friday morning.

    We often hear that climate change is influencing the frequency and strength of tropical storms, heat waves and wildfires, and this is certainly true, though it is too early to say what influence the warming temperatures may be having on Hurricane Florence. That answer must await a post-mortem by climate scientists. But it is also true that rapid coastal development is amplifying the impact of weather and climate events like Hurricane Hugo and those expected with Hurricane Florence over the next few days.

    In fact, according to research by me and colleagues, the root cause of the country’s escalating number of weather- and climate-related disasters is not necessarily a rise in the frequency or intensity of these events but the increasing exposure and vulnerability of populations that lie in their path.

    That may seem obvious, though perhaps not for the people who have moved to places that are likely to end up disaster areas someday. That fact has either escaped their notice or seems to be of little consequence to them.

    This process of population and development growth that influences disaster frequency and magnitude is known as “expanding the bull’s-eye effect.” It isn’t just the population increase that is important in raising the disaster potential but also how the population and built environment are distributed across a landscape. As the targets — people, homes and businesses — become more numerous and spread, so does the likelihood that it will be hit by a tornado or hurricane or wildfire. And that expanding pattern determines the severity of the disaster.

    Since 1940, development within 50 miles of the Carolina coastline has increased an estimated 2,180 percent, or by 1.3 million homes. And as I mentioned, nearly half of this development has taken place since Hurricane Hugo, and many of these homes were added in high-risk areas like floodplains.

    There seems to be something of a “disaster amnesia” going on with respect to our land development practices after a calamity.

    More than a decade ago, 10 leading climate experts felt compelled to issue a statement saying the debate then about whether global warming was intensifying hurricanes was a distraction from “the main hurricane problem facing the United States.” The problem, they said, was the continued “lemming-like march to the sea” in the form of unabated coastal development in vulnerable places. “These demographic trends,” they said, “are setting us up for rapidly increasing human and economic losses from hurricane disasters.”

    We know much more about how the warming climate is influencing tropical storms. And in many places along the nation’s coastlines, the lemmings are still marching toward the sea.

    Nearly 30 percent of the American population lives along a coast, and an even larger percentage resides in flood-prone regions. The Census Bureau recently reported that the Atlantic and Gulf Coast regions have continued to grow despite costly and damaging hurricanes, with their combined populations rising to 59.6 million people in 2016 from 51.9 million in 2000.

    It is not a matter of whether a disaster will strike, but when for individuals living in many of these regions.

    And when disaster knocks at the door, the bill is left to taxpayers who subsidize the National Flood Insurance Program. That money is often used to rebuild homes in the same high-risk locations. Unfortunately, given current insurance programs, rates that don’t reflect the true risk of insured entities in hazard-prone regions and the lack of incentives to persuade people not to live in these areas, the system we have is unsustainable.

    We need to be smarter about where we are developing and how we’re doing it, building in resilience in any new construction in areas prone to weather and climate extremes. People who choose to live in high-risk areas should bear the cost when disaster strikes. Of course, we should be helping people hit by storms like Hurricane Florence. But I’d rather see those dollars directed to hazard mitigation, and making existing and future development better able to withstand a disaster before one hits.

    Just because we can live somewhere doesn’t mean we should. After all, as the saying goes, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

    Among the many crucial quotes from the above article: “In fact, according to research by me and colleagues, the root cause of the country’s escalating number of weather- and climate-related disasters is not necessarily a rise in the frequency or intensity of these events but the increasing exposure and vulnerability of populations that lie in their path.”

    In other words, you don’t need climate change to make the policy of encouraging people to move to hurricane alley a bad idea. There have always been – and always will be — monster storms, so a continuation of historically normal weather guarantees the occasional Cat-5 direct hit on the Eastern Seaboard. The more people we put there, the higher the cost of cleaning up afterward.

    And since we haven’t had a direct hit in quite a while, no one seems to understand just how much all those extra buildings will cost to replace. In this sense, Cat-2 Hurricane Florence is a taste of things to come, but just a taste. The main course is the inevitable “big one” that hits Miami, after which we’ll finally be able calculate this latest unfunded liability.

  • Pat Buchanan On The "Unpardonable Heresy" Of Tucker Carlson

    Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

    Our diversity is our greatest strength.

    After playing clips of Democratic politicians reciting that truth of modern liberalism, Tucker Carlson asked, “How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific.”

    Reaction to Carlson’s question, with some declaring him a racist for having raised it, suggests that what we are dealing with here is not a demonstrable truth but a creed not subject to debate.

