"Neither crop failure nor bad weather caused the famine in Ukraine. Although the chaos of collectivization helped create the conditions that led to famine, the high numbers of deaths in Ukraine between 1932 and 1934, and especially the spike in the spring of 1933, were not caused by collectivization either. Starvation was the result, rather, of
the forcible removal of food from people’s homes;
the roadblocks that prevented peasants from seeking work or food;
the harsh rules of the blacklists imposed on farms and villages;
the restrictions on barter and trade;
and the vicious propaganda campaign designed to persuade Ukrainians to watch, unmoved, as their neighbors died of hunger."
—Anne Applebaum in Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.
Terrorist groups have a new tool in their social media toolbox – Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is being used by a rising generation of members of Hizbullah, Hamas, and Yemen's Ansar Allah Movement (Houthis) to win new supporters and followers. Pro-ISIS and pro-Al-Qaeda figures involved with these groups' online activity frequently discuss, on their closed encrypted platforms, how to best use AI. As one ISIS supporter recently exhorted, "In order to move forward in the future, we need to learn how to use the new technology."
https://www.memri.org/reports/jihadi-groups-look-ai-recruiting-next-generation
Here we must talk about the secret of greatness. What is the secret of greatness? The secret of greatness is to be able to serve something greater than yourself. To do this, you first have to acknowledge that in the world there is something or some things that are greater than you, and then you must dedicate yourself to serving those greater things.
There are not many of these. You have your God, your country and your family. But if you do not do that, but instead you focus on your own greatness, thinking that you are smarter, more beautiful, more talented than most people, if you expend your energy on that, on communicating all that to others, then what you get is not greatness, but grandiosity.
Viktor Orban
We have a new A.I. danger. We are not used to meeting believable impostors online. A.I. can now mimic specific human voices, and compose text which mimics specific human thinking and writing styles. This threatens individual economic security; also national security.
An individual posing as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly used an AI-generated voice to call high-level officials in what appears to be an attempt to manipulate government officials to obtain access to information or accounts.
The unknown Rubio impostor has so far reportedly contacted at least five government officials: three foreign ministers, one U.S. governor, and one member of Congress, according to a State Department cable obtained by the Washington Post.
Authorities believe the imposter is likely trying to manipulate the high-end officials “with the goal of gaining access to information or accounts,” the July 3 cable sent by Rubio’s office to State Department employees said.