    Yet the question remains valid:

    Where is the scientific, historic or empirical evidence that the greater the racial, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of a nation, the stronger it becomes?

    From recent decades, it seems more true to say the reverse: The more diverse a nation, the greater the danger of its disintegration.

    Ethnic diversity, after all, tore apart our mighty Cold War rival, splintering the Soviet Union into 15 nations, three of which — Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia — have since split further along ethnic lines.

    Russia had to fight two wars to hold onto Chechnya and prevent the diverse peoples of the North Caucasus from splitting off on ethnic grounds, as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan had done.

    Ethnic diversity then shattered Yugoslavia into seven separate nations.

    And even as we proclaim diversity to be our greatest strength, nations everywhere are recoiling from it.

    The rise of populism and nationalism across Europe is a reaction to the new diversity represented by the Arab, Asian and African millions who have lately come, and the tens of millions desperate to enter.

    Center-left and center-right parties are losing ground in European elections because they are seen as feckless in meeting what more and more indigenous Europeans believe to be an existential threat — mass migration from across the Med.

    Japan’s population has ceased to grow, and each year brings fewer toddlers into its schools. Yet Tokyo resists the racial and ethnic diversity greater immigration would bring. Why, if diversity is a strength?

    What South Koreans dream of is uniting again with the 22 million separated members of their national family who live in the North, but share the same history and blood.

    This summer, in its Basic Law, Israel declared itself an ethnonational state and national home of the Jewish people. African migrants crossing the Sinai to seek sanctuary in Israel are unwelcome.

    Consider China, which seeks this century to surpass America as the first power on earth. Does Xi Jinping welcome a greater racial, ethnic and cultural diversity within his county as, say, Barack Obama does in ours?

    In his western province of Xinjiang, Xi has set up an archipelago of detention camps. Purpose: Re-educate his country’s Uighurs and Kazakhs by purging them of their religious and tribal identities, and making them and their children more like Han Chinese in allegiance to the Communist Party and Chinese nation.

    Xi fears that the 10 million Uighurs of Xinjiang, as an ethnic and religious minority, predominantly Muslim, wish to break away and establish an East Turkestan, a nation of their own, out of China. And he is correct.

    What China is doing is brutalitarian. But what China is saying with its ruthless policy is that diversity — religious, racial, cultural — can break us apart as it did the USSR. And we are not going to let that happen.

    Do the Buddhists of Myanmar cherish the religious diversity that the Muslim Rohingya of Rakhine State bring to their country?

    America has always been more than an idea, an ideology or a propositional nation. It is a country that belongs to a separate and identifiable people with its own history, heroes, holidays, symbols, songs, myths, mores — its own culture.

    Again, where is the evidence that the more Americans who can trace their roots to the Third World, and not to Europe, the stronger we will be?

    Is the Britain of Theresa May, with its new racial, religious and ethnic diversity, a stronger nation than was the U.K. of Lloyd George, which ruled a fourth of mankind in 1920?

    Was it not the unity Bismarck forged among the diverse Germanic peoples, bringing them into a single nation under the Kaiser in 1871, that made Germany a far stronger and more formidable power in Europe?

    Empires, confederations and alliances are multiethnic and multicultural. And, inevitably, their diversity pulls them apart.

    The British Empire was the greatest in modern history. What tore it apart? Tribalism, the demands of diverse peoples, rooted in blood and soil, to be rid of foreign rule and to have their own place in the sun.

    And who are loudest in preaching that our diversity is our strength?

    Are they not the same people who told us that democracy was the destiny of all mankind and that, as the world’s “exceptional nation,” we must seize the opportunity of our global preeminence to impose its blessings on the less enlightened tribes of the Middle East and Hindu Kush?

    If the establishment is proven wrong about greater diversity bringing greater strength to America, there will be no do-over for the USA.

  • Strzok Wanted To Hunt Down Trump Ties Using FBI "Steele Dossier" Report Leaked To CNN
    • Uncovered text messages reveal that FBI agent Peter Strzok wanted to use CNN’s “bombshell” report about the infamous “Steele Dossier” to interview witnesses in the Trump-Russia probe
    • CNN used leaked knowledge that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier as a trigger to publish 
    • The FBI knew of CNN’s plans to publish, confirming a dialogue between the FBI and CNN
    • This is particularly damning in light of revelations of FBI-MSM collusion against the Trump campaign

    Newly revealed text messages between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page reveal that Strzok wanted to use CNN’s report on the infamous “Steele Dossier” to justify interviewing people in the Trump-Russia investigation, reports CNN. 

    “Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON more out,” Strzok texted to Page on Jan. 10, 2017, following CNN’s report. 

    “Hey let me know when you can talk. We’re discussing whether, now that this is out, we use it as a pretext to go interview some people,” Strzok continued. 

    Recall that CNN used the (leaked) fact that former FBI Director James Comey had briefed then-President-Elect Donald Trump on a two-page summary of the Steele Dossier to justify printing their January report. 

    This is a troubling development in light of a May report that the FBI knew that CNN was “close to going forward” with the Steele Dossier story, and that “The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed,” clearly indicating active communications between CNN and the FBI. 

    Weeks later, as the Daily Caller‘s Chuck Ross notes, the FBI approached former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos “under the guise of interviewing him about his contacts with an alleged source for the dossier.” 

    In short, knowledge of the Comey-Trump briefing was leaked to CNN, CNN printed the story, Strzok wanted to use it as a pretext to interview people in the Trump-Russia investigation, and weeks later George Papadopoulos became ensnared in their investigation. 

    And when one considers that we learned of an FBI “media leak strategy” this week, it suggests pervasive collusion between Obama-era intelligence agencies and the MSM to defeat, and then smear Donald Trump after he had won the election. 

    Text messages discussing the “media leak strategy” were revealed Monday by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). The messages, sent the day before and after two damaging articles about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, raise “grave concerns regarding an apparent systematic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at the FBI and DOJ related to ongoing investigations.” 

    A review of the documents suggests that the FBI and DOJ coordinated efforts to get information to the press that would potentially be “harmful to President Trump’s administration.” Those leaks pertained to information regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant used to spy on short-term campaign volunteer Carter Page.

    The letter lists several examples:

    • April 10, 2017: (former FBI Special Agent) Peter Strzok contacts (former FBI Attorney) Lisa Page to discuss a “media leak strategy.” Specifically, the text says: “I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go.”
    • April 12, 2017: Peter Strzok congratulates Lisa Page on a job well done while referring to two derogatory articles about Carter Page. In the text, Strzok warns Page two articles are coming out, one which is “worse” than the other about Lisa’s “namesake”.” Strzok added: “Well done, Page.” –Sara Carter

    Recall that Strzok’s boss, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was fired for authorizing self-serving leaks to the press.

    Also recall that text messages released in January reveal that Lisa Page was on the phone with Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett, then with the New York Times, when the reopening of the Clinton Foundation investigation hit the news cycle – just one example in a series of text messages matching up with MSM reports relying on leaked information, as reported by the Conservative Treehouse. 

    ♦Page: 5:19pm “Still on the phone with Devlin. Mike’s phone is ON FIRE.”

    ♥Strzok: 5:29pm “You might wanna tell Devlin he should turn on CNN, there’s news on.”

    ♦Page: 5:30pm “He knows. He just got handed a note.”

    ♥Strzok: 5:33pm “Ha. He asking about it now?”

    ♦Page: 5:34pm “Yeah. It was pretty funny. Coming now.”

    At 5:36pm Devlin Barrett tweets:

    Meadows says that the texts show “a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump’s administration.“ 

    Revisiting the FBI-CNN connection

    Going back to the internal FBI emails revealed in May by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), we find that McCabe had advance knowledge of CNN’s plans to publish the Steele Dossier report.

    In an email to top FBI officials with the subject “Flood is coming,” McCabe wrote: “CNN is close to going forward with the sensitive story … The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed in the brief and presented in an attachment.” McCabe does not reveal how he knew CNN’s “trigger” was Comey’s briefing to Trump.

    McCabe shot off a second email shortly thereafter to then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates along with her deputy, Matthew Alexrod, with the subject line “News.” 

    “Just as an FYI, and as expected,” McCabe wrote, “it seems CNN is close to running a story about the sensitive reporting.” Again, how McCabe knew this is unclear and begs investigation. 

    Johnson also wanted to know when FBI officials “first learned that media outlets, including CNN, may have possessed the Steele dossier. ”  

    As The Federalist noted in May, “To date, there is no public evidence that the FBI ever investigated the leaks to media about the briefing between Trump and Comey. When asked in a recent interview by Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, Comey scoffed at the idea that the FBI would even need to investigate the leak of a secret briefing with the incoming president.”

    “Did you or your subordinates leak that?” Baier asked.

    “No,” Comey responded. “I don’t know who leaked it.”

    “Did you ever try to find out?” Baier asked.

    “Who leaked an unclassified public document?” Comey said, even though Baier’s question was about leaking details of a briefing of the incoming president, not the dossier. “No,” Comey said.

    And now it looks like we have an answer for why the FBI never investigated the leak…

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